REPS LIEU AND LEGER FERNANDEZ RE-INTRODUCE 21st CENTURY FEDERAL WRITERS’ PROJECT
WASHINGTON – Today, Congressman Ted W. Lieu (D-Los Angeles County) and Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-NM) introduced the 21st Century Federal Writers’ Project Act, legislation to create a new grant program administered by the U.S. Department of Labor to hire America’s unemployed and underemployed journalists and writers to document the American experience. Between late 2019 and May 2022, more than 360 newspapers closed and the country is on track to lose more than one-third of its total newspapers by 2025. Inspired by the 1935 Federal Writers' Project of the New Deal Era, the 21st Century Federal Writers' Project Act will help address loss of information due to the closures of local newspapers and the mass unemployment of writers across America. It will also create a nationally administered and searchable repository that archives the stories of America's history and the experiences of our time.
“I’m honored to re-introduce the 21st Century Federal Writers’ Project in the 118th Congress,” said Rep. Lieu. “If enacted, our bill will revive the New Deal era’s Federal Writers’ Project by creating a new program to hire America’s unemployed and underemployed writers. The original Federal Writers’ Project resulted in trailblazing literary works that informed and inspired the American public. These works, ranging from the American Guide Series to the Slave Narrative Project, helped bring vibrance and storytelling to our accounting of American history. We’re looking to renew the Federal Writers’ Project to ensure stories from our modern life are recorded for posterity, especially given that we’ve just endured a once-in-a-century pandemic that changed our world. Our bill will also lift up writers and journalists, many of whom have been laid off or lost their jobs in recent years due to the pandemic and America’s changing media landscape. I’m grateful to Representative Leger Fernandez for partnering with me on this bill to ensure the stories of today don’t go untold.”
“Reporters, writers, and poets have always been an important part of our communities. We rely on them to inform us and open our eyes to the realities of the world around us,” said Rep. Leger Fernandez. “We saw their impact during the pandemic, and we continue to see it every day. I am proud to co-lead the 21st Century Federal Writers' Project alongside Representative Ted Lieu to help our storytellers inspire new generations of listeners and readers.”
Background:
Congressman Lieu introduced the 21st Century Federal Writers Project Act in the 117th and 118th Congresses. In addition to introducing the bill, in the 117th Congress, Rep. Lieu advocated for increased funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to support work to document the current American experience, which the NEH received through the Omnibus package. Congressman Lieu is currently advocating for increased funding for NEH throughout the appropriations process in the 118th Congress.
The 21st Century Federal Writers’ Project is supported by:
David Kipen, Founder of the Libros Schmibros Nonprofit Lending Library, former NEA Director of Literature
“Had it not been for the Federal Writers’ Project, the suicide rate would have been much higher,’ said one award-winning novelist nurtured by the original program. We assume he meant his fellow writers, but don’t underestimate the uplifting effect of the Project’s bestselling state guidebooks on a citizenry as divided and lonely then as ours is now. These ‘American Guides’ delighted a nation and nurtured an entire generation of great writing. Today's updated FWP will promote reading and the humanities, preserve our elders' endangered stories and, at long last, help reintroduce America to itself."
Colleen Jaurretche, UCLA Department of English and co-founder and director of the Libros Schmibros Lending Library
“The sharing of stories is as old as we are, and quintessentially human. Even our memories are not seamless affairs but narratives that we’ve somehow cobbled together from discrete moments of experience in order to make life a coherent whole. Our hunger for authenticity has never been greater, nor has the danger of misunderstanding one another. This new FWP will be a much-needed listening project for a distrustful, weary nation. A project that truly aims to hear actual people’s voices."
Mary Rasenberger, CEO, The Authors Guild
“In an era where emerging writers face unprecedented challenges, the Authors Guild is proud to endorse the new Federal Writers Project bill. The original Federal Writers Project, during the New Deal era, bore witness to the creation of phenomenal works, offering a vivid record of a time of deep transition in America. These works stand as testament to the value of investing in our writers, encapsulating the heart and soul of a nation in flux. With the decline of over 2,000 local newspapers and a staggering 60% decrease in newsroom staff over the last 15 years, there is a pressing need to chronicle the American experience, especially at the local level. Given the economic challenges writers face today, where even full-time authors grapple with declining, modest earnings—with median earnings of just over $20,000 a year—and talented young writers find it increasingly difficult to launch careers, providing employment for the record-keepers of our time is paramount. With the rise of generative AI, the authentic narratives of human voices are more essential than ever. This legislation would offer grants to aid unemployed and underemployed writers and artists to document contemporary American realities, ensuring our nation's cultural and historical legacy thrives for the generations to come. We are grateful to Representatives Ted Lieu and Teresa Leger Fernandez for introducing it.”
Richard Powers, National Book Award and Pulitzer-winning novelist
"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.”
Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran and Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times
"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."
Dagoberto Gilb, author of The Magic of Blood and Woodcuts of Women
"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."
George Saunders, MacArthur-winning novelist and short-story writer
"This is a brilliant idea. The new Federal Writer's 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."
Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things To Me and Hope in the Dark
“The United States’ most precious and overlooked resource is stories, the stories of all the people who live far beyond the spotlight, rural people, indigenous people, elderly people who hold memories of the past that will soon vanish...The idea of sending waves of writers out to connect to these stories and maybe preserve them, as the oral historians of the Federal Writers Program did, is gorgeous and would save innumerable stories from vanishing for good, the stories of who we really are."
Douglas Brinkley, historian
“John Steinbeck called the WPA guides created by the first Federal Writers' Project 'the most comprehensive account of the United States' ever written. Intrigued by his promotion of those relics as a boy, I asked my local librarian to let me study them. I was hooked. In time, I've come to own nearly 200 of the volumes. A new Federal Writers' Project could document American life of our time and this pandemic for future generations, and invest in a shared history and needed skills for our union. I heartily support Representative Lieu’s legislation to make a new Writers' Project a reality.”
Ruth Dickey, Executive Director, National Book Foundation
"I wholeheartedly support the creation and funding of a New Federal Writers' Project so that today's writers can follow in the footsteps of luminaries like Zora Neale Hurston, John Cheever, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison and Saul Bellow, all of whom were employed by the original Writers' Project. Now is the perfect time to build on the legacy of the FWP and preserve stories of individuals and communities in these historic times. This investment in writers and in the collection of stories is an investment in our civic society and shared humanity, and will benefit not only the writers and those whose stories are preserved, but will benefit us all, as well as generations of readers to come."
Susan D. Anderson, poet, historian, and curator at the California African American Museum
“I wholeheartedly support Congressmember Ted Lieu’s bill to establish a 21st Century Federal Writers Project. The original project was an incubator for African American literary talent, writers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction employed to document African American history and culture across many regions. Through the project, the great gifts of Sterling Brown, Zora Neale Hurston, Margaret Walker, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Claude McKay, Dorothy West and others were honed. Now, more than ever, we need a revitalized effort that supports Black voices and weaves them into the rich multiplicity of our national literature.”
William Ames, the Emerson Collective
“In the 1930s, with our country battling the Great Depression, the Federal Writers Project put emerging writers to work capturing American life. Their oral histories, essays, and stories would inspire present and future American storytellers, from John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley to Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad. Today, Representative Lieu's bill will give our country another opportunity to empower a new generation of writers. I sincerely hope Congress jumps at this chance to protect the voices of America's present and future."
Paula M. Krebs, Executive Director, Modern Language Association
“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 looking to study the impact of COVID-19 on American culture and history.”
Marie Arana, former Literary Director of the Library of Congress, and prizewinning author of American Chica, Bolívar: American Liberator, and the forthcoming LatinoLand
"The Federal Writers Project was historic in its 20th century iteration, providing real jobs, pulling writers out of poverty, and encouraging extraordinary American talent that we might never have known otherwise. Imagine a world without Ralph Ellison, Eudora Welty, Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Zora Neale Hurston, or Richard Wright. A similar project promises to be even more historic in the present century, recording sea changes in the nation's character--in its groundbreaking science as well its national well-being and, not least, in the very fabric of society itself. It also promises to enlist fresh, new American talent in the bargain! I hope you will join me in wholehearted support of Representative Ted Lieu's 21st Century Federal Writers Project."
Matthew-Lee Erlbach, Co-Founder Arts Workers United / Be An Arts Hero
"We stand, together, at an unprecedented moment, as a nation and as a people. Representative Ted Lieu understands this urgency and the critical role the American Writer plays in helping us understand our complex American character: of who we are, where we are, and maybe most importantly: why we are. And much like the original Federal Writers Project championed the work of great American writers Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, John Cheever, and Studs Terkel, among others, the 21st Century Federal Writers’ Project makes an historic investment in today’s writers who will help define us and this era for generations to come. It is not only our great responsibility but our civic duty to invest in the American Writer, who not only lights the flame of our shared humanity but ignites an economic engine worth nearly $919 billion dollars, across all 435 congressional districts. The pen is in your hand and it is time to a write a new chapter for this nation."
Suzanne Nossel, CEO, PEN America
"PEN America is proud to endorse The 21st-Century Federal Writers' Project Act as a significant step in sustaining and uplifting the transformative work of writers in America. We believe in the profound impact of the creative arts in uncovering untold stories and documenting the richness in the diversity of our experiences, especially as we face enduring global challenges and threats to the freedom of expression. Not only will the program impact how we process and preserve the weight of the past, but it will serve as a critical guide in navigating the present and an important investment in the future generations of writers and readers."
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