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| Friends of American Writers | |
|---|---|
| Name | Friends of American Writers |
| Founded | 1943 |
| Headquarters | Chicago, Illinois |
| Focus | Support for American literature, writers, and literary scholarship |
Friends of American Writers is a Chicago-based literary organization founded in 1943 to promote American literature, support writers, and foster public appreciation for literary arts. The group has connected authors, critics, librarians, publishers, and educators through readings, prizes, and archival work, engaging with institutions, cultural venues, and civic life in the United States. Over decades it has intersected with major literary movements and figures, contributing to the careers of emerging and established writers and partnering with universities, libraries, and arts organizations.
The origins of the group lie amid mid-20th-century cultural networks in Chicago, where civic leaders, bibliophiles, and literary advocates organized similar initiatives during the New Deal era and World War II. Early activity occurred alongside programs associated with the Works Progress Administration, the Chicago Public Library, and regional book clubs that emerged during the 1930s and 1940s. Founders drew inspiration from national antecedents such as the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Poetry Society of America, and the Authors Guild while collaborating with local entities including the Newberry Library, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the Chicago Historical Society. During the postwar decades the organization engaged with award programs like the National Book Award and institutions such as the Library of Congress, and figures from the Beat Generation to postwar modernists appeared at events alongside critics from The New Yorker and The New York Times.
Governance follows a volunteer board model common to nonprofit cultural organizations, with officers, committees, and advisory councils mirroring structures at institutions such as the MacArthur Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and municipal arts commissions. Committees coordinate programming with partners including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Poetry Foundation, and the Chicago Humanities Festival. Administrative functions have interfaced with university presses such as the University of Chicago Press and academic departments at Northwestern, Columbia University, and Harvard University. The group’s legal and fiscal arrangements have been shaped by nonprofit statutes in Illinois and federal tax law, and oversight practices have paralleled those of the American Library Association and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The organization stages readings, panel discussions, book launches, and lecture series featuring authors from diverse schools and movements such as modernism, realism, Southern literature, and contemporary poetry. Events frequently take place in venues like the Newberry Library, the Schubert Club, the Poetry Center, and college auditoria at institutions including DePaul University and Loyola University Chicago. Programming has involved collaborations with publishing houses such as Knopf, Random House, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and university presses, and has featured book reviewers and columnists from The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, The Nation, and The New York Review of Books. Special initiatives have linked to festivals like the Chicago Humanities Festival and regional prizes administered by organizations including PEN America and the National Book Critics Circle.
Membership historically included bibliophiles, librarians, publishers, critics, and writers from Chicago and beyond. Notable affiliated figures have included novelists, poets, essayists, and dramatists who participated in events or received support, placing the organization in proximity to luminaries associated with the Harlem Renaissance, the Lost Generation, and later generations such as confessional poets and postmodern novelists. Individuals from literary circles connected to Ernest Hemingway, T. S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Saul Bellow, James Baldwin, Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, John Steinbeck, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Eudora Welty, Pablo Neruda, W. H. Auden, E. E. Cummings, Maya Angelou, Adrienne Rich, Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Ray Bradbury, Arthur Miller, Truman Capote, Harper Lee, Ralph Ellison, Dorothy Parker, Wallace Stevens, John Updike, Maxine Hong Kingston, Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut, Anne Rice, Nora Ephron, Carl Sandburg, James Joyce, Henry Miller, Rod McKuen, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, Susan Sontag, Michael Ondaatje, Salman Rushdie, Octavia Butler, Louise Erdrich, Alice Walker, Jorie Graham, Anna Quindlen, David Mamet, Saul Bellow, Ira Levin, T. C. Boyle, Edward Albee, Anne Bradstreet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Carson McCullers, Daisy Goodwin, Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, Eileen Myles—among many others—have intersected with the group’s activities through readings, judging panels, or archival donations.
The organization has administered prizes and small grants to emerging writers, often coordinated with academic departments and libraries. These awards have operated in the ecosystem of American literary honors alongside the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the MacArthur Fellowships, and the PEN/Hemingway Award; recipients have used grants to complete manuscripts and attend residencies such as Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Millay Colony. Financial support has at times been underwritten by philanthropic entities with histories tied to the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and local benefactors.
Public-facing publications have included newsletters, event programs, and occasional anthologies of prizewinning work, produced in partnership with university presses and cultural institutions. Archival records, correspondence, and program ephemera have been deposited with repositories like the Newberry Library, the Harold Washington Library Center, the University of Chicago Special Collections, and regional historical societies, providing resources for scholars connected to the Modern Language Association, the American Comparative Literature Association, and literary historians studying networks around magazines such as The Dial, Poetry, Partisan Review, and The Sewanee Review.
Category:Literary societies Category:Organizations based in Chicago