Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Ted Lieu (33 District of California)
WASHINGTON D.C. — Congressman Ted W. Lieu (D-Los Angeles County) and Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernández (D-NM) introduced the 21st Century Federal Writers’ Project Act, legislation to create a new grant program administered by the National Endowment for the Arts that will empower America’s writers and journalists to capture and document the American experience.
As the nation approaches the 250th anniversary of its founding, this legislation establishes a coordinated national effort to chronicle the full breadth of American life across all 56 states and territories. Modeled on the Federal Writers’ Project (1935-1943), the 21st Century Federal Writers’ Project Act will support writers in documenting the histories, communities, customs, and everyday experiences that define the country today. The bill also creates a nationally administered and searchable repository to preserve these books and other media, ensuring that the stories gathered during the semiquincentennial era remain accessible to future generations of Americans.
“From the beaches of Los Angeles to the mountains of West Virginia, from the dairy farms of Wisconsin to the fishing vessels of Alaska, the American experience has a wide array of history, culture, customs, and communities. As we honor the 250th anniversary of the United States, let us celebrate what defines this great country – its people,” said Congressman Lieu. “The 21st Century Federal Writers’ Project Act will not only support writers and journalists – many of whom have lost their jobs in recent years – it will memorialize what it means to be American. The stories of today should not go untold.”
“Reporters, writers, and poets have always opened our eyes to the realities of the world around us. As the Trump administration tries to rewrite and sanitize the complex history of America itself, their work is more important than ever. With this legislation, our writers will be able to apply for federal funds to continue documenting American life as it looks like now,” said Congresswoman Leger Fernández. “Representative Ted Lieu and I are reintroducing the 21st Century Federal Writers’ Project to revive the 1935 program that gave us an inside look at how diverse the American experience is across the country. This project gives our storytellers the opportunity to shape how American history will remember the 21st century.”
“This is a brilliant idea. The new Federal Writers’ Project will help us learn who we are, at a moment when such knowledge could not be more crucial. It recognizes that coming to know our country better through stories, told lovingly and specifically, by talented writers, is a wonderful way to repair our current partisan divide,” said George Saunders, MacArthur-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo.
“As a college student from Teheran studying in Oklahoma, I first fell under the spell of the original Federal Writers Project and its guides to all the American states. Many of the great authors nurtured by the Writers’ Project, from Zora Neale Hurston to Saul Bellow to Ralph Ellison, still console and inspire me to this day. I have seen firsthand what happens when a nation’s people stop listening to each other and become strangers. Please, I implore you to pass the 21st-Century Federal Writers’ Project Act, and help a new generation of American writers to spare my adopted country a similar fate,” said Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran.
“It’s not every idea that wins support from both The Nation magazine and President Trump’s NEA, but the 21st-Century Federal Writers’ Project Act is just such an idea. Modeled on the Depression’s original, beloved Writers’ Project, the new initiative will hire talented, inquisitive, human writers to create print and multimedia guides to all 56 states and territories – ultimately helping reintroduce a divided America to itself,” said David Kipen, NEA Director of Literature under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
“The 21st-Century Federal Writers’ Project is urgently needed. It is an exercise in national cultural diplomacy that will build bridges from group to group and region to region. Our country is in a state of transformation on all levels, and this national portrait now will give future generations a detailed, state-by-state look at who we are,” said Colleen Jaurretche, UCLA Department of English and co-founder and director of the Libros Schmibros Lending Library.
“For nearly a century, the legacy of the Federal Writers’ Project has demonstrated the power of writers to document history, strengthen civic understanding, and preserve the voices of everyday Americans. As communities across the country lose local news outlets and writers struggle to sustain their careers, the need for a modern version of that effort has never been greater. The Authors Guild strongly supports locating this program within the National Endowment for the Arts, whose longstanding commitment to preserving our shared cultural heritage makes it an ideal home for this initiative. By supporting writers in telling the stories of our time, Congress can help create an invaluable record of America for generations to come,” said Mary Rasenberger, CEO of The Authors Guild.
“The 1930s Writers’ Project remains a rich source of stories, truths, and memories of the diverse, tumultuous, beautiful and challenging terrain of our country and its people. We need a new Writers’ Project, to document, sing about, and remember the extraordinary people, places, and events of our time, now, and in the future,” said Susan D. Anderson, History Curator and Program Manager of the California African American Museum.
“In the 1930s, with our country battling the Great Depression, the Federal Writers’ Project put emerging writers to work capturing American life. Across cities, towns, and rural communities nationwide, they documented the people, places, and stories that make up our country, helping to shape a generation of American storytellers, from Ralph Ellison and Studs Terkel to John Steinbeck. Today, Representative Lieu’s bill will give our country the opportunity once again to empower emerging writers and protect the voices of America’s present and future,” said William Ames, Portfolio Director of Philanthropy, Emerson Collective.
“Studs Terkel’s ‘working’ was about all I found to read as a carpenter and laborer for two decades. It was through his work that I learned about the ‘30s Federal Workers Project and all the great stories and writers who joined and apprenticed through it. It was my dream work. Do it again now, and count me in still,” said Dagoberto Gilb, author of The Magic of Blood and A Passing West.
“To strengthen our story-telling culture while at the same time fostering a sense of common national cause: Now there is a great American idea,” said Richard Powers, Pulitzer- and National Book Award-winning author of The Overstory.
“According to the latest report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Arts & Culture generates $1.17 trillion dollars (4.2% of U.S. GDP), more than all of Agriculture and Mining, combined: the American Writer is central to this massive economic engine. At this unprecedented time of great economic hardship, the 21st Century Federal Writers’ Project will create and multiply American jobs across 435 congressional districts, all while capturing the voice and very soul of America at the dawn of this new era,” said Matthew-Lee Erlbach, Playwright, Screenwriter, Co-Founder of Arts Workers United.
“Congressman Lieu’s bill recognizes the central role played by writers in the full functioning of our democracy. The bill would serve the double purpose of collecting the stories of the United States’ experience of the pandemic for use by future generations and also putting back to work many of the nation’s most talented writers and researchers, whose careers have been devastated by the effects of the pandemic. Current-day students and researchers benefit from the work made possible by FDR’s Federal Writers Project, and, with the passage of this bill, the same will be true for future generations,” said Paula M. Krebs, Executive Director of the Modern Language Association.
“In this time of rampant and destructive disinformation and divisiveness, we need the insights writers acquire when they listen to people and share their stories with respect, perspective, and understanding. The 21st-Century Federal Writers’ Project will enable us to freshly recognize the true wealth, strength, and wonder of America in all its vibrant variety,” said Donna Seaman of the American Library Association’s Booklist.
“As the inaugural Literary Director of the Library of Congress, former Editor-in-Chief of Book World at the Washington Post, and senior executive in two New York publishing houses, I’m very aware of the extraordinary influence that the original Federal Writers Project (1935-1943) had on this country’s literary history. So many of our most illustrious writers—Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, Studs Terkel, Richard Wright, May Swenson, and many others—got their start documenting the Depression for the American Guide Series. One of the most valuable collections of the past century, the Slave Narratives, containing 2,300 first-person accounts of bondage and the families that endured it, was produced as a result. These papers and recordings are all housed at the Library of Congress for the world to see, hear, study, and use. The work has been invaluable. It enriched our country’s cultural currency immeasurably. But it also supported indigent, out-of-work writers in a time of dire need.
We could use such a project again. Resuscitating this project now, in this era of COVID and conflagration, when there are so many stories to tell and so much information about this country’s experiences to glean, promises to be a rewarding undertaking. I thoroughly endorse and support this effort and hope that the fruits of this project might be available in print as well as digital form. It will rescue unemployed writers, awaken nascent talent, and energize stalled careers, but it will also contribute greatly to the historical record of the country. And I am quite sure it will take its place as an extraordinary collection in the important archives of this land, said Marie Arana, Founding Literary Director, Library of Congress.
This bill is supported by: Ken Burns, filmmaker, director of The American Revolution and The Civil War; Dana Gioia, poet, critic, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 to 2009; John Glusman, Vice President and Executive Editor of W.W. Norton & Company; Joy Harjo, 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States; George Saunders, MacArthur-winning novelist and short-story writer; Richard Powers, National Book Award and Pulitzer-winning novelist; Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran and Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times; Johanna Drucker, Distinguished Professor Emerita, Department of Information Studies, UCLA; Paul Vandeventer, President & CEO of Community Partners; Laura Zapiain, Senior Product and Privacy Counsel for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative; David Kipen, NEA Director of Literature under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama; Colleen Jaurretche, UCLA Department of English and co-founder and director of the Libros Schmibros Lending Library; Mary Rasenberger, CEO, The Authors Guild; Susan D. Anderson, History Curator and Program Manager, the California African American Museum; William Ames, Portfolio Director of Philanthropy, Emerson Collective; Dagoberto Gilb, author of The Magic of Blood and A Passing West; Matthew-Lee Erlbach, Playwright, Screenwriter, Writers Guild of America PAC Board Member, Co-Founder Arts Workers United ; Paula M. Krebs, Executive Director, Modern Language Association; Jill Lepore, New Yorker Staff Writer, Professor of American History at Harvard, author of the bestselling history of America These Truths; Philip J. Deloria, Harvard Professor of History; Steve Ross, Dean’s Professor of History at USC, author of Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America; Howard Rodman, author/screenwriter, Vice President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Past President of the Writers Guild of America West; Donna Seaman, Booklist; Summer Lopez, PEN America; Marie Arana, Founding Literary Director, Library of Congress.