Ted Lieu looks to revive Federal Writers’ Project
U.S. Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Los Angeles) and Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-New Mexico) re-introduced the 21st Century Federal Writers’ Project Act on Aug. 24 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.
“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,” Lieu said. “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,” Fernandez said. “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.”
The legislation is supported by many of the country’s leading literary figures, including David Kipen, founder of the Libros Schmibros nonprofit lending library and former National Endowment of the arts 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,” according to Kipen. “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.”
Rebecca Solnit, author of “Men Explain Things to Me” and “Hope in the Dark,” said that stories, especially those of people “who live far beyond the spotlight,” are the United States’ most overlooked resources.
“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.”