Dedicated to the artistic possibilities of language through cultivating new writing, presenting contemporary literature and art, and building a diverse literary community.

Language is the fundamental medium through which we conceptualize the world, the essential tool for communicating our individual and collective selves, and the shared repository of our collective knowledge. We value imaginative, artistic, and critical engagement with language in all its dimensions, whether aural, graphic, symbolic, narrative, or other.

To reimagine and reshape the possibilities of language is to reimagine and reshape the possibilities of the world. We therefore seek to nurture poets, writers, and artists at all levels of development in creating new literature and art, and to encourage them to experiment in their work. In doing so, they expand for all of us the possibilities of our shared world.

Because language informs and is informed by all areas of human existence, we believe that the literary arts remain vital by actively engaging with a wide range of disciplines, genres, media, artistic practices, and subjects. We value cross-fertilization and collaboration between the arts, and the exchange of challenging ideas.

Writers and artists flourish in an atmosphere of shared care, equity, creative and intellectual exchange, and collaboration. We value and seek to foster a literary and artistic community characterized by mutual respect and support for each others’ lives and creative work.

The literary arts depend upon an engaged and active literary public. We value readers and literary exchange, and seek to expand public awareness of, and involvement in, contemporary literary arts. 

Literary culture thrives when people of all backgrounds have equal access to the literary arts without economic, physical, or cultural barriers. We believe in offering all aspiring writers support and encouragement in developing their work and their voices, regardless of economic resources, cultural background, housing status, or physical ability. 

We value programming that includes the greatest possible diversity of voices and backgrounds in order that writers, readers, and audiences may continually learn from, and respond to, the full richness of human linguistic invention. We seek programming that reflects the widest possible range of literary traditions, perspectives, cultures, and sensibilities, and which uses the literary arts to celebrate and bridge diverse literary communities and cultures. We also seek to foster an artistic ethos that is inclusive of linguistic diversity, and which values attention to the meanings, grammars, rhythms, cadences, forms, and traditions of different literary and linguistic cultures.

We acknowledge that as an arts organization, we operate within a society founded upon colonialism, slavery, xenophobia, and white supremacy, and which continues to be shaped by ongoing racist practices and laws that inflict material and psychological harm on Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other people of color. As a cultural institution, we are committed to advancing racial and cultural equity both within and outside the organization.