Girls Write Now is a nationally award-winning nonprofit, media incubator, and multi-generational community. For nearly three decades, we have broken down the barriers of gender, age, race, and poverty to mentor, teach, and connect writers and leaders across disciplines and around the nation. With a focus on those historically disempowered due to their gender and gender identity, we harness the power of stories to shape culture, impact industries, and bridge worlds.
Girls Write Now Collaboratory Journeys
Enrollment is open for mentors and mentees in our Fall 2026 Journeys (November – January). Deadline is August 31.
Mentor, Write & Connect
Our doors are open to writers, thinkers, leaders, and dreamers of all ages, backgrounds, skill levels, and perspectives. Whatever you do, you write. Wherever you are, we’re here. This is home base to connect and create.
Engage Employees, Promote Talent, Publicize Campaigns
Join forces with us to elevate diverse talent across fields and industries. We welcome partnerships with community-based organizations, academic institutions, and companies big and small.
Donation Options for Individuals & Institutions
When you write, you can do anything. When you give, we can do everything. Invest in a 30 year tradition that transforms lives, shapes democracy, enriches industries, and heals the world.
Metamorphosis: Girls Write Now 2026 Anthology
To truly understand Girls Write Now, zoom out and observe a complex, multi-dimensional organism, constantly and consciously in the making. Its contours come into focus, and each word dissolves and evolves: Girls becomes a spectrum across gender, race, age, and poverty; Write spans genres, media, and disciplines; Now stretches across three decades and counting. Resolved into its component parts—G. W. N.—its very being refracts: a nonprofit, but also an incubator of art, a developer of professions, a community that heals. Made for writing and mentoring—and, in turn, for training, curating, and fortifying coalitions of artists, educators, and leaders. Rooted in New York City, branching outward: statewide, national, even global. Dubbed the Collaboratory: intimate, versatile, cutting-edge; designed to move with AI, a volatile marketplace, and our own psyches. For Girls Write Now, Metamorphosis is not only the title and theme of this anthology—it is a state of being.
Field Notes
Local Roots, Global Reach
Championing Youth Advocacy, Literary Capacity & International Creative Exchange
Girls Write Now is driving change at every level. In New York City, we’ve helped spearhead STARS Citywide Girls Initiative—a coalition of ten nonprofits serving girls and gender-expansive youth—which recently produced a Town Hall with Council Members Ty Hankerson and Amanda Farías on what safe spaces look like for young people in 2026, alongside Girls Write Now’s youth-led Crafting White Papers for Change advocacy program. Across the nation, we play a key leadership role in LitNYS, the country’s largest literary arts ecosystem, connecting partners through the LitNews newsletter, the Lunch With Lit podcast, and the new Mentor on Call peer support service. And around the world, we joined fellow Creativity Pioneers at Casa Ecco on Lake Como to explore “Disorientation and the Compass of Language,” with deep thanks to the Moleskine and Hawthornden Foundations for connecting us to changemakers across the globe.
Corporate Partners
In The News
Eames Institute Announces Girls Write Now Founder & Executive Director Maya Nussbaum a 2026 Honoree of the Curious 100.
Eames Institute Announces Girls Write Now Founder & Executive Director Maya Nussbaum a 2026 Honoree. The Eames Institute's Curious 100 is a celebration of one hundred courageous leaders and creative minds across the US who are harnessing the transformative power of curiosity to address today’s most pressing problems and shape the cultural conversations that define our moment.
Girls Write Now Partners with Tribeca Film Festival as Co-Host
Girls Write Now is Co-Hosting at the 2026 Tribeca Film Festival!
2026 Pride Month Book Recommendations from Girls Write Now
The Girls Write Now Community's Recommended Reading for Pride Month
Mentees Inspire CITYarts Peace Wall
“I firmly believe that when kids create, they don’t destroy- they inspire us all. At this time more than ever,
LinkedIn Features Girls Write Now’s Innovative Approach to Virtual Community
In an article on their blog, LinkedIn for Nonprofits highlighted how Girls Write Now leverages tech platforms to facilitate conversations across divides and bring together people from unlikely places.
From Macmillan to Mentorship: Career Readiness at Girls Write Now
Loved the Macmillan Career Chat, and Want More Professional Guidance? Or Have Hard-Earned Expertise to Share? We've Got the Journey for You!
Mentoring Through Uncertainty
Advice and Resources for Supporting Youth During Social, Political, and Personal Stress
Original Multimedia
The title comes from a tweet that reads: “if u r transgender u have to live. if u accomplish something else then good. if u accomplish nothing else then good. but u have to live”
This piece was written to shed light on creatives. Artists often perceive the world in a unique way that many people don’t understand, so I wanted to do my best to describe that.
Gold can be shaped and formed, so can love.
The following is an excerpt from Sundown. The story follows the narrative of a young girl, Claire, who suffers a terrible loss after running away from home.
This piece showcases not only the hardships I faced as a queer girl in a Christian household but how I overcame my self-doubt and learned to accept myself as I am.
If you are transgender, you have to live
Everlasting Color
golden girls
Excerpt from Sundown
What am I made of?
Community Experiences
Upcoming Events
On Girls Write Now Events
Become a Mentor
Make Time.
It feels like there’s never enough time in the day, and that feeling only grows as we get older. But did you know that when you mentor at Girls Write Now, you get time back? Our community gives you more than you could ever imagine, including a new sense of how to live and give your best life.
