The Spaces

UNION SQUARE (closed July 2023)

WILLIAMSBURG (closed December 2021)

Paragraph has two locations -- one on 14th Street close to Union Square and the other in Williamsburg close to McCarren Park. They are both loft-like spaces on the top floor with exposed brick walls and natural light through high windows and skylights.

Both spaces are divided into two areas — a writing room and a kitchen/cafe area. The writing room has partitioned desks where writers work in a quiet, focused atmosphere. Workspaces provide privacy, with sight lines blocked from other writers. They also feature couch/lounge areas to take breaks, catch up on reading or take a nap, and lots of books and periodicals and more books. We love books!

The kitchen/cafe is separated from the writing space by sound-proofed walls. The kitchen is the place where writers can be social or have a meal, make coffee or tea. It is  furnished with cafe seating, refrigerator, microwave, toaster oven, and complimentary coffee and tea. There is a high-speed printer with unlimited printing (bring your own paper). Lockers are available to rent.

Our Story

In 2005, fresh out of The New School’s MFA program, Lila and Joy founded Paragraph. In graduate school, among all different types of writers and mentors, they discovered that writing is indeed an isolating practice that requires quiet and retreat, but that the community of writers they found in graduate school was also an essential piece to the writing practice. In September 2005, when co-working and WeWork was a relatively unknown concept, they opened Paragraph: a workspace for writers. Luckily, they new very little about running a business or they would have seen the risk was too great, the potential for failure too high. A month after opening, they were the cover story of the NY Times Sunday Styles section.

Paragraph was located on the third floor of a nondescript building on 14th Street, up a long three flights of stairs. It was open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. It was created by writers for writers, with an understanding that writers work best in a quiet, comfortable space away from the hurry and obligation of daily life. The space was very old New York — tin ceilings, a non-working fireplace, large windows off the kitchen with the view of the backs of buildings and other apartments and businesses. The heart of Paragraph is and will always be the writers who came through those doors. Our community.

In 2019, Paragraph expanded to a second location in Willamsburg, Brooklyn. When Covid hit, the second space could not withstand the pandemic. It closed in December 2021. The original space also struggled, but was able to continue on thanks to government loans and a generous landlord. In July 2023, the building on 14th Street was sold. Paragraph lost its lease, and closed the space.

We are currently fundraising so that we can reopen our doors in a new location. Our heart still beats. We continue to be a community. Right now, we are held together virtually. We come together for events to support our writing practice, improve our craft and help us on the journey to publication. We hope to see everyone again in our new location very soon.

Our Community

Paragraph is a community of novelists, short story writers, journalists, editors, technical writers, memoirists, screenwriters, playwrights, and writers of all other mediums and genres imaginable at various levels of their careers.

This community can often serve as a support network that many writers find missing when they work from the confines of their bedroom or home office.

Our community is leveraged in the form of monthly events: craft talks and workshops to refine craft, agent roundtables to find representation, pitch wars to help craft query letters, from publication to print to give insight into the publication journey, and more. Below is a sampling of past event participants.

PAST READERS

Hannah Tinti Amy Hempel AM Holmes Jenny Xie Chad Harbach Leslie Jamison Ben Purkert George Black Sophie Jaff Matthew Thomas Francine Prose Andrew Sean Greer Sergio De La Pava Hermione Hoby Alan Burdick Amy Brill Dale Peck Darcy Frey Alexander Chee Sunil Yapa Lisa Ko Amy Meng Allison Amend Elyssa East Roxanna Robinson Beth Gutcheon Rick Moody Joshua Furst Jennifer Vanderbes Lauren Belfer Rebecca Donner Idra Novey Patrick Ryan Evan Hughes Adele Waldman

LITERARY AGENTS

Alec Shane (Writers House) Amy Tannenbaum (Jane Rotrosen) Ayesha Pande (Pande Literary) Brianne Johnson (Writers House) Bridget Smith (Dunham Literary) Cameron McClure (Donald Maass) Chris Clemans (Janklow & Nesbit) Claudia Ballard (WME) Daniel Lazar (Writers House) David Dunton (Harvey Klinger) Duvall Osteen (Aragi Inc.) Eddie Schneider (JABBERwocky) Henry Dunow (Dunow, Carlson & Lerner) Emilie Stewart (Emilie Stewart Agency) Emily Forland (Brandt & Hochman) Heather Alexander (Pippin Properties) Joy Tutela (David Black) Julie Barer Katherine Fausset (Curtis Brown) Kathy Schneider (Jane Rotrosen) Noah Ballard (Curtis Brown) Kevin O’Connor (Charlotte Sheedy) Kimberly Brower (Rebecca Friedman) Leah Hamos (Gersh) Lexi Wangler (Massie & McQuilkin) Lindsay Edgecombe (Levine Greenberg) Marilyn Allen (Allen O’Shea) Melissa Flashman (Janklow & Nesbit) Renée Zuckerbrot (Renée Zuckerbrot) Rob McQuilkin (Massie & McQuilkin) Sarah Younger (Nancy Yost) Stephanie Koven (Cullen Stanley) Sylvie Greenberg (Fletcher & Co) Victoria Skurnick (Levine Greenberg) Wendy Levinson (Harvey Klinger) Zoë Pagnamenta (Zoë Pagnamenta Agency)

EDITORS & WORKSHOP LEADERS

Melissa Ragsly (A Public Space) Anna Raff (SCBWI) Patrick Ryan (One Story) Lily Herman Wandy Felicita Ortiz Julie Trelstad Gretchen Crary Myla Goldberg Lisa Selin Davis Jenny Klion Nancy Rawlinson Patricia Mulcahey Judy Sternlight Rose Fox (Publishers Weekly) Wilda Williams (Library Journal)

Our Writers

Paragraph is where writers write. It is our core mission to provide a space where creativity can flourish. We are proud of the many works that have gone on to be published, produced, or awarded in many different forms and mediums. Here is a brief list of many of the works conceived, written, or edited in our space, and the varied publications that our writers have written for.