Words Without Borders publishes selected prose and poetry on the web and organizes special events that connect foreign writers to the public; it develops also materials for high school teachers and is interested to build an "online resource center" for contemporary global writing. Words without Borders is supported also by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and the Lannan Foundation. Words without Borders was founded by Alane Salierno Mason, translator of Elio Vittorini, in 1999 although it did not begin publication until 2003.

David Orr, on The New York Times, compliments the "intelligence and idealism" of WWB as a site devoted to revealing a lot of special forms of foreign literatures.