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Despite a circulation boom, public libraries in Ohio are scrambling to close branches, reduce hours, and lay off staff—all in an attempt to cope with an unprecedented drop in state funding. According to the Ohio Library Council, reductions approved last month to the Public Library Fund, along with declining tax revenues, are expected to shrink library budgets by as much as 30 percent.
Theatre producer and former professor Rocco Landesman was confirmed by the Senate on Friday as the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Also confirmed by the Senate last week was former congressman Jim Leach, tapped to head up the National Endowment for the Humanities. Both men are expected to be sworn in within a few days.
Author Thomas Nesbit announced this week that he will donate half the earnings from his e-book Deep Fried to the nonprofit 826 National, which runs literacy centers for school-aged children in seven American cities. This is the first such pledge to the organization by a debut novelist.
With support for small publishers continuing to dwindle amid the uncertain economic climate, Archipelago Books has put out a call for donations to help it stay afloat. The award-winning New York City-based press, which specializes in literary translations, says shrinking finances have forced it to lay off staff and delay the release of upcoming titles.
For many writers groups and nonprofit literary organizations battered by the recession, help is on the way. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which was signed into law by president Barack Obama in February, included fifty million dollars in arts funding that is being allocated by the National Endowment for the Arts.
David Grant, president and CEO of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, announced this week that he will step down by June 2010. Grant has helmed the New Jersey-based philanthropic organization—best known as the sponsor of the Dodge Poetry Festival—since 1998.
Officials at Louisiana State University (LSU) say funding cuts under consideration by the state legislature could threaten the survival of the Southern Review and LSU Press. The revered literary journal and the state’s only university-supported publishing house were among those singled out in the university's preliminary budget reduction proposal.
The New England Review has until the end of 2011 to become self-supporting or it will lose its sponsorship, Middlebury College announced this week. The thirty-year-old magazine was included in a list of recommended cuts released on Tuesday by the Vermont college’s Budget Oversight Committee.
President Obama announced yesterday that he has nominated Rocco Landesman, a theatre owner and producer, as the next chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Landseman, whose appointment must be confirmed by Congress, will fill the post recently vacated by Dana Gioia.
Copper Canyon Press is the latest publisher to receive an International Literary Exchange Award from the National Endowment for the Arts. The public agency announced last Thursday that the press, based in Port Townsend, Washington, will receive $117,000 to support the translation, publication, and promotion of a bilingual anthology of Chinese poetry.
