About Us

Mission

Teachers & Writers Collaborative (T&W) celebrates the imagination through transformative writing and arts education for youth and lifelong learners. Our programs and publications inspire classroom innovation and create greater equity in and through the literary arts.

T&W programs include: writing workshops for youth, art workshops for seniors, and training for teachers. In addition, T&W hosts the NY Poetry Out Loud recitation competition and the NY Youth Poet Laureate program for teens in New York State. To support the teaching of creative writing, we publish Teachers & Writers Magazine and an assortment of books for educators.

Our 2023-2025 Strategic Vision

Our 2023-2025 Strategic Vision, released October 2022, outlines a new mission, vision, and core values, and goals for the next two years.

Read the 2023-2025 Strategic Vision

Vision

We strive toward a world in which artistic practice is valued and accessible to all, with the belief that words have the power to transform lives and communities.

We envision a world in which students’ whole selves have a place in school, where they are encouraged to experiment and explore language in their authentic voices.
We envision a world in which learning is a lifelong process and there are abundant art-making opportunities for older adults.
We envision classrooms that embrace creative play, free thought, free expression, and an eager willingness to engage with divergent ideas.
We envision a world where artists earn fair and sustainable compensation that supports creative work.
We envision a world in which arts education is vital; valued as a wellspring of creative thinking, problem solving, and growth; and where society thrives through artistic collaboration among communities, teachers, students, and artists.

Core Values

T&W’s programs are centered around our core values of creativity; process & practice; collaboration; and diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.

Creativity:

We inspire imagination, foster critical thinking, and nurture the development of student voices.

Process & Practice:

We honor the creative process, guided by the practice of working artists, and provide the space and structure that leads students to produce great work.

Collaboration:

We work together with writers, partners, and students to develop innovative and responsive programs. We believe good things happen when ideas and resources are exchanged in a spirit of reciprocal learning.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Accessibility:

We pursue a culture in which all can flourish by centering marginalized voices, asking participants and facilitators to examine their place in the context of their communities.

The 1977 staff of Teachers & Writers Collaborative

History

Teachers & Writers Collaborative was founded in 1967 by a group of writers and educators who believed that professional writers could make a unique contribution to the teaching of writing and literature. Those responsible for shaping T&W’s program and philosophy in the organization’s early years included June Jordan, Rosellen Brown, Victor Hernández Cruz, Kenneth Koch, Herbert Kohl, Phillip Lopate, Grace Paley, Muriel Rukeyser, and Anne Sexton, among others.

Since its founding, T&W has published more than 80 books about teaching writing. T&W writers have brought writing residencies and professional development workshops to hundreds of thousands of students and tens of thousands of teachers in New York City schools. This depth of experience led the National Endowment for the Arts to call T&W the arts education group that is “most familiar with creative writing/literature in primary and secondary schools.”

Staff

Asari Beale, Executive Director

Asari Beale is an Afro-Latina writer, educator, and leader deeply committed to children’s literacy. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable and a steering committee member of LitNet, a network serving America’s literary community. She has taught literature and creative writing at Hunter College, Brooklyn College, and Fordham University. Prior to joining Teachers & Writers, she served as the Director of Communications and Community Relations at LSA Family Health Service and as Communications Manager at Reach Out and Read of Greater New York. Ms. Beale holds a BA from New York University and an MFA from Brooklyn College. She lives, loves, and writes out of Harlem, New York City.

Nancy L. Weber, Education Director

Nancy L. Weber is a fiction writer and teacher. Prior to joining the Teachers & Writers staff in September 2019, Ms. Weber was an Adjunct Lecturer at St. Joseph’s College and the New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn, as well as a Fiction and Business Writing teacher at Gotham Writers Workshop. She was also a Founding Board Member, Program Director, and Workshop Facilitator for NY Writers Coalition, a non-profit arts and social justice organization providing writing programs to disenfranchised youth and adults throughout NYC. Ms. Weber received a BFA in Film Production from New York University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Writer’s Foundry at St. Joseph’s College.

Alice Pencavel, Program Coordinator

Alice Pencavel is a writer and teacher. Prior to joining Teachers & Writers in 2021, Ms. Pencavel worked as a Teaching Artist for multiple non-profits, including Arts Connection, SAY (Stuttering Association for the Young), Brooklyn Acting Lab, Stages on the Sound, Girls Write Now, and Teachers & Writers, among others. As a playwright, she has collaborated with Naked Angels, Lincoln Center Theater, MCC, Manhattan Repertory, Superhero Clubhouse, and the Kitchen Theater. She also worked in Customer Support with DonorsChoose, helping public school students receive educational materials. Having served as a Teaching Artist with Teachers & Writers, Ms. Pencavel has seen first hand the impact of bringing writing programs into schools and is thrilled to offer her services in this new capacity. Ms. Pencavel holds a BFA in Acting from Ithaca College and an MFA in Playwriting from the New School.

Joshua Garcia, Office Manager

Joshua Garcia is a poet. Prior to joining Teachers & Writers, Joshua was a Stadler Fellow in Literary Arts Administration at Bucknell University, where he assisted with the Center's programs and events and led a poetry writing program for incarcerated writers. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the College of Charleston and has mentored undergraduate students in creative writing and community engagement initiatives. His first poetry collection, Pentimento, is forthcoming with Black Lawrence Press (2024), and his poems have appeared in Arts & Letters, The Georgia Review, Ninth Letter, North American Review, and elsewhere.

Dalia Elhassan, Poetry Out Loud Coordinator

Dalia Elhassan is a Sudanese-American poet and writer living in NYC. A graduate of The New School's Eugene Lang College, her work has been featured in The Kenyon Review, The Oakland Arts Review, Rattle #59, and most recently in the New-Generation African Poets Series (Sita) with her chapbook, In Half Light (2019, Akashic Books and the African Poetry Book Fund). She is the recipient of the Hajja Razia Sharif Sheikh Prize for nonfiction and was shortlisted for the 2018 Brunel International African Poetry Prize. Dalia is currently an MFA candidate at NYU's Creative Writing Program, where she is completing her thesis.

Lanxing Fu, Development Coordinator

Lanxing Fu is a Chinese-American theater artist living in NYC. She is Co-Director of Superhero Clubhouse, an interdisciplinary group creating performance for climate and environmental justice. Her art-making is rooted in social-engaged theater practice, and she has been a writer, teaching artist, and producer for many years, as well as a workshop facilitator and guest speaker with various organizations. She holds a BA in Theatre Arts and a BA in Humanities, Science, Environment from Virginia Tech.

Join our team:

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Board of Directors

Patricia Hampl
Regents professor of English at the University of Minnesota; author of Blue Arabesque, I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory, Virgin Time, and A Romantic Education; recipient of numerous awards, including MacArthur, Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships.

Wandy Hoh
Managing Director, Macquarie Asset Management

Luis Jaramillo (Chair)
Author of the novel The Doctor’s Wife; director, School of Writing, The New School.

Steven Schrader
Author of the short story collections Crimes of Passion, On Sundays We Visit the In-laws, and Arriving at Work, and the memoir What We Deserved; publisher of Cane Hill Press; former Teachers & Writers Collaborative director.

Nancy Larson Shapiro (Vice Chair)
Director of Teachers & Writers Collaborative from 1979-2005; co-editor of The Point: Where Teaching & Writing Intersect.

Barbara Stallworth
PMP, Lead Program Manager, S&P Dow Jones Indices

David Wagner (Treasurer)
Banking Executive

Tiphanie Yanique
Author of How to Escape a Leper Colony: A Novella and Stories and the children’s picture book I Am the Virgin Islands; recipient of the 2011 BOCAS Fiction Prize for Caribbean Literature, the 2010 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award for fiction, and a 2008 Pushcart Prize; visiting associate professor of English, Wesleyan University.

Join our Board and make a difference!

Teachers & Writers Collaborative is currently seeking new members for the Board of Directors. To learn more about this unique opportunity to make a difference in the lives of New Yorkers, contact T&W Executive Director, Asari Beale.

Information packet for board prospects

Teachers & Writers Collaborative thanks the members of the T&W Advisory Board for their support of our work.

Abiodun Oyewole

Max Rodriguez

Mike Rose

Esther Rosenfeld

Jessica Siegel

Martin Skoble

Mark Statman

Peter Straub

Catherine Bowman

Rosellen Brown

Billy Collins

Christina Davis

Sasha Waters Freyer

Dixie Goswami

Colin Greer

Marvin Hoffman

Kaylie Jones

Marc Kaminsky

Simon Kilmurry

Karen Koch

Katherine Koch

Leonard Marcus

Bruce Morrow

Sidney Offit

Susan Straub

David Unger

Meredith Sue Willis

Linda Winston

Alexandra Tyler

Zelda Wirtschafter

Kevin Young

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