Since launching our redesigned website two years ago today, we continue to expand content and features.

In the fall of 2013, we introduced a successful blog, the Writer’s Notebook, full of interesting articles on craft, literary criticism, career advice, publishing, and more with Steve Almond, Ru Freeman, and Roxanne Gay as regular contributors. The #AWP14 conference schedule, posted last fall, saw the return of the interactive schedule feature, allowing attendees to not only create personal schedules but to save them to their profiles and share them with friends. Individuals organizing offsite events had a new system in which to enter information, one that enabled them to edit their events if any changes arose. We also fully integrated our Writer’s Chronicle subscription system, allowing anyone with a subscription to log into his or her AWP user account to view subscription status and read the entire archive of articles. And speaking of archives, an archive of Writer’s News articles dating back nine years is now available on our website.

We recently relaunched our In the Spotlight member feature, allowing members to showcase themselves or nominate others for the honor of appearing on our site. A new field added to the Directory of Members profile allows users to share their Twitter usernames, which will help with promotion as well as live tweeting at the conference.  Additional private profile fields have been expanded to give users more professional role and gender options to self-identify with. There is also a new birth date field; fill it out the next time you update your profile and you just might hear from AWP on your special day!

During the past year, we’ve posted over 1,800 jobs in the Job List, more than 800 grant/award/submission opportunities in the Writer’s Calendar, 10 podcast episodes, and 62 articles for writers.

What’s in store for the website’s next year? We’re so glad you asked! In September, we will unveil our redesigned Guide to Writing Programs, which will give you better ways to search and browse hundreds of writing programs around the world. We’ll have new tools for our conference sponsors, conference volunteers, and advertisers.  Other upcoming projects such as our webinar series for members, several digital apps, and additional social media campaigns will help us get our content into your hands in new and exciting ways.

AWP has enjoyed creating a website where writers can find everything from inspiration to opportunities. We look forward to serving you throughout the next year.