Directory Assistance Since 1970
JULY AUGUST 2019 120POETS & WRITERS IS MORE than a magazine. We are a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving creative writers. We pay fees
to writers giving readings and leading workshops, provide information and advice to authors, and help them connect with one another and
with audiences. We also sponsor a number of awards and prizes. Learn more at pw.org.
The Poets & Writers Directory—which for decades has
provided a way for published poets, fiction writers, and cre-
ative nonfiction writers to be discovered and contacted for
a range of professional opportunities—has recently under-
gone a complete transformation.
The origins of the Directory are intertwined with the
origins of Poets & Writers itself. Pictured above is the pri-
mogenitor of the Directory: the Rolodex that belonged to
Galen Williams, who founded Poets & Writers in 1970—
nearly fifty years ago. In those pre-Internet days, Galen
found herself fielding calls from people who wanted to
invite an author to give a reading or a talk, teach a work-
shop, or be on a panel but didn’t know how to contact
them. Poets & Writers became a kind of de facto “direc-
tory assistance,” providing writers’ addresses and telephone
numbers. Soon the decision was made to publish an index,
which would share authors’ contact information as well as
details about whether they were open to giving readings,
whether they were willing to travel, and the kinds of audi-
ences they preferred to work with.
The Directory continued to evolve over time: By 2004,
the last year Poets & Writers published a print edition, it was
a hefty tome, listing thousands of writers nationwide, and in
2005 it was converted to an online resource at pw.org. The
Directory now holds more than 10,000 author profiles, and
moving all that data onto a new platform was a major data
migration event. The project, which was supported in part
by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, took
about eighteen months to complete and required writing
approximately 15,000 lines of code.
The new interface is more intuitive, making it easier
than ever for writers with enough publication credits to
apply to be listed. Once approved and published, profiles
are easier to update and can include embedded audio and
video, links to the author’s website and Twitter feed, and
much more. Entries also automatically connect to five of
our most popular databases. Now, if authors note that their
work has been published by a press in our Small Press
Database or represented by an agent in our Literary Agents
Database, those listings will be automatically linked to their
profiles. Another important improvement to the Directory
is the addition of translators.
As a research tool, the Directory is more powerful than
ever. Want to see all the authors who have been published
in a particular journal or are represented by a particular
agent? Filter to see that list. Understanding connections
like these can help writers target their submissions more
effectively. The Directory can also help build and main-
tain networks. Want to reconnect with colleagues from an
MFA program or retreat? Filter to find people who list that
program on their profiles. And of course event organizers
can still discover writers they want to invite to take part
in a reading—filtering by location, genre, and many other
variables.
To learn more, to browse the Directory’s 10,000-plus
profiles, or to apply to be listed, go to pw.org/directory.