Creative Writing at The New School mourns the loss of Leonard Riggio, co-founder of the Writing and Democracy Honors Program, who passed away on August 27.
Mr. Riggio is most well known as the executive chairman of Barnes & Noble, which evolved from The Student Book Exchange, a small bookstore he founded in 1965. At The New School, we know Riggio as the visionary leader committed to supporting the education of developing writers. In a set of conversations with Robert Polito in 2005, the two designed a curriculum that Riggio funded with a generous gift. This gift not only made scholarships available to ambitious undergraduate writers, it also supported bringing a curriculum to life. In a series of workshops, seminars, and a colloquium of events, students develop their writing in the context of democratic expression, citizenship, and the skill of close reading, which is applied across literature, contemporary arts and culture. It is a specialized course of study that fosters a growing community of writers that continues to flourish today. Current Writing and Democracy Honors scholars not only undertake rigorous, interdisciplinary coursework; they also edit and publish the award-winning 12th Street: The Journal of Writing and Democracy, share their own writing in a student reading series, and cultivate connections that continue long after graduation.
Writing and Democracy students complete their studies with a thesis manuscript that is very often the seed of a first book. It has been a special pleasure to encounter these books on the shelves of the bookstore founded by the man who shaped and supported the education of their authors. The Writing and Democracy program that Leonard Riggio made possible has also shaped practices at The New School as students, faculty, and staff connected to the program continually look for ways to infuse our work together with the democratic principles and attentive responses its mission engenders.
The New School Creative Writing community will always be grateful for the foresight and generosity of Leonard Riggio, who believed that educating writers would not only produce new books, but would also foster the development of perceptive and principled citizens who would shape culture in profound ways.
Alumni of the Writing and Democracy Honors Program have shared their reflections following Leonard Riggio’s passing:
Daniel Gee Husson (Riggio grad, 2015, and former Editor-in-Chief of 12th Street) shared this reflection as a response to an obituary for Mr. Riggio published in The Washington Post:
What this obituary doesn’t say is there’s a whole group of folks who were part of a pretty magical program at the New School. The Riggio Honors Program: Writing and Democracy, partially funded by Leonard and Louise Riggio, gave so many of us opportunities to study and learn in really dynamic classrooms. I wouldn’t have a college degree without the Riggios. The On & Off Theatre Workshop certainly wouldn’t exist without the Riggio Program.
For a working class kid from Brooklyn, that’s a hell of a journey.
Rest well, good sir.
Nico Rosario (Riggio grad, 2014) shared these thoughts with the obituary in ARTnews:
So many of my friends have Leonard and Louise Riggio to thank for our New School education. As a Riggio scholar in Writing and Democracy, I was cultivated into the hulking intellectual you all know and love! 
Professor Robert Polito, founding director of The New School’s Creative Writing Program and the Riggio Honors Program and former President of the Poetry Foundation, shares this reflection on the intellectual underpinnings of this undergraduate honors program:
Len Riggio was a true American visionary.
The Writing and Democracy Honors Program originated in a series of conversations that took place at the Barnes & Noble headquarters on lower Fifth Avenue during the spring of 2005. Bob Kerrey, then President of the New School, made the introduction to Len Riggio, and initially I was joined by Arjun Appadurai (then the New School Provost) and Jonathan Veitch (then the Dean of Lang College) for a far-ranging discussion of possible collaborations around the notion of “democratic expression.” Pretty quickly Len signaled that he wanted to concentrate his attentions on “young writers,” and I started to meet alone with him and his close team: from the outset, the perspicacious and invaluable Mary Ellen Keating (then the Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs), and soon after Louise Riggio, who spurred and grounded our meetings with a shrewd alertness to the needs of student writers. This was a sophisticated seminar in the provocations of contemporary American education. Len immediately was intrigued by a program that would specifically emphasize language and combine the training of writers and the training of alert citizens. But anyone who knows Len and Louise’s work in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, at DIA Beacon, and for Poets and Writers will recognize that as a philanthropist as well as a businessman Len Riggio was a seer, and many of the best ideas were inevitably his. He insisted, for instance, that we offer a course in the American Constitution that would not only examine the major transformations in constitutional thought and design but also require the class to draft a new document to meet the demands of the 21st Century. He believed that the program “should encourage people who are not skilled writers, but interested in careers in politics and government as well”; hence the University Lecture Courses were open to students across the University, not just to writing students. He wanted us to take advantage of The New School Writing Program’s reputation as a community resource, so we initiated the Riggio forums of lectures, panels, and other public events.
Finally, over a weekend in my study in New Paltz, NY, I condensed our conversations into a short proposal for a “Writing and Democracy Program” that Len committed to fund for a four-year period. Throughout, Len and Louise proved attentive stewards: visiting classes; arranging for spectacular launch events at the Union Square Barnes & Noble for the Writing and Democracy literary magazine,12th Street; and inviting the students to the office for a serious talk, and (as I remember vividly) a spirited look at one of their beautiful Alighiero Boetti pieces.
In 2009, Len and Louise Riggio renewed their gift and agreed to sustain the Writing and Democracy Program through the academic year 2014–15.
As Len wrote then to Bob Kerrey:
Louise and I are pleased to make a pledge in renewed funding. . . The objective of our renewed support is to sustain the defining features of the current program, which include an innovative sequence of undergraduate writing workshops, close reading literature seminars, and university lecture courses; undergraduate fellowships and graduate student teaching assistantships, distinguished public readings and forums, and an undergraduate literary journal. . . We look forward to seeing this program continue to educate undergraduate students based on the pedagogical links between democratic expression and citizenship and the skills of reading, writing, and rhetoric.
The Writing and Democracy Honors Program represents an ambitious initiative to reinvent undergraduate education through a sustained investigation of language and democratic expression across a spectrum of cultural, political, social, and artistic experiences.
A close attention to language—a vigilance and sophistication in the use and appreciation of words—is both vital preparation for a career as a writer, whether poet, novelist, or nonfiction writer, and an essential prerequisite for alert, informed citizenship. This New School undergraduate writing initiative seeks to merge study and practice, the aesthetic and the political. The program is grounded in the art and craft of writing, and the study of literature with special emphasis on the writer engaged in and grappling with the world.