After nine months as interim executive director of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP), Michelle Aielli was named executive director in July. The organization she now oversees supports nearly eleven thousand members, including individual writers, MFA programs, literary centers, journals, and retreats, and it orchestrates the popular AWP Conference & Bookfair in a different host city each year. Aielli is a book publishing veteran with over twenty-five years of experience, most recently as a vice president and publishing director of Hachette Books at Hachette Book Group. She spoke about AWP’s priorities and the future of the literary arts.
Michelle Aielli, the new executive director of AWP. (Credit: Gary Morgen)
Talk about your path from publishing to AWP.
I came up through publicity, and initially I thought I would pursue work in editorial, but I was really excited about the prospect of being able to bolster and promote authors’ work. [My work as] publishing director of Hachette Books gave me important exposure to the business of publishing. I was working with all teams across all the different groups: sales, finance, budget. During that time I also spent four years on the board of directors of AWP. Our beloved executive director Cynthia Sherman retired, and I was asked to step in as interim executive director. After nine months, the board voted to make me permanent executive director.
What were some of the challenges and successes of this past year?
Like many nonprofits, we are navigating a period of uncertainty and financial challenges. A lot of our funding comes through membership dues and conference revenue. We are also supported by individual and organizational donors and some grants. I did bring on a development manager who is really looking at where our needs are. She is looking to actively expand our donor base and grow long-term support.
We had a very successful conference in Los Angeles, more than ten thousand attendees, which is our largest attendance since before the pandemic. The conference is a great strength. Our programming is a strength. Our network of people, how they come together to support one another, and what they are doing in the literary arts is a huge strength.
How do you go about trying to meet so many members’ needs?
We have to not only meet them where they are, but also find out what we are not doing that we want to do. We do member outreach, surveys—we recently did a survey on AI. [We need to] understand how these big issues are affecting our members and where we might be able to provide support or education or advocacy. We always ask for feedback after the conference—programming, panels, accessibility, the conference center, the book fair. We look at success rates of certain programs. At our conferences we have a well-attended program called Writer to Agent. We launched a summer edition this year. It was all virtual and allowed people outside of the conference to get that experience. One of our board members, [literary agent] Regina Brooks, was looking at HBCUs and noticed that none have MFA programs in creative writing, so she joined forces with us to create our HBCU Fellowship Program. After that we started a Tribal Colleges & Universities Fellowship program. We are also working to develop more yearlong programming, to engage with our members throughout the year, outside of the conference.
What gives you the most hope for the literary arts right now?
This is not a community that’s giving up. It continues to publish meaningful works, continues to educate future generations of writers, continues to unite across many experiences and perspectives, and [it] talks about and plans forward for development and growth. We are in a really challenged moment. In Los Angeles in 2025 our keynote speaker was Roxane Gay. She ended her talk by saying the pen is not mightier than the sword—the pen is the sword. I do feel that’s why we do this work, and that gives me hope.
Emily Pérez is the author of What Flies Want (University of Iowa Press, 2022), which received the Iowa Poetry Prize, and a coeditor of the anthology The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood (University of Georgia Press, 2022). She lives in Denver with her family.
