2012 Grant Awards: Art Works

[ August 11, 2011 deadline ]

Arts Education | Dance | Design | Folk & Traditional Arts | Literature
Local Arts Agencies | Media Arts | Museums | Music | Musical Theater
Opera | 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.
New York, NY
$60,000
To support National Poetry Month in April 2013, Poets.org, the journal American Poet, and a poetry conference in New York City. For National Poetry Month, the world's largest celebration of poetry, the Academy will distribute 200,000 free posters, sponsor readings and events across the country, and conduct a nationwide media campaign to encourage poetry coverage and book reviews.

Art Sanctuary
Philadelphia, PA
$15,000
To support the 29th annual Celebration of Black Writing in 2013. Featuring a week-long series of readings, workshops, panels, performances, discussions, and a book fair, the festival will honor Black women, such as Alice Walker, who have made significant contributions to the literary field.

Association of Writers & Writing Programs (aka AWP)
Fairfax, VA
$100,000
To support the 2013 AWP conference in Boston, Massachusetts; the publication of The Writer's Chronicle; and the AWP website, including the web-based AWP Job List. Serving an estimated 9,500 attendees, the annual three-day conference is the largest gathering of its kind, featuring more than 400 readings, forums, and panel discussions, as well as a book fair showcasing the work of more than 550 small presses.

Bowery Arts and Science, Ltd.
New York, NY
$15,000
To support poetry, prose, and spoken-word presentations and workshops at the Bowery Poetry Club. Programs include World of Poetry, featuring poetry in translation; Page Meets Stage, pairing two poets with one reading, one performing; Summer Institute for Social Justice & Applied Poetics, an education-through-the-arts initiative targeting at-risk teens; Urbana/Word Shop, a weekly poetry slam; and the Segue Readings, highlighting diverse and cutting-edge aesthetics.

Brooklyn Public Library
Brooklyn, NY
$20,000
To support readings and discussions with local and international authors. The project includes four series: the Brooklyn Independents, featuring poets from four independent presses; the Russian Literary Series, featuring Russian writers reading and presenting in Russian to Brooklyn's large population of Russian speakers; Gotham: Writers in the City, featuring New York writers and moderated by WNYC radio host Leonard Lopate; and Popular Nonfiction, featuring an essayist, biographer, memoirist, travel writer, and other nonfiction authors.

Cave Canem Foundation, Inc.
Brooklyn, NY
$58,000
To support the 2012 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, as well as workshops in New York City and an annual week-long writing retreat, all targeting emerging African American poets. The foundation's flagship program is a retreat at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, Pennsylvania, which brings together 54 emerging poets for workshops and readings with award-winning faculty such as Nikky Finney, Terrance Hayes, and Amiri Baraka.

CityLit Project
Baltimore, MD
$15,000
To support the 2013 CityLit Festival in downtown Baltimore, a free day-long series of events held at the Enoch Pratt Free Library. The organization will partner with Urbanite magazine and WYPR, Baltimore's local NPR affiliate, to promote the festival, and tour some of the invited authors to schools prior to the event.

Columbia College Chicago
Chicago, IL
$15,000
To support the Story Week Festival of Writers, held at venues throughout Chicago. The theme for 2013 is Voices for Change, featuring readings, performances, and discussions that explore how stories promote understanding among people of different backgrounds.

Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (aka CLMP)
New York, NY
$100,000
To support technical assistance and capacity-building programs for large, mid-size, and small independent and not-for-profit magazines and presses. As the only service organization of its kind, CLMP provides resources that include an interactive website offering access to media databases and virtual roundtable discussions, as well as workshops, one-on-one mentoring, and networking opportunities.

East Carolina University
Greenville, NC
$15,000
To support the Eastern North Carolina Literary Homecoming, a year-long program of events featuring artists who are from, live in, and/or write about the region. The theme for 2012 is Adapting North Carolina Literature into Film.

Fall for the Book, Inc.
Fairfax, VA
$15,000
To support Fall for the Book, a week-long festival of readings, discussions, and exhibits. Each year, the festival honors a headlining writer. Past honorees include Stephen King, Amy Tan, Michael Cunningham, Joyce Carol Oates, E.L. Doctorow, Ann Patchett, Dave Eggers, and Sherman Alexie.

Gemini Series, Inc. (aka Gemini Ink)
San Antonio, TX
$15,000
To support workshops and other literary events in diverse communities throughout South Central Texas. University Without Walls offers nominally priced classes and discussion groups scheduled to accommodate jobs and families, with topics ranging from family oral histories to journaling. Writers in Communities offers workshops in at-risk schools, justice settings, therapeutic facilities, and shelters.

Humanities Tennessee
Nashville, TN
$15,000
To support the 2012 Southern Festival of the Book. The free festival takes place over a weekend in October and features approximately 120 sessions with 250 authors; 8 to 10 sessions run concurrently throughout each day.

Inprint, Inc.
Houston, TX
$15,000
To support the Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series. Invited speakers for the 2012-13 season include T. Coraghessan Boyle, Anne Carson, Deborah Eisenberg, Claudia Emerson, Percivel Everett, Eduardo Galeano, Amitav Ghosh, Terrance Hayes, Jhumpa Lahiri, Lily Tuck, and Karen Tei Yamashita.

Just Buffalo Literary Center, Inc.
Buffalo, NY
$40,000
To support Babel, a program that brings renowned international writers to western New York for readings and related outreach activities. Proposed authors include Nobel and other prize winning writers such as Nadine Gordimer, Seamus Heaney, Haruki Murakami, Elias Khoury, Herta Muller, JMG LeClezio, and Julia Alvarez.

Kundiman, Inc.
Sunnyside, NY
$15,000
To support readings, the 2012 Asian American Poetry Retreat, and the Kavad Oral History Poetry Project: Together We Are New York. The oral history project is a multi-faceted initiative comprised of recorded interviews with Asian immigrants by Asian American poets, who use the stories they hear as jumping off points for poetic responses and performances.

Litquake Foundation
San Francisco, CA
$10,000
To support the annual literary festival Litquake, featuring readings, performances, cross-media literary events, panel discussions, workshops, and the commissioning of original works of fiction. This youthful, non-traditional, week-long festival includes a Lit Crawl, with 400 authors in 75 venues around the Bay area in a four-hour time period, as well as special events geared toward elementary school students (Kidquake) and middle and high school students (Teenquake).

Loft, Inc. (aka The Loft Literary Center)
Minneapolis, MN
$70,000
To support the Loft Program for Writers, which offers classes, mentorship opportunities, and workshops for writers of all levels. One of the oldest and largest literary centers in the country, the Loft also offers readings, book clubs, and other opportunities for community members to engage in a dialogue with a range of prose, poetry, young adult, and children's writers.

Montana Committee for the Humanities (aka Humanities Montana)
Missoula, MT
$15,000
To support the 2012 Montana Festival of the Book. The three-day festival will highlight the work of Native American writer and Montana native James Welch, with a world premiere of the film Winter in the Blood, based on his novel of the same name, and a chamber opera based on his novel, The Heartsong of Charging Elk.

Nature of Words
Bend, OR
$15,000
To support the Nature of Words Literary Festival. The five-day festival showcases Oregon and Northwest authors, authors who address environmental issues in their writing, and authors whose writing fits with the theme of the events.

Neighborhood Writing Alliance
Chicago, IL
$15,000
To support Body Wisdom, a series of writing workshops targeting adults from low-income households in Chicago's underserved neighborhoods. The workshops, some led by poet Sonia Sanchez, will foster writing inspired by the intersections of physical movement, intuitive and primary senses, and creative expression.

One Story, Inc. (Consortium)
Brooklyn, NY
$10,000
To support the development of Subscription Manager, an online fulfillment application. In partnership with Ploughshares, which will be one of the early beta-testers, One Story will build its application to allow literary journals to bill and renew subscribers more efficiently, thereby increasing productivity.

PEN American Center, Inc.
New York, NY
$100,000
To support the 2013 PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. The largest international literary festival in the country, PEN World Voices will feature readings, performances, discussions, conversations, and screenings in both large-scale and intimate public venues.

PEN Center USA West (aka PEN Center USA)
Beverly Hills, CA
$30,000
To support Freedom to Write, a series of readings, panels, workshops, and outreach programs targeting writers in underserved communities. The project includes Emerging Voices, a fellowship program for aspiring writers; The Mark, a rigorous manuscript finishing school for Emerging Voices fellows; PEN in the Classroom, providing creative writing residencies for at-risk youth; and The Bridge, a more advanced level of instruction for young writers.

PEN/Faulkner Foundation (aka PEN Faulkner)
Washington, DC
$40,000
To support a reading series, literary programming targeting at-risk groups, and writers in the schools. The foundation will present 70 one-day author visits to 19 high schools,  a book group for teenage unwed mothers, and book groups to be held at the D.C. Jail and the New Beginnings Development Center.

People and Stories Gente y Cuentos, Inc.
Trenton, NJ
$15,000
To support Reading Literature: Writing Our Stories, a series of free book discussions and writing workshops targeting inmates, homeless individuals, and Latino adults, including recent immigrants. Guest teachers will include Paul Muldoon, C.K. Williams, Claudio Mir, and José L. Martí.

Poetry Project, Limited (aka Poetry Project at St. Mark's)
New York, NY
$15,000
To support the Monday Night and Wednesday Night Reading Series. The Poetry Project has been sponsoring readings at the landmark St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery in New York's East Village for 45 years, allowing both emerging and established poets to perform new work for a broad audience.

Poetry Society of America
New York, NY
$50,000
To support Poetry in Motion, which replaces advertisements with poetry placards on trains and buses around the country, as well as nationwide poetry events and chapbooks. Poetry in Motion will reach an estimated eight million transit riders, with new programs planned for Santa Cruz, California; Missoula, Montana; and East Lansing, Michigan.

Poets & Writers, Inc.
New York, NY
$90,000
To support the publication of Poets & Writers Magazine and the expansion of the Poets & Writers website. The service organization will strengthen links between its print and online content, expand the functionality of its directory of writers, launch a mobile-friendly version of the website, and provide advice columns on such topics as agents, promotion and publicity, MFA programs, and digital publishing.

Poets House, Inc.
New York, NY
$100,000
To support a series of talks, panels, readings, and outreach to library staff in Queens, New York, on how to incorporate poetry into existing programs and services. Activities will include Passwords, in which poets discuss an influential poet or poetic tradition; an exhibition on the visual poetics of Sylvia Plath; and symposia exploring poetry and science, and Native American poetry in the 21st century.

Richard Hugo House (aka Hugo House)
Seattle, WA
$15,000
To support readings, open mic nights, performances, and commissioned new work in an effort to introduce new writing by established and emerging writers to a broad audience. Activities include a regular gathering for writers in which local authors provide creative writing prompts and performances of newly commissioned one-person plays.

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (on behalf of Center for Latino Arts and Culture)
New Brunswick, NJ
$15,000
To support the Latino/a Literary Imagination: Emerging Voices Residency Program, offering free intensive writing workshops and reading tours throughout New Jersey and New Mexico. Rutgers University and the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque will select 48 fellows from each region through a competitive application process to work with such authors as Jimmy Santiago Baca, Denise Chávez, Junot Díaz, Judith Ortiz Cofer, and Martín Espada.

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey-Camden Campus
Camden, NJ
$14,000
To support Writers at Camden, free monthly workshops, readings, and discussions with visiting writers targeting residents of Camden, one of the most poverty-stricken cities in the nation. Scheduled sessions include Breaking In: First Novels, First Nonfiction, with Téa Obreht; The Poet and Political Conscience, with Martín Espada; Unconventional Fiction, with Percival Everett; and Books to Movies, with Tom Perotta.

San Francisco State University
San Francisco, CA
$15,000
To support the Poetry Center Digital Archive, one of the largest and oldest collections of poetry recordings in the country. The university will preserve, transfer, catalog, and make accessible for free 100 additional at-risk original videos of poetry readings between 1973 and 1986.

Small Press Distribution, Inc. (aka SPD)
Berkeley, CA
$40,000
To support the expanded distribution of independently published books to booksellers, librarians, educators, and individual readers. As the only distributor focusing solely on literary titles, SPD plays a crucial role in the distribution of roughly 10,000 titles from more than 400 publishers around the country.

Small Press Distribution, Inc. (aka SPD) (Consortium)
Berkeley, CA
$60,000
To support outreach to literary audiences through the use of accurate and timely bibliographic information on books distributed by SPD. To help promote these titles to booksellers, librarians, and individual readers, and thus keep small presses competitive in today's market, SPD will expand its acquisition and dissemination of digital information to include not just a book's author, title, and price, but reviews, promotional quotes, excerpts, cover scans, and other rich content.

Storyville Center for the Spoken Word (aka The Moth)
New York, NY
$15,000
To support the Moth Mainstage, a series of themed storytelling performances in New York City and around the country. Performers develop, edit, and present true, first-person stories, live and without notes. Scheduled participants include Karen Russell, Garrison Keillor, Tony Kushner, Armistead Maupin, and James McBride.

Telling Room
Portland, ME
$10,000
To support Young Writers and Leaders, a free, weekly after-school literary arts program for teenaged refugee and immigrant students. Fifteen participants are paired with teaching artists to create original pieces of writing, which they then publish in an anthology and present in a public reading.

Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, Inc.
New Orleans, LA
$15,000
To support the 27th annual Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival and the 11th annual Saints and Sinners Literary Festival. Both festivals feature readings, panel discussions, master classes, playwriting and fiction writing contests, a book fair, and adjunct components such as touring visiting writers to area high schools.

Thurber House, Inc.
Columbus, OH
$15,000
To support a summer writing camp for children in grades two through eight and writing workshops for older children and adults. Participants can focus on one topic or genre over a six-week period, or take different workshops each week on such issues as character development and writing for television.

Utah Humanities Council
Salt Lake City, UT
$15,000
To support Authors on Main Street, a year-long series of readings and discussions, and the annual Utah Humanities Book Festival. The festival will take place in different communities around Utah, with each community offering its own workshops, readings, and discussion opportunities.

Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy (Consortium)
Charlottesville, VA
$15,000
To support the 2013 Virginia Festival of the Book. The festival, now in its 19th year, will feature free readings by both award-winning and emerging authors, as well as panel discussions, lectures, writing workshops, school visits, and youth conferences.

Voices UnBroken
Bronx, NY
$15,000
To support outreach programs for youth who are incarcerated, detained, or in the foster care system. Activities will include creative writing workshops, monthly open-mics, and performances featuring professional writers reading alongside workshop participants.

Woodland Pattern, Inc. (aka Woodland Pattern Book Center)
Milwaukee, WI
$10,000
To support fees and travel costs for visiting writers. For more than 31 years, the center has been presenting authors representing a variety of styles and heritages in readings and master classes for working class, racially mixed, and multigenerational community members.

Wordstock
Portland, OR
$15,000
To support the Wordstock Book and Literary Festival in October 2012. The week-long festival will include a two-day book fair featuring 100 authors on eight author stages, more than 150 exhibitors, a special children's literature stage, and a series of workshops for writers and K-12 teachers.

Writers and Books, Inc.
Rochester, NY
$15,000
To support lectures about literature and in-person and online writing workshops for youth and adults. Workshops are offered on such topics as playwriting, screenwriting, fiction, poetry, memoir, journalism, comedy, and performance.

Young Men\'s & Young Women\'s Hebrew Association (aka 92nd Street Y) (on behalf of Unterberg Poetry Center)
New York, NY
$40,000
To support the Unterberg Poetry Center's Main Reading Series. Serving the New York community since 1939, the center features readings, literary tributes, interviews, performances, and dialogues between writers and audiences about literary and related topics.

Young Men\'s Christian Association of Billings (aka YMCA Writer\'s Voice)
Billings, MT
$15,000
To support Native Voices, a unique series of public readings by contemporary Native American writers. Authors representing Crow, Cheyenne, Kootenai, Salish, Sioux, Assiniboine, Cree, Cherokee, and Aleut cultures will present work in public, private, and Tribal colleges throughout eastern Montana.

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

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