Art is never the voice of a country, it is an even more precious thing, the voice of the individual, doing its best to speak, not comfort of any sort, but truth. And the art that speaks it most unmistakably, most directly, most variously, most fully, is fiction...
-Eudora Welty
Mission & History
The Center for Fiction, founded in 1820 as the Mercantile Library, is the only organization in the United States devoted solely to the vital art of fiction. The mission of The Center for Fiction is to encourage people to read and value fiction and to support and celebrate its creation and enjoyment. With all our resources, including our exceptional book collection, our beautiful reading room, our expanding website, and our ever-growing array of creative programs, we seek to serve the reading public, to build a larger audience for fiction, and to create a place where readers and writers can share their passion for literature.
The Center for Fiction was founded by merchants and their clerks before the advent of public libraries. By the mid-nineteenth century, it was thriving as one of the foremost cultural institutions in the United States, with an extraordinary collection of books in the humanities, and a popular lecture program that featured such renowned speakers as William Makepeace Thackeray, Frederick Douglass, and Mark Twain. The Center offered classes on many subjects and was considered a meeting place for social and educational pursuits.
The Center currently focuses on collecting and lending fiction, both literary and popular, presenting literary programs for the general public, and renting low-cost space to writers and other literary organizations. It has developed one of the best collections of fiction in the United States and had benefited from six National Endowment for the Humanities grants for literary programming in the past ten years.
The Center for Fiction is a not-for-profit institution classified by the Internal Revenue Service as a public charity under the statute 501(c)3. Contributions to the Library are tax-deductible to the extent provided by law.
from the New-York Commercial Advertiser November 2, 1820
Board of Directors
Peter Ginna, Chair
Gabrielle Bamberger, Vice Chair
Sharen Benenson, Secretary
Nick Brumm, Treasurer
Claudia Deutschmann
Nancy Dunnan
Mark Fowler
Calvert D. Morgan Jr.
Elizabeth Nunez
Pilar Queen
James W. Stevens
Reba White Williams
Staff
Noreen Tomassi
Executive Director
noreen@centerforfiction.org
Brenda Wegener
Head Librarian
brenda@centerforfiction.org
Esther McGowan
Development Director
esther@centerforfiction.org
Kristin Henley
Programs Director
kristin@centerforfiction.org
Jordan Scott
Webmaster / Design Coordinator
jordan@centerforfiction.org
Burton Greenhouse
Accounting
greenhousb@aol.com