The Center for Fiction | About The Center for Fiction @TheCenterforFiction | Uploaded December 2021 | Updated October 2024, 1 day ago.
The Center for Fiction brings diverse communities together as readers and writers of all ages to develop and share a passion for fiction. Founded in 1820 as the Mercantile Library, it welcomed Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Edgar Allan Poe. The Mercantile Library was renamed The Center for Fiction in 2008, but its founding principle has not changed: With access to the best of literature, everyone is able to find a path to possibility and opportunity. In February 2019, the 200-year-old literary nonprofit opened its expansive 18,000 sq. ft. facility with street-level bookstore and performance space in Brooklyn, offering New Yorkers an immersive cultural experience centered on reading and writing.
Throughout the year, The Center for Fiction provides a vast array of public programming, reading groups, and writing workshops. Its First Novel Prize and Emerging Writers Fellowships help build literary careers, and KidsRead/KidsWrite provides NYC public school students with author-led reading and writing events. In recent years the organization’s mission to celebrate and support the art of fiction has expanded to include storytelling in all its forms, integrating music, theater, dance, film, television, and the visual arts into its programming.
The Center for Fiction brings diverse communities together as readers and writers of all ages to develop and share a passion for fiction. Founded in 1820 as the Mercantile Library, it welcomed Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Edgar Allan Poe. The Mercantile Library was renamed The Center for Fiction in 2008, but its founding principle has not changed: With access to the best of literature, everyone is able to find a path to possibility and opportunity. In February 2019, the 200-year-old literary nonprofit opened its expansive 18,000 sq. ft. facility with street-level bookstore and performance space in Brooklyn, offering New Yorkers an immersive cultural experience centered on reading and writing.
Throughout the year, The Center for Fiction provides a vast array of public programming, reading groups, and writing workshops. Its First Novel Prize and Emerging Writers Fellowships help build literary careers, and KidsRead/KidsWrite provides NYC public school students with author-led reading and writing events. In recent years the organization’s mission to celebrate and support the art of fiction has expanded to include storytelling in all its forms, integrating music, theater, dance, film, television, and the visual arts into its programming.
