When the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced last month that it would be piloting a national reading initiative, more than $250,000 was doled out in the name of literacy. Ten communities were selected to participate in the program, which is a direct reaction to the organization's 2004 "Reading at Risk" survey that found a steep decline in reading. Hoping to renew interest in reading and literature, the NEA delivered grants from $15,000 to $40,000 to 10 variously sized libraries, literacy foundations and arts organizations around the country.

For some of the recipients, like Fishtrap Inc., the Big Read marks a departure in programming and focus. The 19-year-old Enterprise, Ore.—based nonprofit, which serves as more of a writers' foundation than anything else, is one of the more unlikely groups on the NEA list; it's also the smallest. Serving a community of 7,000, the organization has a staff of three, with only one full-time employee, director Rich Wandschneider. The Big Read is a first for Fishtrap, Wandschneider said, but it fits into the organization's goal of supporting writers and, by extension, promoting serious reading.

Wandschneider, who said that Fishtrap has always focused on "themes and not just books," pointed out that the community's Big Read selection, Fahrenheit 451 (the three other options are The Great Gatsby, Their Eyes Were Watching God and To Kill a Mockingbird), will allow Fishtrap to continue in this vein. With panels on utopias and dystopias planned for the month of February (when the book will be read), Wandschneider is also making a major push to get Ray Bradbury's still-topical book on area schools' reading lists. The hope is also that some local celebrities—from elected state officials to Portland-based screenwriter and radio personality Mike Rich, who penned such films as Finding Forrester and The Rookie—will come to Enterprise to join the public discourse. "We're going to saturate this community with the book, and that's the neat thing," Wandschneider said. "We have 350 high school kids here and over half of them will have read this book in over two months from now."

The Arkansas Center for the Book, which serves the entire state (about 2.6 million people), is one of the larger recipients of the NEA grant money. Working with $25,000 and reading The Great Gatsby, the Big Read is more of a continuation than a departure for the state organization. The NEA grant gives the Arkansas Center for the Book—which has done "One Community, One Book" programs (which the Big Read is modeled after) for about four years—the chance to try a new approach with its literacy initiatives.

According to Jane Thompson, the Center's coordinator, all the organization's previous efforts have focused on books by living Arkansas authors. The programs were pegged to three-day author tours throughout the state, Thompson said. For Gatsby, which will be read during National Library Week, April 2—8, bookmarks, reader guides and radio programs will be sent to libraries, high schools and book clubs. Excerpts from the book introducing each of the five central characters will run in a number of major newspapers. (Simon & Schuster has granted permission for the use of the material.) Thompson hopes The Great Gatsby will allow the state to widen the scope of its book selections. "I think that this will be a turning point for us in terms of future programming," she said. "If [the program] is successful... it would open the door for us to do classics because, up until now, our programs have been 100% dependent on an author."

Harper Perennial publisher Carrie Kania is excited about the NEA initiative. Since Harper publishes two of the selected books, To Kill a Mockingbird and Their Eyes Were Watching God (and also publishes the audio editions of all four titles), the house is offering support in any way it can to all the communities. Thus far posters for the books have been made and are being sent to libraries and bookstores in the 10 areas. "It's fantastic," Kania said of the Big Read. "We've always worked closely with 'One City, One Book' [programs] and this is just taking that idea and expanding it."