NEA Literature Grants

I’m going to write more about this next week, but this morning, the National Endowment for the Arts announced the recipients of the 2009 Access to Artistic Excellence grants. A lot of fantastic organizations received funding this year, such as Archipelago, the Center for the Art of Translation, Graywolf, Copper Canyon, Words Without Borders, Conjunctions, etc., etc. And in today’s economic climate, I’m sure these grants are even more meaningful than usual.

I served as one of the panelists for this grant, and found the whole experience to be one of the most interesting things I’ve ever done. Obviously I can’t write or talk about the specifics of what happened at the panel, but I have been planning on writing about how this works and what these grants mean to nonprofit organizations. The whole process was fascinating . . . I think all the panelist would agree that this is a lot of work, but definitely worth it in the end. More on that next week . . .