Traci Lester to Step Down as Executive Director of The Center for Fiction, Search Underway for New Executive Director
November 16, 2022 — Brooklyn, NY — The Board of The Center for Fiction announced today that Traci Lester is stepping down as Executive Director, effective January 1, 2023.
Traci joined The Center for Fiction in March of 2021 and under her direction worked to secure and maintain pandemic relief funding that allowed The Center to offer extensive virtual programming and sustain its onsite Bookstore, Writers Studio, and Library. She also oversaw the full reopening of The Center in the fall of 2021, including returning it to robust in-person public programming along with the opening of all its spaces for readers, writers, and lovers of storytelling.
“Traci has brought tremendous expertise and dedication to her role at The Center, contributing a great deal to this important cultural organization. We thank her for these efforts and wish her well in her next endeavors,” said Board Chair Erroll McDonald.
Traci has made the decision to leave The Center at the close of this year to pursue other opportunities. The Center will hire an interim executive director to oversee the institution while a search is underway.
About The Center for Fiction
About The Center for Fiction
The Center for Fiction is a literary nonprofit that brings diverse communities together to develop and share a passion for fiction. Founded in 1821 as the Mercantile Library of New York in Manhattan, the organization is now based in the heart of the Brooklyn cultural district, with a 18,000 sq. ft. facility that offers New Yorkers an immersive cultural experience centered on reading and writing. Throughout the year, The Center for Fiction provides a vast array of public programming, reading groups, and writing workshops. The First Novel Prize and Emerging Writer Fellowships help build literary careers, and KidsRead/KidsWrite programs inspire an early love of reading and writing in public school students with author-led events. In recent years, the organization’s programming has expanded to include storytelling in all its forms, integrating music, theater, dance, film, television, and the visual arts into its exploration of the best of fiction throughout history and today.
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