Call to Action: Giving Defunded Publishers a Boost

According to Publishers Weekly, “On May 2 the National Endowment for the Arts terminated or rescinded grants already awarded in the 2025 fiscal year to a number of cultural institutions, including several nonprofit publishers and literary organizations. That same day, the Trump administration proposed eliminating the NEA, its sister agency the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Library and Museum Services from the national budget for the next fiscal year.

Grantees across the country received an email on Friday from the NEA stating that their awards had been terminated effective May 31. According to this crowdsourced list, publishers whose NEA grants were terminated include Alice James Books, Aunt Lute Books, BOA Editions, the Center for the Art of Translation, Deep Vellum, Four Way Books, Hub City Writers Project, Open Letter Books, Milkweed Editions, Nightboat Books, Red Hen Press, and Transit Books as well as such literary magazines as Electric Literature, McSweeney’s, n+1, the Paris Review, and Zyzzyva.”

LET’S TAKE ACTION! We can give these publishers a boost and purchase their titles by visiting a local bookstore or purchasing via Bookshop.org or Libro.fm. We’ve selected a few titles that we know will be impacted, and made them available in our WRITEABILITY Bookshop.org storefront here.

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