In the Hawthornden Foundation’s “Casa Ecco”, the former Villa Maresi, on Lake Como. Image: Hawthornden Foundation
By Porter Anderson, Editor in Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Grants for capacity building
MLast month we reported on the Amazon Literary Partnership’s fellowship programs in the United States and the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Today (August 14) there is news from the United States National Book Foundation, which presents the National Book Awards and a series of accompanying programs aimed at promoting reading, literary education, and a culture receptive to contemporary American literature.
The foundation, chaired by David Steinberger, CEO of Open Road Integrated Media, has announced plans to award a total of $350,000 in capacity-building grants to 49 nonprofit literary and arts organizations across the U.S. Selected organizations will receive grants valued at $5,000 to $10,000 to support projects that “build organizational capacity and increase sustainability.”
The program, officially called the Capacity-Building Grant Program, is made possible by funds from the Hawthornden Foundation. The Hawthornden Foundation was founded in 1983 by the British-American literary philanthropist Drue Heinz (1915-2018), who was the third wife of HJ Heinz II and heiress to the Heinz fortune.
Drue Heinz had a penchant and talent for buying historic houses – including the Hawthornden Castle complex outside Edinburgh – and restoring them as writers’ retreats. The Heinz family’s Casa Ecco, as they called Villa Maresi on Lake Como, became a place for Conversations and one of those retreats that she used to have. She also published The Paris Review From 1993 to 2007 he was co-founder of Ecco Press and sponsor of the Drue Heinz Literary Prize, a short story competition based at the University of Pittsburgh Press.
She also founded the Hawthornden Prize in the United Kingdom, which was established in 1919 and honors writers aged 40 and under for “imaginative literature” in poetry and prose.
Ellyn Toscano
Speaking on behalf of Hawthornden about this new example of the Foundation’s philanthropic generosity, Hawthornden Executive Director Ellyn Toscano said: “We are delighted to support the National Book Foundation in its important program of capacity-building for literary organizations.
“The National Book Foundation’s contributions to the literary arts are invaluable.”
The National Book Foundation uses its grants to support projects “aimed at building a sustainable and effective organization in the areas of fundraising, finance, or marketing; capacity-building opportunities for staff and/or board members; strategic planning advice; diversity and equity initiatives; leadership development and management training; sabbaticals for long-serving staff and executives; and succession planning.”
Ruth Dickey
For the National Book Foundation, Executive Director Ruth Dickey says, “The National Book Foundation’s Capacity Building grantees represent organizations based in 22 states and Washington, DC, and they have annual budgets ranging from less than $20,000 to more than $4,000,000.
“We look forward to watching these 49 diverse, nonprofit literary arts organizations continue to serve readers and writers across the country, and are very grateful to the Hawthornden Foundation for its tremendous support of our sector and investment in the capacity of these important organizations.”
Recipients of the Capacity Building Funding Programme
- 826DC, $10,000
- Adirondack Center for Writing, $5,000
- Afghan American Artists and Writers Association (AAAWA), $5,000
- Cambodian American Association for Literary Arts, $5,000
- Chicago Humanities, $5,000
- Children’s book project, $5,000
- Urban art and lectures, $10,000
- CityLit Project, $5,000
- Cleveland Kids’ Book Bank, $10,000
- Elk River Arts & Lectures, $5,000
- Everyone wins DC, $10,000
- Gemini Ink, $10,000
- Girls Write Now, $10,000
- Imprint, $10,000
- Kimbilio, $5,000
- Kiwanis Literacy Club Foundation, $5,000
- Lighthouse Writers Workshop, $10,000
- LitArts RI, $5,000
- Literary Cleveland, $10,000
- Madison Reading Project, $5,000
- MAKE Literary Productions, NFP, $5,000
- Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, $10,000
- Mississippi Book Festival, $10,000
- Nathaniel Gadsden’s Writers Wordshop, $5,000
- Nebraska Writers Collective (NWC), $10,000
- Northern Arizona Book Festival, $5,000
- Pen Parentis, $5,000
- Planting People Growing Justice Founding Leadership Institute, $5,000
- Podium RVA, 5,000 USD
- Poetry Society of New York, $5,000
- Rhode Island Center for the book, $5,000
- Short-haul Seattle, $5,000
- Small publisher Traffic Literary Arts Center, $5,000
- Speculative Literature Foundation, $5,000
- Teacher-Writer Collaboration, $10,000
- Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, $5,000
- Texas Book Festival, $10,000
- The Flow Chart Foundation, $5,000
- The Muse Writers Center, $10,000
- The PEN/Faulkner Foundation, $10,000
- The Porch Writers’ Collective, $10,000
- The Word, a haven for storytellers, $5,000
- The Writer’s Center, $10,000
- Torch Literary Arts, $5,000
- Tuleburg Press, $5,000
- Tulsa Literary Coalition, $10,000
- Forest pattern, $10,000
- Authors & Books, $10,000
- Writers in Baltimore Schools, $5,000
The applications were examined by an independent panel composed of the following people:
- Lilly Gonzalez, Executive Director of the San Antonio Book Festival
- Michael Holtmann, Managing Director and Editor of the Centre for Translation Arts
- Lisa Willis, Managing Director of Cave Canem.
Final grant decisions were made by the National Book Foundation and approved by a committee of the Foundation’s Board of Directors.
For more information from Publishing Perspectives on the National Book Foundation in the US, click here, for more information on the National Book Awards in the US, click here, for more information on the Hawthornden Foundation, click here, and for more information from us on the US market, click here.
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