The National League of American Pen Women was founded in 1897 with the purpose of encouraging and promoting women artists and writers. The impetus for establishing the National League of American Pen Women came after the Washington, D.C. Press Club refused to admit women into its membership. A group of women artists and writers, headed by Marion Longfellow O'Donohue, niece of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, realized the need to establish a club to support women writers and artists. On June 26, 1897, the group met in Washington, D.C. and formed the National League of American Pen Women. Since its founding, the National League of American Pen Women has grown into an organization of over 5,000 members - artists, authors, poets, composers, musicians and lecturers - with its headquarters located in Washington, D.C.

The Western New York Branch of the National League of American Pen Women was established in 1919 by Effie Farnham Burns, a Buffalo teacher and an ardent suffragette. Burns first learned about the National League of American Pen Women when she met a group of members while attending a conference in Washington, D.C. Inspired by the encounter, Burns became a member and vowed to establish a branch in Western New York. The Western New York Branch was formally brought into existence in the fall of 1919. On November 27, 1920, Mrs. William Atherton Du Puv, the national president of the National League of American Pen Women, presented the Western New York Branch with its charter at a gala celebrating the first anniversary of the branch's formation.

Over the years the branch has devoted itself to encouraging and promoting women artists and writers in western New York through activities, lectures, seminars, workshops, art festivals and poetry readings. A monthly radio program was hosted for a brief period from 1929 to about 1942. The branch has hosted a variety of art and literature competitions, such as the Play Contest, which ran from 1948 to about 1953, and was sponsored by Lewis Fisher of the Lake Shore Play House.

Taken from background information compiled by Rodney Obien, June 1997.