Books need all of us

Dear Readers,

This spring, I celebrated four years at the National Book Foundation, and so I’ve been thinking a lot about what can happen in four years. High school. College. A presidency. Four years is long enough to learn a tremendous amount. To go from the bewilderment of finding your locker to the completion of a chapter and a sense of having built a community.

In these four years at the National Book Foundation, we crafted a strategic plan to guide us to our 75^th Anniversary this past November, and—with your help—grew our work in meaningful ways:

• Welcoming 20 new public housing communities to our Book Rich Environments program, 6 of which are in rural and tribal communities and getting almost 1.4 million new, free books into the hands of families in these communities.
• Meeting our goal of reaching all 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico with free events with National Book Award–honored authors and book distributions.
• Launching a new Teacher Fellowship supporting teachers who nurture a joy of reading in their students, focusing on states with the highest levels of book banning.
• Launching Read with NBF and our Summer Reading Adventure to connect readers everywhere with both books and one another.

I hope we can count on you to make an investment in our work today. Your gift—of any amount—enables us to keep reaching readers, and championing books, even as we plan for a challenging future.

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Along the way, I’ve had the tremendous joy of getting to speak with readers in all corners of the country, as well as getting to witness the magic that can happen when readers come together. I have so many special memories of conversations and connections, from Miami to Tucson, Mississippi to Montana.

One of my favorite moments this spring was getting to bring Alicia D. Williams, author of the Young People’s Literature Longlister Mid-Air, to Harlem to speak to students from four different New York City Housing Authority Community Centers during spring break. Students got free copies of her books, and had lots of questions for her, about her life and writing. Alicia shared generously about challenges she experienced as a young person, many of which appear in her books. Because she never had anyone tell her they were proud of her, Alicia said that as an adult, she tried many careers before finally giving herself permission to become a writer. Toward the end of the session, a young man raised his hand, and simply said, “I’m proud of you.”

I’ve thought a lot about that moment, and about how profoundly moving it can be for readers to have a chance to hear writers talk about their process and their work, and also about how support and encouragement are so vital, for writers and readers alike.

Our work at NBF is about building that support and encouragement through championing books and building connections—between people and books, and between readers and writers.

I’m so grateful to get to do this work, in partnership with you, and with all the people who make our work possible—our staff, Board, interns and volunteers, partners across the country, judges and selection committee members, teachers, booksellers, publishers, librarians, writers, and readers. Together, we form a critical network of support for books.

And this is a time when books need us. With cuts to NEA and NEH funding alongside escalating book bans, our literary sector is at risk, and more than ever, we need you to be part of our work standing up for books. Books need all of us.

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At our Science + Literature celebration this spring, our three honored authors, Ramona Ausubel, Claire Wahmanholm, and Ed Yong, had an inspiring conversation about why writing and community matter in this moment, and I’m still thinking about their words, and particularly something Ramona shared about the importance of staying in love with the world. She said, “When you love something, you don’t get to just say, ‘I take the easy, convenient. I want the waterfalls and the monkeys, nothing else please.’ [The world] belongs to all of us and we belong to it, and we’re in this together.” Ramona’s words are a beautiful reminder of why it matters to read, to gather in community, and to support books and writers, all as part of the ways we love the world.

Thank you so much for your partnership and support. Together we will continue to celebrate books, create moments of connection, and bring extraordinary experiences with books and writers to readers of all ages in all corners of the country, experiences that can remind us all to stay in love with the world, and to find the ways we are proud of one another. We’re hard at work now on developing a new strategic plan that will guide our next five years, and I look forward to sharing our plans with you, and to the reading and work ahead.

Yours in books,

 

Ruth Dickey
Executive Director

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Header image photo credit: Vita Hewitt