House of SpeakEasy

The SpeakEasy Bookmobile: Launched in 2017 to serve communities with little access to libraries and no access to bookstores. Our goal is to increase book ownership and book access, leaning on studies that have shown a direct correlation between the number of books in a home and the educational success of youth. We partner with the New York City Housing Authority and several key non-profit literacy organizations to ensure we’re serving the city’s most vulnerable communities. Through collaborations with publishers, literacy organizations, community-based groups, and donors, SpeakEasy ensures books make it into the hands of those who need them most and is proudly helping families build their own home libraries. Since its first deployment, the Bookmobile has helped thousands of families build their book ownership, distributing over 25,000 titles to students, families, educators, and residents in low-income NYC neighborhoods.

SpeakTogether in the Schools: Equitable access to quality writing education has been a longstanding challenge in New York City public schools. Teachers receive little specialized support on writing instruction and have too few opportunities to explore their own identities as writers. SpeakTogether’s program architecture and pedagogy is engineered to remedy these challenges specifically in historically under-resourced school districts. We believe writing should be at the center of instruction. For decades, it’s been acknowledged that writing is one of the most significant factors to reinforce nearly every aspect of a young person’s academic success.

Founded in 2015, SpeakTogether brings today’s most acclaimed writers to New York City public schools in Brooklyn, Queens, and The Bronx to provide young students and teachers opportunities to engage directly with SpeakEasy’s community of poets, novelists, playwrights, and essayists.

SpeakTogether’s mission is also fueled by the fact that teens want to learn to write. According to a study conducted at the Pew Research Center, 98 percent of surveyed teens agreed that writing is important for their future success. For many students, SpeakTogether’s in-school programming brings them into contact with the first published writer they’ve encountered. Many of the students are also the first in their families to advance beyond high school. These students demonstrate promise and ambition and most, if not all, would likely not have the opportunity to get such personal, engaging contact with professional artists of this caliber, and certainly not in a format like this. Through testimonials, students and educators alike report how rare and exceptional these encounters are. Meanwhile, the writers we work with make it a point to tell us how meaningful it is to participate and return to SpeakTogether year after year. It’s worth noting that one of SpeakEasy’s strengths has always been its robust network of writers and its commitment to continue to nourish these relationships over the years.

The SpeakEasy Bookmobile: Part of a long tradition of mobile bookselling and roaming lending libraries dating back to 1860, our 27-foot-long retrofitted box truck is a dynamic book delivery system. The bookmobile’s innovative design invites open-air browsing, encouraging interactivity with fellow book lovers. The truck serves a variety of programming formats at both local and national levels. It has a proven track record of fostering a love of reading in plazas and parks across the five boroughs of New York City, and farther afield as well, such as the International Rescue Committee in Atlanta, Georgia. In contrast to bookmobiles operated by public libraries, ours is a private enterprise, free to curate books according to need, fulfilling requests for specific age groups, languages, and economic means to ensure no one walks away empty-handed. All books are distributed for free.

SpeakTogether in the Schools: To learn to write is to learn to think clearly and to engage boldly with the world around us — that’s exactly the project of SpeakTogether. SpeakEasy’s education initiative produces a vibrant and accessible literary education and culture in New York City classrooms, one anchored by diverse authors and steered by innovative pedagogy. Since 2015, SpeakTogether has presented 42 programs and workshops, featuring over 40 writers and serving 2,500 students across the boroughs.

Working with our established educational and literacy partners and our deep network of writers, we bring authors into public high school classrooms in The Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens to work closely with the next generation of storytellers. These authors provide students insight into what it means to be a writer and lifelong lover of literature, along with helping students hone the critical thinking and questioning skills necessary for the pursuit of higher education. In addition to our work in the classroom, we provide a month-long series of storytelling workshops for small groups of students. These hyper-interactive and intimate workshops expose young people to multiple methods of story research and composition along with developing their storytelling performance and public speaking confidence. Our college essay writing and readiness program, a partnership with Union Settlement Association’s highly-regarded College Readiness Program, is aimed at helping level the playing field for young college hopefuls, many of whom are the first in their families to pursue a degree. Finally, SpeakTogether makes free tickets to House of SpeakEasy’s shows for educators and provides follow-up materials for them to use in their own classrooms, such as workshop curricula from presenting writers and signed copies of author books.

House of SpeakEasy's staff and board possess decades of experience in the book publishing and the field of literary arts. Our personal and professional networks afford us access to a wide range of acclaimed authors and the publishers who release their works. As such, we are able to easly engage a variety of writers across an array of disciplines and to participate and perform in live events for general public, students, educators, families, and communities. Access to free, quality literary titles is also well within the staff's ability to imagine and make possible.

In the 10 years since its founding, House of SpeakEasy has:

—Distributed over 35,000 new books to youth, families, and communities in over two dozen cities and town across 14 states, for free
—Featured over 75 writers in workshops and matinees in New York City high schools, serving 7,500 young college hopefuls
—Hosted over 300 published authors on its stages across the country, offering their books for sale and compensating writers for their time