THE ATLAS 21 Pre-Order is live! Order your copy today | Release Party 8/13 at RIPL & Rozz-Tox!

LOCATION UPDATE!

The Young Emerging Writers (YEW) Summer Internship Program will host a two-part party to celebrate the release of the latest issue of THE ATLAS, the Program’s literary magazine, on Thursday, August 13 at the downtown Rock Island Public Library and Rozz-Tox.

The event will start at 6:00 p.m. in the Community Room of the downtown Rock Island Public Library with the release of THE ATLAS 21, where the 2026 YEW interns will give a brief reading of their work from the magazine. Copies will be available for $10, along with other local literary artists selling their work. Light refreshments will be served.

Then, at 8:00 p.m., the party will move down the street to Rozz-Tox, featuring an open mic for YEW alumni and staff, followed by live music from KAS.

Support MWC for Giving Tuesday on 12/3!

We are writing, like so many other nonprofits are, to ask for your support this Giving Tuesday (December 3, which kicks off our year-end giving campaign) by renewing or starting a membership so that we can continue to provide high-quality, low-cost literary programming to our community as we have for going on 45 years.

In 2025, we will continue our traditional programming: both the Collins Writers’ Conference and the Young Emerging Writers Internship will celebrate their 20th anniversaries in 2025, and we’re planning some special events to celebrate. Writers’ Studio (our twice-monthly critique group) will continue as it has for over 50 years, The SPECTRA Reading Series returns in the spring with four events, and we have a number of terrific workshops coming up. We will be publishing an anthology on the theme of “Being Human in the Age of AI” in partnership with Galvin Fine Arts, in addition to two  the Foster-Stahl chapbooks and The Atlas. We also want to bring more writers to the Quad Cities, host more workshops, and continue to grow our partnerships with other organizations throughout the community. And we cannot do that without you.