FY 2005 Grant Awards: Access to Artistic Excellence II

Dance | Design | Folk & Traditional Arts | Literature | Local Arts Agencies
Media Arts | Multidisciplinary | Museums | Music | Musical Theater
Presenting | Theater | Visual Arts

Some details of the projects listed below are subject to change, contingent upon prior Endowment approval.

LITERATURE

Academy of American Poets, Inc. (consortium)
New York, NY
$40,000
To support a consortium project to coordinate National Poetry Month. In partnership with the American Poetry & Literacy Project, the Academy will sponsor readings, discussions, and outreach programs designed to encourage Americans to make poetry a larger part of their lives.

Adirondack Community College
Queensbury, NY
$5,000
To support readings and workshops by nationally renowned and local writers for students and community members. The college will promote the readings through its Web site and newsletters.

Arizona State University (on behalf of Bilingual Review Press)
Tempe, AZ
$10,000
To support educational and outreach programs that promote the work of Latino poets. Activities will include a Web site to foster the exchange of information among poets, literary organizations, and the general public.

Association of Writers & Writing Programs
Fairfax, VA
$70,000
To support the production, printing, and distribution of The Writer's Chronicle and the AWP Job List, continued development of the AWP Web site, and the 2006 AWP Conference in Austin, Texas. AWP will promote the publications and annual conference through a 200,000-piece direct mail campaign.

Brooklyn Public Library Foundation
Brooklyn, NY
$10,000
To support Brooklyn Authors for Brooklyn Readers, a series of readings and interviews with WNYC radio talk show host Leonard Lopate. The library will make digital audio recordings of each program available on its Web site.

City University of New York Medgar Evers College
Brooklyn, NY
$10,000
To support the Eighth National Black Writers Conference. Proposed participants include Yusef Komunyakaa, Elizabeth Alexander, Edwidge Danticat, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., James McBride, Elizabeth Nunez, John Edgar Wideman, and Quincy Troupe.

Clapperstick Institute
Berkeley, CA
$5,000
To support the Central Valley Writers Conference, a free, two-day festival of readings and writing workshops in rural California. Proposed participants include Lawson Fusao Inada, Philip Levine, Gary Soto, Susan Kelley-DeWitt, Dixie Salazar, and Juan Felipe Herrera.

Collaboraction Theatre Company, Inc.
Chicago, IL
$5,000
To support a series of readings and performances featuring innovative presentations of authors and their work. Through light and sound design, props and costuming, readings, adaptations, and other activities, the events will explore the collaboration process and develop new models for the presentation of contemporary literature.

Council of Literary Magazines and Presses
New York, NY
$45,000
To support new and enhanced services for independent literary publishers. Scheduled activities will include an interactive Web site, a national conference, and technical assistance workshops.

Fishtrap, Inc.
Enterprise, OR
$10,000
To support writing workshops, discussions, and readings for residents of the rural Northwest. Themes for the events will include finding and establishing roots, and the changing ethnic composition of the West.

Gemini Series, Inc.
San Antonio, TX
$7,000
To support a series of classes, readings, and special events led by published writers and teachers. The University Without Walls program will offer classes for local writers and community members combining both on-site mentoring and distance learning.

Haleakala, Inc. (The Kitchen) (consortium)
New York, NY
$10,000
To support a consortium project of literary performances to showcase small, alternative literary publications and their writers. In partnership with Open City, Inc., The Kitchen will promote the monthly series to its mailing list of 17,000 individuals.

Hill-Stead Museum
Farmington, CT
$10,000
To support the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, featuring summer readings and workshops. Scheduled poets include Edwina Trentham, Major Jackson, and Cortney Davis.

Humanities Tennessee
Nashville, TN
$10,000
To support The Southern Festival of Books: A Celebration of the Written Word in 2005. With an annual audience of 30,000, the free three-day festival will feature readings and panel sessions by more than 200 authors.

Inprint, Inc.
Houston, TX
$15,000
To support the 25th anniversary of the Inprint Brown Reading Series. Inprint will send brochures to more than 100 print and broadcast media groups and 5,400 households throughout Houston, and place posters and postcards at area bookstores, theaters, cafes, schools, libraries, and universities.

Intersection (consortium)
San Francisco, CA
$7,000
To support the consortium project Independent Press Spotlight, a monthly series of events designed to highlight the work of independent presses and literary journals from the Bay Area. In partnership with City Lights Foundation, the center will promote the series in its newsletter which is distributed to more than 11,500 individuals.

Just Buffalo Literary Center, Inc.
Buffalo, NY
$10,000
To support outreach programs throughout the greater Buffalo area. Proposed programs will include Poetry To Go, a series of readings at public venues; World of Voices, bringing international writers to western New York for week-long residencies; and If All of Buffalo Read the Same Book.

Literary Arts, Inc.
Portland, OR
$10,000
To support the Oregon Book Awards and Author Tour. As many as 30 finalists will conduct readings at sites throughout the state.

Loft, Inc.
Minneapolis, MN
$45,000
To support The Minnesota Program for Writers, which will provide workshops and mentors for emerging writers throughout the state. The program will feature The Mentor Series, which connects nationally recognized writers with local writers through workshops and one-on-one instruction; and Talking Volumes, presenting recent original work by advanced writers to audiences throughout the Upper Midwest.

Log Cabin Literary Center, Inc. (consortium)
Boise, ID
$15,000
To support the consortium project Readings and Conversations, a lecture and discussion series. In partnership with the Idaho Commission on the Arts, the center proposes to present Ursula Hegi, Chuck Palahniuk, Walter Mosley, Adrienne Rich, Rudolfo Anaya, and Mary Oliver.

Louisiana Library Foundation
Baton Rouge, LA
$5,000
To support the 4th annual Louisiana Book Festival. Featuring more than 100 poets, writers, and scholars, the festival will include panel discussions, readings, and writing workshops.

Marygrove College
Detroit, MI
$5,000
To support a day of readings and workshops with a critically renowned African American writer as part of the college's Contemporary American Authors Lecture Series. The program will be promoted through direct mailings to more than 200,000 students and community members.

Montana Committee for the Humanities
Missoula, MT
$15,000
To support the Montana Festival of the Book. More than 70 regional authors will read and discuss their work at selected venues, reaching an estimated audience of as many as 5,000.

Mountain Writers Series
Portland, OR
$15,000
To support readings, residencies, and special events throughout the Pacific Northwest region. Proposed authors include Belle Waring, ZZ Packer, Ron Carlson, David Guterson, Aimee Bender, Michael Ondaatje, and Marie Howe.

National Book Foundation, Inc.
New York, NY
$40,000
To support literary outreach programs that link National Book Award authors with underserved communities throughout the country. Programs will include American Voices, which brings writers to American Indian reservations nationwide, and a summer writing camp for inner-city teens and adults.

National Steinbeck Center (consortium)
Salinas, CA
$20,000
To support a consortium project titled The Steinbeck Chair, a community artist-in-residence program. In partnership with The Western Stage, the center will bring Japanese American poet Lawson Inada to Salinas for readings, workshops, and discussion groups.

PEN American Center, Inc.
New York, NY
$20,000
To support Border Crossings, a program that brings literature to underserved American audiences through readings and discussions. The project is designed to create public events featuring distinguished writers and connect under-recognized writers to their local communities through writing workshops and public readings.

PEN Center USA West
Los Angeles, CA
$15,000
To support Freedom to Write, a project to connect professional writers with emerging writers from underserved communities. The project will include Emerging Voices, a one-on-one mentorship program, and PEN in the Classroom, an arts instruction program for high school students.

Poetry Center of Chicago
Chicago, IL
$10,000
To support readings featuring nationally renowned writers, and Hands on Stanzas, a poets-in-the-schools-program. Students of the program receive an anthology of their work, free admission to readings, and opportunities to present their poetry at sites throughout the city.

Poetry Flash (consortium)
Berkeley, CA
$10,000
To support a consortium project for the 10th anniversary of the Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival. In partnership with The Ecology Center, the project will celebrate American literary imagination and its relationship to the natural world.

Poetry Project, Ltd.
New York, NY
$15,000
To support the Monday Night and Wednesday Night Reading and Performance Series, which will feature live presentations by more than 130 poets and performers. Writers under consideration include Wanda Coleman, Martin Espada, Kimoko Hahn, Sonia Sanchez, and Kevin Young.

Poetry Slam, Inc.
Whitmore Lake, MI
$10,000
To support the 16th Annual National Poetry Slam in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The four-day festival will showcase more than 350 poets from across the nation and abroad to an estimated audience of 15,000.

Poetry Society of America
New York, NY
$25,000
To support Poetry in Motion, a program that places poetry placards in public transportation systems throughout the country. Targeted cities will be expanded to include New Orleans, Kansas City, and Milwaukee.

Poets House, Inc.
New York, NY
$40,000
To support public events in the Re/VISION/aries series. The project will explore a range of visionary poets of the past, look at new frontiers being charted in contemporary poetry, and invite diverse audiences to reconsider their stance toward poetry.

Poets & Writers, Inc. (consortium)
New York, NY
$15,000
To support the consortium project Carried Voices: Writers & Books in the West. In partnership with the YMCA of Billings, the project will bring literary events to Oregon, Washington, Montana, Wyoming, and northern California.

Poets & Writers, Inc.
New York, NY
$80,000
To support the publication of Poets & Writers Magazine and the continued development and promotion of Poets & Writers' Web site. The Web site provides links to over 1,000 other Web sites dedicated to helping writers.

Richard Hugo House
Seattle, WA
$10,000
To support Project Writing Nation, a series of outreach programs designed to boost writing skills and interaction with literature. Programs will include Writers in Residence, the Zine Archive and Publishing Project, Hugo Huts, and the Annual Inquiry, a dialogue among writers and community members about a relevant literary and cultural issue.

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey-Camden Campus
Camden, NJ
$10,000
To support the 18th annual Rutgers-Camden Writers' Conference, a day of free writing workshops for residents of Camden and South Jersey. Proposed workshop leaders will include Terrance Hayes, Jewell Parker Rhodes, Rafael Yglesias, and Gretel Ehrlich.

San Francisco State University
San Francisco, CA
$10,000
To support the Poetry Center's Being a Poet youth residency project. A pilot program will bring renowned visiting writers to local classrooms, using current literary efforts in the Bay Area.

Seattle Arts & Lectures (consortium)
Seattle, WA
$10,000
To support a consortium project to present readings and lectures in Portland and Seattle. In partnership with Literary Arts, Inc., the organizations will mail promotional brochures to more than 23,000 individuals, and will run advertisements in local magazines and newspapers.

Texas A&M Research Foundation
College Station, TX
$20,000
To support Writing the Self and Community, a series of public readings and writing workshops organized by the journal Callaloo. The journal will sponsor summer workshops at Texas A&M University and additional workshops at historically black colleges and universities around the country.

Texas Book Festival
Austin, TX
$10,000
To support readings and panel discussions by prominent authors participating in the 2005 Texas Book Festival. The festival will feature such writers as Amy Tan, Anita Diamont, Rigoberto Gonzales, Scott Turow, Walter Mosley, and Ann Patchett.

University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ
$10,000
To support the Visiting Poets and Writers Reading and Lecture Series. Proposed artists will include John Ashbery, Nick Flynn, Nikki Giovanni, Garrett Hongo, Heather McHugh, Jane Miller, Tyehimba Jess, and José Emilio Pacheco.

University of Massachusetts at Amherst (on behalf of Juniper Initiative)
Amherst, MA
$10,000
To support the Juniper Initiative, featuring literary programming that reaches out to locales throughout the Connecticut River Valley. The initiative will feature a Visiting Writers Series and the Juniper Festival, an annual gathering of 400-600 readers, writers, editors, and independent publishers.

University of Mississippi Main Campus (on behalf of Center for Study of Southern Culture)
University, MS
$10,000
To support the 2006 Oxford Conference for the Book. Proposed participants include Sherman Alexie, George Saunders, Ted Genoways, Annie Proulx, Julia Reed, and Brad Watson.

University of Texas at Dallas (on behalf of American Literary Translators Association)
Richardson, TX
$20,000
To support services to enhance the professional development of literary translators. Activities will include an annual conference, the publication of issues of the Translation Review and Annotated Books Received, and continued development of a Web site.

Woodland Pattern, Inc.
Milwaukee, WI
$20,000
To support a series of readings, exhibits, and community workshops. Participating writers will include Ammiel Alcalay, Robert Creeley, Bei Dao, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Simon Ortiz.

Writer's Garret
Dallas, TX
$20,000
To support the improvement and expansion of the Writers Community and Mentorship Project, a professional development program for writers. Project participants will study with published writers in workshops, seminars, and classes, as well as through one-on-one mentorships.

Writers & Books, Inc.
Rochester, NY
$10,000
To support Literary Learning for a Lifetime, a series of educational and outreach programs. The project will offer readings, writing workshops, and online classes.

Writers Room, Inc.
New York, NY
$10,000
To support subsidized work space for emerging writers. The Writers Room is an urban writer's colony in New York City.

Writers' Room of Boston, Inc.
Boston, MA
$5,000
To support subsidized work space for emerging writers in Boston. The project will provide 40 authors with work space 24 hours a day.

Young Men's Christian Association of Billings
Billings, MT
$8,000
To support a series of readings by contemporary writers in Billings and surrounding rural communities. The project will include the High Plains BookFest, a festival featuring readings and discussions with more than 90 writers.

Young Men's Christian Associations of the United States of America
Chicago, IL
$50,000
To support the YMCA National Readings Tour and the YMCA National Writers Community, a writers-in-residence program. The tour will link local writers with nationally recognized writers for readings in communities such as Louisville, Orlando, Syracuse, Norwalk, and Portland.

Young Men's & Young Women's Hebrew Association (on behalf of 92nd Street Y)
New York, NY
$40,000
To support the Unterberg Poetry Center Reading Series. The project will feature readings, performances, literary tributes, and live interviews by established and emerging authors.

National Endowment for the Arts · an independent federal agency
1100 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20506