The American Writers Association (AWA) was an organization of writers. Formed in 1946, its members included Bruce Barton, John Dos Passos

John Dos Passos

John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...

, John Erskine

John Erskine (educator)

John Erskine was a U.S. educator and author, born in New York City and raised in Weehawken, New Jersey. He graduated from Columbia University ....

, James T. Farrell

James T. Farrell

James Thomas Farrell was an American novelist. One of his most famous works was the Studs Lonigan trilogy, which was made into a film in 1960 and into a television miniseries in 1979...

, John T. Flynn

John T. Flynn

John Thomas Flynn was an American journalist best known for his opposition to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and to American entry into World War II.-Career:...

, Rupert Hughes

Rupert Hughes

Rupert Hughes was an American historian, novelist, film director and composer based in Hollywood. Hughes was born in Lancaster, Missouri. His parents were Felix Turner Hughes and Jean Amelia Summerlin, who were married in 1865. His brother Howard R. Hughes, Sr., co-founded the Hughes Tool Company....

, Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance...

, Clarence Budington Kelland

Clarence Budington Kelland

Clarence Budington Kelland was an American writer. He once described himself as "the best second-rate writer in America"....

, Clare Boothe Luce

Clare Boothe Luce

Clare Boothe Luce was an American playwright, editor, journalist, ambassador, socialite and U.S. Congresswoman, representing the state of Connecticut.-Early life:...

, Eugene Lyons

Eugene Lyons

Eugene Lyons was an American journalist and writer. A fellow traveler of the Communist Party in his younger years, Lyons became highly critical of the Soviet Union after having lived there for several years as a correspondent of United Press International...

, Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was an American author and journalist. Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937 for her epic American Civil War era novel, Gone with the Wind, which was the only novel by Mitchell published during her lifetime.-Family:Margaret Mitchell was born in Atlanta,...

, Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....

, Dorothy Thompson

Dorothy Thompson

Dorothy Thompson was an American journalist and radio broadcaster, who in 1939 was recognized by Time magazine as the second most influential women in America next to Eleanor Roosevelt...

 and Louis Waldman

Louis Waldman

Louis Waldman was a leading figure in the Socialist Party of America from the late 1910s and through the middle 1930s, a founding member of the Social Democratic Federation, and a prominent New York labor lawyer.-Early years:...

.

The organization formed as a response to the "Cain Plan" put forth by the American Authors' Authority and its founder, novelist and screenwriter James M. Cain

James M. Cain

James Mallahan Cain was an American author and journalist. Although Cain himself vehemently opposed labeling, he is usually associated with the hardboiled school of American crime fiction and seen as one of the creators of the roman noir...

. In July 1946, Cain proposed that the Authority be created to act as a central repository for copyrights, negotiating collectively for authors to give them greater bargaining power. The AWA opposed this plan. Many AWA members considered the Cain Plan an attempt by Communists to gain control over copyrights. Flynn compared the Authority's board of governors to the politburo

Politburo

Politburo , literally "Political Bureau [of the Central Committee]," is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.-Marxist-Leninist states:...

 of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

. Cain responded by referring to members of the AWA as "reactionary, almost incomprehensibly censorious".

In September 1946, a group of 50 writers signed a joint letter to Elmer Rice

Elmer Rice

Elmer Rice was an American playwright. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his 1929 play, Street Scene.-Early years:...

, president of the Authors League of America, to announce the group's formation. The AWA soon found backing from radio and film producers, as well as newspaper editors and publishers. The group held meetings and began a newsletter. Erskine was initially elected as the group's leader, but he was soon succeeded by Hughes. Flynn, Lyons and Waldman were selected for a "strategy committee".

The Cain Plan was quickly defeated, but the AWA continued to exist for several years after. In 1949, the group supported the Contempt of Congress

Contempt of Congress

Contempt of Congress is the act of obstructing the work of the United States Congress or one of its committees. Historically the bribery of a senator or representative was considered contempt of Congress...

 citations against the Hollywood Ten by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. That same year the AWA denounced the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace as a "fraud", saying its Russian delegates were "prisoners" of that country's Communist authorities.