Poets & Writers

Poets & Writers, founded in 1970, is the largest nonprofit serving creative writers in America: the bimonthly magazine, the pw.org databases (literary magazines, small presses, grants and awards with vetted legitimacy standards, MFA programs, literary agents), Readings & Workshops grants that pay writers for events, and the Jackson, Barnes, and other author prizes.

Its Grants & Awards listings are the field's standard for contest vetting — P&W will not list awards with practices it considers exploitative. The organization's institutional weight is unmatched; its web product, famously, is not. That gap is the opening every newer directory, this one included, exists to exploit.