Program/Grant: NEA Big Read

Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum will partner with local and regional partners to offer diverse programming for audiences of all ages inspired by The Cold Millions. In collaboration with author Jess Walter we will center multiple reading, writing and learning activities on the topics of history, landscape, industry, and the importance of storytelling within our society.

The Iowa City NEA Big Read is the premier program associated with the University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art’s exhibition on the Black Midwest, funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art. Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” together with the exhibition, brings the Iowa City community together to explore narratives of recovery, reproduction, and creation as they pertain to the Black Midwest.

A partnership with the MOJA Arts Festival and Charleston County Public Library, Charleston's NEA Big Read will use "Their Eyes Were Watching God" as a cultural touchstone and literary point of departure to consider and explore the African-American experience in the South through a variety of overlapping perspectives and artistic interpretations.

Youth Activism Project will be reading Fahrenheit 451 for Big Read 2025. We will examine the theme, Where We Live, and the aspect, Alternate Realities, in the context of questions like: What would our community be like if we had fought censorship more effectively in our past? What could our community become if we resist censorship that currently exists and censorship which may come in the future?

Massanutten Regional Library (MRL) will bring our community of 160,000 in the City of Harrisonburg, Rockingham County, and Page County together to celebrate the themes of cultural identity, family and place, belonging, and more through a 2025 Big Read focused on Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing. Previous Big Read successes in 2007, 2008, 2009, & 2010 have our community asking us to reignite this program.

Taos Center for the Arts, Society of the Muse of the Southwest, and Taos Public Library present readings, workshops, film screenings and a community art project devised across arts, culture, and agriculture groups to center the cultures, traditions, histories, and languages of northern New Mexico and to gather around the question: how do we take care of each other in these times?

Each winter, Fishtrap brings our local community together to read a work of American literature, providing free books and resources to schools, libraries, and community centers in rural Wallowa and Union counties. In recent years the program has involved 25% of the county population through a mix of discussion groups, films, lectures, in-school curriculum, performances, and exhibits.

Sandy Spring Museum will collaborate with Montgomery County Public Libraries, Olive Branch Community Church, MoCo Underground Writer’s Showcase, and other partners to present public programming using the novel Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi as a cornerstone. This programming will provide opportunities for the public to connect with local Black history and the work of regional BIPOC scholars and creators.

The Lewis & Clark Library and partners are exploring the theme of Where We Live alongside the book “Cold Millions” by Jess Walter with lectures, performances, writing workshops and conversations. We will learn about Montana’s labor history and women activists, the Indigenous experience of marginalization, as well as the power of storytelling in our own lives.

The Quincy Public Library, through a series of diverse programs, will lead the community on a physical and internal exploration of the natural world that focuses on where we live. Along the way, community members will discover the power of reconnecting and being in harmony with nature, and the positive impact the connections will bring.