Seven major foundations came together to launch the Literary Arts Fund with a $50 million endowment to support the literary arts in the US.
Besides directly supporting writers, the Literary Arts Foundation will aim to award grants to nonprofits (based in the US) and fiscally-sponsored literary organizations and publishers. It will cover contemporary writers working in the mediums of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and even hybrid genres. Each year, there would be an open call asking writers and entities to submit applications for the grant.
The Literary Arts Fund is a brainchild of seven major foundations coming together. These include the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Hawthornden Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Poetry Foundation. The seventh foundation has chosen to remain anonymous. However, the initiative for the fund was taken by the Mellon Foundation, whose current president, Elizabeth Alexander, is also an acclaimed poet. She said: “Novelists, poets, and all manner of creative writers shape and drive our collective discourse and capacity for invention and imagination. American philanthropy can play a bigger role in strengthening the financial infrastructure of the literary organizations and nonprofits that serve these literary artists. As we initiate this historic effort, we at Mellon are pleased to join with our co-funders in sustaining and further stewarding the extraordinary legacy and power of the written word in our country.”
Each foundation gave a one-time donation for the grant, which will be overseen by the newly-formed Literary Arts Funders Collaborative. Other entities, like the McKnight Foundation and the Houston Endowment, also made contributions. Ultimately, the funds currently possess grants worth $50 million, which they plan to disburse annually over a period of 5 years. Jennifer Benka, who has 20 years of experience managing literary organizations, will oversee the fund.
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The literary arts are the least-funded art discipline in the world, with only 1.9 percent of the grants in 2023 going towards it. The Literary Arts Fund, whose applications for this year open on November 10, hopes to reduce this gap.
