The Writers Room was founded in 1978 to provide emerging and established writers, working in any and all literary genres, with affordable work space in New York City.
Writing requires quiet and solitude in greater measure perhaps than any other art form.
An extraordinarily vital but demanding city as New York offers writers an abundance of literary material and venues, but few affordable places in which to work professionaly at the craft of writing. The Room was founded when some writers who had worked together in the Frederick Lewis Allen Room of the New York Public Library saw the need to establish a writing work space in New York City with no restrictions on the literary genre or the length of residency. Since its founding, the Room has moved and expanded four times, settling into a newly renovated 4,500 square foot loft on Astor Place in 1995. This service is made possible with public funds from the National Endowment of the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, as well as various foundations, corporations, and individuals. Contributions to the Room are tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law.