New York State Writers Institute

The Writers Institute’s central aim is to enhance and celebrate literature, writing, and performance, and to recognize the position of writers as a community within the larger community. Books, films, plays, and their creators can provide portals through which the most personal or complex issues of human understanding can be explored. Mandated by New York's governor and legislature to provide “a milieu for established and aspiring writers to work together. . .to increase the freedom of the artistic imagination,” the New York State Writers Institute is one of America’s premiere sites for promoting the art of the written word. To meet the challenge of that original mandate the Institute sponsors a diversity of programs including author visits and residencies, film screenings, symposia, panel discussions, stage readings, and writing workshops for adults and high school students. The goal of these programs, most of which are free and open to the public, is to increase access to major authors for students of writing and readers of literature, broaden exposure for emerging authors, and provide important cultural initiatives for the general public.