Our Impact
Pen Parentis programmatic, policy, advocacy and research work continues to substantially and materially improve the lives of writers who are also parents. Since 2009, we have achieved real and measurable progress toward keeping writer-parents on creative track while the organization (incorporated as a nonprofit in 2014) continues to lead the arts industry in advocating for fair and equitable public policies for all creative writers who are also parents.
2024 – BREAKING STEREOTYPES OF PARENT-ARTISTS
With a generous grant from the NEA we were able to incentivize the publication of an all-parent-written issue of a professional arts & literature magazine. Full Bleed Issue 7 is a beautiful, full-color, fully designed student-edited annual publication of the esteemed MICA (Maryland Institute of Culture and Arts) in Baltimore, MD. All of the content was submitted blind with 30% of the content coming from rural areas or centering around non-urban topics. Every artist and writer published in the issue was compensated at professional levels, and everyone, both artist and writer, was also a parent, selected in a competitive editorial process curated around the topic of HOME. Click here to read the editor-in-chief’s lovely reflections on the topic, including some key considerations on Pen Parentis’ work in support of writer-parents by our founder, M. M. De Voe.
How PEN PARENTIS changes writer communities and the lives of writer parents.
In the last 10 years, we have brought forth some big ideas and made them a reality:
We pushed to offer all readers at Pen Parentis a fair and living wage – every featured author is now offered professional rates for their participation in our events;
We raised awareness of diversity, by including this word in our Salons mission statement long before the #BLM movement made it a common phrase in nonprofits.
We helped set the ball in motion to move the local and state governments to increase the minimum wage for all New Yorkers;
We worked with other sector leaders and partners and led and achieved a path to salary parity for childcare workers, and a government commitment to pay actual costs for critical operation expenses;
We worked to usher the passage of three critical initiatives that place racial justice at the heart of government functioning and direct our city to measure the true cost of living;
We advanced day laborers and worker cooperatives to be recognized as legitimate industries in NYC;
We led critical reforms in NYPD to move us toward ending the criminalization of poverty in New York City;
We established a career ladder for human services workers; and much, much more....
Testimonials
