From: neile@stein.u.washington.edu (Neile Graham)
Subject: Government funding of the arts
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 18:43:44 GMT

Sorry to come into this thread so late, but I, like everyone else, want to
add my $0.02.  

I write poetry and fantasy novels, and I work as a volunteer for several
literary projects.  I write a lot of grants for myself and for these
projects.  

I've received two small personal grants to write my poetry--one from the
Canada Council (I'm a Canadian now living in the U.S. :( ) and one from
Artist Trust of Washington State (which gets some of its funding from the
NEA).  So, yes, the taxpayers of both the U.S. and Canada have paid for me
to write poetry.  Not only that, but the taxpayers of Canada paid for my
publisher to publish my book and I'm hoping they'll pay for another but
that's beside the point. 

Part of the point is that you've never heard of me, and the people on the
grants committees had never heard of me, but they liked my work enough to
buy me some time to do a better job of it.  I'm not Sylvia Plath or Emily
Dickinson, but without subsidized journals and book publishers, you will
*never* hear of me and even if I were Sylvia Plath or Emily Dickinson
chances are that in today's market you would *still* never hear of me.  

I would still write as much as I could without subsidized writing time,
but that's not all these granting agencies do.  Getting that time was one
of the best things that ever happened to me as a writer, but perhaps that
is well beside the point. 

The NEA also paid for a grant I wrote to bring writers-in-residence to the
small creative writing school I went to--a place that could produce large
audiences but not the money to get the writers there.  Having those
writers read their writing and talk about their writing was one of the
most valuable experiences for the young writers and readers there.

One of the projects I've been writing grants for recently is to publish a
series of anthologies of poetry from Seattle and Seattle's 19 sister
cities, which range around the world.  We've raised enough money through
personal connections and through asking businesses related to the cities
involved to pay for the publication of the book, but even with that and
even if we sell out our printing it will only cover the costs of printing
the next in the series.  We apply for money from various sources to pay
contributors and translators who thus far have been doing the work for
love of the project. 

Some of you might think that none of this is "deserved" and if the work
involved couldn't survive in the marketplace (none of it could) that the
government still shouldn't pay for it.  Aunt Mildred has said she doesn't
mind paying for it, but Uncle Joe would rather his money went to the
defense marching bands (which get as much money in the U.S. as the NEA
does).  That's fine--for whatever difference it makes Aunt Mildred pays
Uncle Joe's share of the arts funding and Uncle Joe pays her share of the
marching bands.  For the small amount of money that's involved it works
out pretty well. 

Personally I think there are a lot of things that go beyond the
marketplace.  The sister city anthologies are just one example--the
project is creating a series of networks around there world where writers
are talking to each other and sharing their work.  The real next Sylvia
Plath or Emily Dickinson has her book published by a press that gets an
NEA grant to do it, so that it even exists in the world to be discovered
later by critics and People of Distinguished Taste (TM). 

Government support of the arts isn't perfect, but the small amount of
money involved goes a long way to giving artists the opportunity to be
seen at all.  The granting process isn't perfect, but agencies do their
best to select a variety of juries and the juries do their best to pick
what they consider the best and most important work--and the juries always
change so what they might choose changes.  It provides an opportunity for
the artistic process not to be guided by the lowest common
denominator--what can be sold to the largest amount of people, which is,
IMHO, the best thing grant agencies do--and whenever I read a great book
from a small press I thank the whole country for it.  

That work deserves to exist.  It's fine that the government pays for it. 
Better them than corporations deciding what the only literature
available will be and that all literature published will be entirely for
profit.  We know what terrific things we'd all have to read then. :P

--
neile@u.washington.edu
Newsgroups: misc.writing