TAKE AUTHORS SURVEY, BOOST NWU

What is the easiest way to support your union? Completing an Authors Coalition survey. Each response can generate the same income for the NWU as gaining one new member. In 2015, your participation helped us accrue nearly $160,000 in non-title specific royalty payments. This amount is directly linked to the number of completed surveys. However, […]

Writers Attend White House Summit

          The White House Summit on Worker Voice on October 7 brought together workers, including writers, labor leaders, business owners, government officials, and advocates.             President Obama told those gathered in the East Room: “We should be making it easier, not harder, for folks to join a union.” Yet he cautioned that those who would […]

NWU Picnic a Breeze

Nineteen people attended the National Writers Union, New York Chapter’s annual picnic on Saturday, August 23, at Riverside Park in Manhattan. The ambiance was perfect. The Hudson River, shimmering blue like Apache jewelry, offered bountiful breeze, and the trees, limbs stretched out like tents and dressed in grand, garden-green, served as shade from the sun; […]

Poem: Cali Quake—whose fault is it?

Cali Quake—whose fault is it?   If an earthquake comes shocking, shaking, rattling and rolling Cali is it Yogi Bear, Hugo Pinell’s parting words?  It rained forty days and forty nights the week Bunchy was assassinated…   If an earthquake comes shocking, shaking, rattling and rolling Cali whose fault is it? Round up the usual […]

Poetry for All and All for Poetry

Story by Garret Buell Robinson, Poem by Raymond Nat Turner Now celebrating its fifth birthday, the New York City Poetry Festival continues to flourish. Thousands of people turned out for this year’s event, which was hosted by the National Writers Union, on Governor’s Island, where Guggenheim Fellow Nick Flynn and esteemed Poet and Educator Patricia […]

Notes on the Harlem Book Fair

African voices can be muffled by white supremacy and racism, but poets and writers who are invested in self-determination will find a way to get their words out. Panelists who participated in the National Writers Union discussion, “Silencing Black Writers in the USA,” shared these and other perspectives at the Harlem Book Fair in late […]

Independent Contractor or Employee?: US Dept of Labor Stiffens Criteria

The U.S. Dept. of Labor (DOL) is stiffening the criteria by which it determines whether a worker is an independent contractor or employee. The DOL’s rules control whether you qualify for a few things—minimum wage, overtime, hours worked, child labor, and time and payroll records. Employees do, contractors don’t.  Other agencies control other financial aspects […]

Starting A Publishing Company

I started Hard Ball Press out of desperation. My first four crime novels had gone out of print because either the publisher had shut down, or they had decided not to issue a paperback follow up to the hardcover.  So in the early days of print-on-demand, I began to put out my own novels, and […]

Louis Reyes Rivera Tribute Event Honors Four Emerging Talents

Every year, the National Writers Union’s New York Chapter features four emerging poets who are personally selected by close associates of Louis Reyes Rivera. These four artists are given the extraordinary opportunity to read their original works to the accompaniment of professional jazz musicians in a prominent venue. This year on May 16, a standing-room-only […]