2026 T&W Homecoming
September 15, 2026 @ 6:00PM — 9:00PM Eastern Time (US & Canada) Add to Calendar
Roosevelt House, Public Policy Institute at Hunter College: 47-49 E 65th St New York, NY 10065 Get Directions
Join us for a celebration of Teachers & Writers Collaborative!
T&W Homecoming is an evening of celebration in support of our mission: to increase access to the arts and uplift youth voices. All proceeds from this event will support the essential, transformative work of Teachers & Writers Collaborative.
The 2026 Homecoming celebration will include a poetry reading by Hana Tsai, the New York State Youth Poet Laureate, and award presentations to two renown authors for their contributions to Teachers & Writers Collaborative and for inspiring young writers: essayist, film critic, fiction writer, and poet Phillip Lopate and novelist Ibi Zoboi. Following the program guests will enjoy a reception which will include a silent action, cocktails, and refreshments catered by Eataly NYC. This year, the Homecoming takes place at the historic Roosevelt House on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
Purchase a ticket today and celebrate with us!
You may also make a donation to support T&W. Click the "Donate" button to make a 100% tax-deductible contribution. Click on "Sponsor Our Event" to see a full list of sponsorship and ad opportunities.
About the Honorees
Phillip Lopate is a central figure in the revival of the American essay, both through his ubiquitous edited anthology, Art of the Personal Essay, and his own essay collections, Bachelorhood, Against Joie de Vivre, Portrait of My Body, Portrait Inside My Head, A Year and a Day and two collections of film criticism, Totally Tenderly Tragically and My Affair with Aart-House Cinema. His book-length nonfiction works include Waterfront, Notes on Sontag and A Mother’s Tale. Besides Art of the Personal Essay, he has edited American Movie Critics, Writing New York and a three-volume historical study, The Glorious American Essay, The Golden Age of the American Essay and The Contemporary American Essay. A member of the Academy of American Arts and Letters, the Academy of the American Arts and Sciences and the New York Institute of the Humanities, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Cullman Library Award and a National Endowment of the Arts grant. He is Emeritus Professor of Columbia University’s Graduate Writing Program, School of the Arts.
Ibi Zoboi is the New York Times bestselling author of books for children and teens, including American Street, a National Book Award Finalist, Pride, a modern remix of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice , and the Walter Award and LA Times Book Prize-winning Punching the Air, co-written with Exonerated Five member Yusef Salaam. Ibi is a two-time Coretta Scott King Award honoree for The People Remember, her debut picture book, and Star Child: A Biographical Constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler . She is the winner of the 2024 CSK Award for Nigeria Jones and the editor of the anthology Black Enough: Stories of Being Young and Black in America . Okoye to the People is her Black Panther novel for Marvel.
Ibi has appeared on CBS This Morning, MSNBC’s The Reid Out alongside Yusef Salaam, PBS’s Book View Now, and MSNBC’s Velshi Banned Book Club. Her writing has been published in Time Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, the Horn Book Magazine , and The Rumpus, among others. As an educator, she received several grants from the Brooklyn Arts Council for her community-based programs for teen girls in both Brooklyn and Haiti, partnering with Haiti Cultural Exchange. She’s worked for arts organizations such as Teachers & Writers Collaborative and Community Word Project as a writer-in-residence and teaching artist in New York City public schools.
Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and raised in New York City, Ibi lives in New Jersey with her family.
Honorary Committee
Thank you to the following for your support!
Hilton Als
Roberta Plutzik & Neil Baldwin
Thomas & Elizabeth Beller
Shari Spiegel & Alan Berliner
Wesley Brown
Gabriel Brownstein
Ian Buruma
Cheryl Cipriani
Yael Reisman & Jordan Davis
Chris Edgar
Edwin Frank
Joseph O’Neill & Rivka Galchen
Jack Stephens & Sally Gall
Dwight Garner
Eli Gottlieb
Eliza Griswold
Suzanne Guillette
Rachel Hadas
Patricia Hampl
Molly Haskell
Edward Hirsch
Gail Hochman
Adam Horvath
Leslie Jamison
Margo Jefferson
Marc Kaminsky
Elizabeth Kendall
Fran &Howard Kiernan
Lori Zippay & Simon Kilmurry
Stuart Klawans
Karen Koch
Sheila Kohler
Dan & Teri Mack
David Mikics
Antonio Monda
Honor Moore
Lisa Brennan-Jobs & Bill Morein
Bruce Morrow
Brian Morton
Alana Newhouse
Geoffrey O’Brien
Helen Benedict & Stephen O’Connor
Peggy O’Shea
Rose &Miguel Ortiz
Ron & Pat Padgett
Gregory Pardlo
Paul Lazar & Annie-B Parson
Raphael & Christina Peacock
Jake Perlin
Lenny Quart
Irina Reyn
Carrie Rickey
Thomas & Anna Roma
Max Rudin
Wendy Salinger
James Sanders
Harry & Lynne Sharon Schwartz
Vijay Seshadri
Nancy & Steve Shapiro
Michael Shea
Shifra Sharlin & David Sorkin
Lynne Street-Sachs & Mark Street
Betsy Sussler
Sasha Waters
Andrew B. Weinberger & Meredith Sue Willis
Meg Wolitzer
About Teachers & Writers Collaborative
Teachers & Writers Collaborative is one of the first writers-in-the-schools programs, with a 50+ year history of delivering innovative creative writing programs that increase access to the arts, build community, and amplify youth voices. Founded in 1967 by a group of writers and educators who believed that professional writers could make a unique contribution to the teaching of writing and literature. Those responsible for shaping T&W’s program and philosophy in the organization’s early years included June Jordan, Rosellen Brown, Victor Hernández Cruz, Kenneth Koch, Herbert Kohl, Phillip Lopate, Grace Paley, Muriel Rukeyser, and Anne Sexton, among others.
T&W programs include: writing workshops for youth, art workshops for seniors, and training for teachers. In addition, T&W hosts the NY State of Poetry program and the NY Youth Poet Laureate program for teens in New York State. To support the teaching of creative writing, we publish Teachers & Writers Magazine and an assortment of books for educators. Learn more about our programs at twc.org.
Since its founding, T&W has published more than 80 books about teaching writing. T&W writers have brought writing residencies and professional development workshops to hundreds of thousands of students and tens of thousands of teachers in New York City schools. This depth of experience led the National Endowment for the Arts to call T&W the arts education group that is “most familiar with creative writing/literature in primary and secondary schools.”
Youth Programs
Creative Aging Programs
New York State Poetry Out Loud & Youth Poet Laureate Programs
