The AWP Writing Organization Award is a new award that annually recognizes writing conferences, festivals, centers, workshops, residencies, retreats, and other organizations for the important work they do to serve the writing community. AWP recognized the inaugural winner, Torch Literary Arts, at the 2025 AWP Conference & Bookfair. Below is a reflection from Amanda Johnston, founder and executive director of Torch.
Founded in 2006 by Texas Poet Laureate Amanda Johnston, Torch Literary Arts supports emerging and experienced Black women writers across the diaspora. The award-winning Torch Magazine publishes and promotes new works across poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and script (plays and screenplays). Our programs include an annual retreat, workshops, the Wildfire Reading Series, a virtual writing circle, the In Conversation Series, the Writers Across the Diaspora program, and special events.
Less than 5% of people in publishing identify as Black women. Our unique stories and perspectives are often overlooked, dismissed, and erased. Torch is here to change that, and it starts by meeting our community with intentional love and care, one writer and reader at a time. Annually, Torch Literary Arts supports over two hundred Black women writers, reaches an in-person and virtual program audience of more than three thousand, and has an average of seventy-five thousand online viewers.
We’re honored to receive the inaugural AWP Writing Organization Award. Being recognized and celebrated alongside the extraordinary finalists in our community, alongside our literary peers, means everything to us and the Black women writers we serve. In 2026, Torch will celebrate twenty years of literary excellence, and with the support of this award and the gift of space at the bookfair during the AWP conference in Baltimore, Torch will be able to make the most of the opportunity and increase our visibility.
During these trying times, Torch Literary Arts remains dedicated to serving our community and creating a space on and off the page where Black women writers and our supporters know they are welcome and our voices matter.
Founded in 2006 by Amanda Johnston, Torch Literary Arts is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that publishes and promotes creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by emerging and experienced writers alike. Torch has featured work by Toi Derricotte, Tayari Jones, Sharon Bridgforth, Crystal Wilkinson, Patricia Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Sapphire, and others. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, retreats, and special events.
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