Looking to increase support for literary magazine publishing, the literature program of the National Endowment for the Arts released details of a $350,000 grant to establish the Literary Journal Institute, whose task will be to help strengthen operations and enhance revenue production of literary journals.
The Literary Journal Institute will be staffed and administered by the Council for Literary Magazines and Presses. CLMP's executive director, Celia O'Donnell, called LJI a "pilot project to see what's the most effective way to help small magazines." She noted that "our most revered writers and p ts -- Sharon Olds, Richard Ford, Philip Roth -- first published and continue to publish in literary magazines." NEA funding for journals has dropped from 43 grants in 1993 to two in 1996, she said; the LJI will hold four workshops for literary magazines over the next year that will focus on "increasing their revenues or their donations and on saving money." They expect to attract more than 800 publications. The first workshop will be held in Atlanta, Feb. 5-7, 1999.
Cliff Becker, acting head of the literature program, told PW that "this is a onetime effort specifically to help magazines, which have been the hardest hit by loss of federal funding. If the program grows, we'd love to be able to transfer the know-how to helping independent book publishing."
