Washington Writers' Publishing House is a non-profit organization that has published over 50 volumes of poetry since 1973 and so far nearly a dozen volumes of fiction. The press sponsors an annual competition, featured in Poets & Writers, for writers living in the Washington-Baltimore area, and the winners of each category (one each in poetry and fiction) comprise our set of published works each year.
WWPH has received grants from the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Nation magazine, and the Poetry Society of America. Many individuals have also assisted, encouraged, and supported our work through the years.
"Washington Writers' Publishing House involves some of the best writers in the area in its activities and has built an audience of national significance. It is among the most successful recent literary experiments in the country."—Henry Taylor, Pulitzer Prize Winner
Since WWPH is a collaborative not-for-profit press run by the writers themselves, winners volunteer their various talents to help future winners shepherd their own books through the stages from manuscript preparation, production, publication and publicity. As a result of her own poetry collection Raking the Snow chosen as a winner of the Washington Writers' Publishing House competition in 1982, for three years Elisavietta Ritchie was asked to serve as president.
Her manuscript of short fiction, In Haste I Write You This Note: Stories & Half-Stories, was a co-winner with Laura Brylawski-Miller of the Premiere Fiction Competition in 1999, and, for lack of anyone else then available, the two found themselves running the WWPH fiction division. After a decade as president and/or co-president for fiction, Elisavietta turned over the presidency to new generations of fiction winners, but remains an editor. |
