Although Jim Sitter's advocacy work, networking with the rich and powerful in support of literature, has directly affected many Americans, his name is not often bandied about in book publishing circles beyond the small nonprofit literary world. And that's just the way he likes it.
“I don't want to do PR. I just want to get the job done. I want to win,” Sitter insists of his lobbying for literature, which began 25 years ago in the Twin Cities, where he launched the Minnesota Center for Book Arts in 1984. Sitter, who at the time owned a company that distributed titles for 235 small literary presses, was galvanized when For Colored Girls Who've Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf, originally published by Shameless Hussy Press, was adapted for the stage by a local playwright, pulling in thousands of dollars in support from foundations. “I knew the publisher was seeing zero. I was distributing the book, and I wasn't getting anything. That puzzled me: why a text can be supported by the philanthropic community on a stage, but not on the shelf,” Sitter recalls.
After spearheading the drive that turned the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area into a vibrant hub of literary activity, Sitter moved to Manhattan in 1989, where he rescued the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses from near-bankruptcy. While at CLMP, Sitter, along with Elliot Figman, created LitNet, a coalition of some 20 literary nonprofits across the country as well as literary presses like Dalkey Archive and Graywolf Press and organizations like the Academy of American Poets and the Association of Writing Programs that “look out for literature's interests” with decision makers. Sitter left CLMP in 1997 to return to Minneapolis, and today he shuttles between his base in downtown Minneapolis and Washington, D.C., advocating for literature at the national level as head of LitNet.
“If it's a good year,” Sitter explains, LitNet works to increase NEA appropriations. Other years, LitNet fights to protect appropriations while ensuring that no content restrictions “or other rules that are bad for the arts, bad for literature, bad for writers” pass Congress. “We're working with the NEA staff, working with Congress, with the White House on occasion, spending a lot of time with the other arts groups,” Sitter explains.
While Sitter revels in the combination of an arts-friendly president and Democratic control of Congress, the past year for him has been “amazingly interesting, fascinating and very busy,” due to the downturn in the economy. “The situation in Washington has gotten much more complicated,” he says, although compared with the threats to the NEA's very existence in the mid-'90s, it's still “more stabilized” than in previous years. Besides earmarking $50 million for the arts in the economic stimulus bill, the Obama administration suggested a $6 million increase for the NEA in its first budget proposal sent to Congress, which the House proposes upping, to $15 million. A conference committee will meet after Labor Day to work out the differences in the House and Senate bills.
“We've got very strong continuing support for the NEA in the House,” Sitter explains. “They're really taking a leadership role in getting the NEA budget back up from the $99 million it was cut down to during the [Newt] Gingrich years,” when it was slashed by 40%.
During that period, a consensus emerged within the arts advocacy community to protect arts organizations rather than defend individual artist fellowships. “We thought that was both bad politics and bad policy,” Sitter says, so LitNet struck a deal with Gingrich resulting in $1.2 million annually going to emerging writers. “It was a lot of fun, though it was nerve-wracking,” Sitter admits, particularly when trying to do a deal with Gingrich in 1995 at BEA in Chicago, while publishers and booksellers protested the Speaker's presence there. “Gingrich doesn't remember my name, but he remembers me,” Sitter notes. “He still says, 'Aren't you with the writers?' whenever he sees me.”
Implying he may eventually become a writer, too, Sitter mentions being offered a contract to write his memoirs. The publisher wanted to release an edition “appropriate to the market” of 17 copies, Sitter jokes. “Then he heard the story about what happened with Gingrich. He said he'd up it to 5,000.”
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