“A word after a word after a word is power.”

Margaret Atwood

At Uptown Stories, we believe in the power of words.

For the past ten years, we have been empowering the young people of upper Manhattan to write their own stories. 3,660 of them have come through our doors and we’ve published almost 16,000 pages of their original work.

Now, we have an opportunity to inspire even more young people.

This fall, we partnered with New York State to provide free daily after-school programming at three local public schools, where we will continue to serve their students for the next five years. These young writers are now learning fiction writing, playwriting, and comics from some of our most experienced, beloved teachers, and they’re already writing up a storm!

However, we need your help to continue serving young writers.

Quite simply, serving more students requires more resources. Last year, 79% of Uptown Stories students relied on our Pay-What-You-Can tuition policy to support their arts education. If you make a generous gift to support us, we can keep our workshops financially accessible for young people who badly need this space.

Writing is one of the most powerful tools we can give young people to be the best version of themselves, no matter what story they are born into. To know themselves. To express themselves. To write down what happened. To tell their story.

What they write next will be entirely up to them, but we know it will be good, because they have such beautiful imaginations. Our young people can imagine new stories, new countries, new worlds, for all of us. They’re just waiting to be written down.

Use Your Words

To find yourself. To express yourself. To tell your story.