Acting Programs Director Devon Stein spoke with Pen Parentis, a member organization of Nonprofit New York. We will continue to highlight the work of our members because we believe when your nonprofit is stronger, all of us are stronger.
Tell me about the organization and what you do.
Pen Parentis is a small literary nonprofit that helps writers stay on a creative track after starting a family.
Our Literary Salons present small and diverse groups of established authors reading from New York and discussing the ways they manage their time, money, and energy to maintain a successful literary career. These are open to the general public on the second Tuesday of each month and are live cast online to be more accessible. Our Writing Fellowships are open to any writer who has a child under 10. Our accountability group meetups are inclusive and limited to 15 participants each. These weekly meetings build a supportive genuine literary community and are open to writers at any stage with children of any age. Our website provides free resources for all writer-parents whatever their circumstances.
How many people are on your team?
5
What population do you serve?
All writers who are also parents.
Where do you see your organization in the next five years or ten years?
We have just brought all of our programs entirely virtual and now we must expand visibility so that writer-parents across the country can find out about our free resources for them. We expect exponential growth and have to do the hard work of creating a sustainable infrastructure here in NYC for this progress!
How has partnering with Nonprofit New York helped you succeed?
We love the resources - we particularly like the in-person events where we can speak to other nonprofit leaders to exchange tips and ideas.
What are you currently working on that you want us to mention to our membership?
We are focused mainly on building a network across the country, but we are NYC-based and we love our City, so we really appreciate partnering with local arts and literary organizations who host creative events locally--even if it's just to cross-promote.