Originally published by Publishing Perspectives.
The Amazon Literary Partnership—in the States since 2009 and in the UK since 2019—funds writer- and diversity-supportive programs.
Today’s (July 19) listing of US award recipients of more than US$1 million in overall grants comprises 74 literary nonprofit companies in the United States. The partnership program is designed expressly to offer funding support, as its descriptive text puts it with writers and diversity in the lead: “to empower diverse, marginalized, and underrepresented voices, helping writers to create, publish, learn, teach, experiment, and thrive in 2022 and beyond.”
Included in this year’s list are 10 first-time grant recipient organizations. And for a fourth time, there are two major groups receiving grants of US$140,000 each with which they’ll create sub-grants for “literary organizations supporting poetry groups and literary magazines.” One of these major recipients is the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP), which itself has just announced three prominent publishing players it will honor in November. The other is the Academy of American Poets.
Since the Amazon’s program was begun in 2009—then under the direction of Jon Fine —it has disbursed some $15 million on grants. After Fine’s departure from Amazon, Neal Thompson oversaw the program’s work for several years before Alexandra “Al” Woodworth was named to manage the Amazon Literary Partnership in 2019.
Personable and committed, Woodworth has given Publishing Perspectives her input on the 2022 list of awardees, saying, “ As always, the Amazon Literary Partnership is excited and humbled by the vital work these organizations do on behalf of writers. We believe in supporting not just previous grant recipients, but also new organizations that are pushing boundaries and making an impact in the communities they serve.”
This year’s grant awardees, all told, operate in at least 30 of the 50 American states. The number of new recipients on the list below will be effectively tripled, when the 10 new recipients now on the list are joined by 20 more chosen by those two larger groups, CLMP and the Academy of American Poets.
Woodworth points out that so many organizations have had to “pivot and adjust their programming in light of COVID-19, and it’s inspiring to see how organizations have evolved and become even more focused on the communities they serve. House of Speakeasy’s Book Mobile is a great example of this.”
Paul Morris, the House of Speakeasy executive director, Woodworth says, has told her that its grants in the past four years have allowed the program to give away new books regularly in “book deserts” in parts of New York City and in 18 other cities the program went to in 2019. And during the still-ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Morris said, an increased level of funding from the Amazon program supported the program’s ability to get free books, book bags, and school supplies to students and families hard hit by the virus’ outbreaks.”