Our Story
New Literary Project invests in students & teachers, readers & authors, and it inspires and equips writers across the generations to write their hearts out. New Literary Project offers writing workshops free of charge for underserved younger writers; celebrates storytellers and storytelling through a major national award to a mid-career author of fiction (the Joyce Carol Oates Prize); supports creative writers teaching high school to make time to work on their own projects; and makes possible readings, events, and publication in our annual anthology of Project-connected authors, Simpsonistas. (In fact, and please don’t take this in the wrong way, our literary events make for great parties.)
The Project came together in 2015 in partnership with the University of California, Berkeley, English Department, the world’s foremost English Department, in the world’s leading public university, and the Lafayette Library and Learning Center Foundation. Until April 2021 we called ourselves the Simpson Literary Project, to honor the example set by Sharon Simpson and the late Barclay Simpson, legendary pillars of soulful support for education, the arts, and social justice. Our dear friend Sharon actively continues to engage and inspire us.
We acknowledge and fight systemic racism and inequity.
We drive social change by unleashing artistic power in neglected, overlooked, and undervalued communities. Our writers write their hearts out across generations, divisions, differences. Our workshop leaders celebrate the visible and invisible qualities making students who they are. In all these ways, New Literary Project is organically, programmatically, institutionally committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
We welcome every person’s unique perspective and experience.
NewLit community members, donors, volunteers, advocates, and employees are valued and respected—whatever their gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, age, sexual orientation or identity, economic status, education, or disability.
We center diversity, equity, and inclusion practices in our work.
We urge all who value reading, writing, teaching, literature, and literacy to join us and be committed to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Project Board
Diane Del Signore
Executive Director,
New Literary Project
Joseph Di Prisco
Chair, Author & Educator
Shanti Ariker
Chief Legal Officer, JFrog
James Bell
Founder & Chairman, Bell Investment Advisors; Community Leader
Uttara C. Chaudhuri
PhD Candidate, UC Berkeley English. Creative Writing Teacher.
Laura Cogan
Editor and Consultant
Ian Duncan
Interim English Department Chair, UC Berkeley; Florence Green Bixby Professor of English
Eric Falci
English Department Chair & Professor, UC Berkeley
John Murray
Author and Associate Professor (Teaching), University of Southern California
Joyce Carol Oates
(Honorary) Author and Professor of Humanities, Princeton University
Mike Ross
Author, U.S. & International Law School & University Lecturer
Pat Scott
Public Radio and Nonprofit Executive
Frank Starn
Community Leader and Corporate Executive
David Wood
Community Leader and Public High School English Teacher, Northgate High School
Board Emeritus
Genaro Padilla
Chair Emeritus, English Department; Vice Chancellor Emeritus, UC Berkeley
Donald McQuade
English Professor Emeritus; Vice Chancellor Emeritus, UC Berkeley
Beth Needel
Executive Director, Lafayette Library and Learning Center Foundation
Project Team
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Diane Del Signore
Executive Director
-
Tyson Cornell
Publicist & Publicity
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Josephine Courant
Digital Design
-
Hannah Onstad
Communication Director
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Abby Donahue
Project Manager
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Regan McMahon
Project Consultant
Jack Hazard Fellowship Team
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Ian Maloney
Jack Hazard Fellowship Program Director
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William Archilla
2023 Jack Hazard Fellow
Los Angeles, CA -
Victoria María Castells
2023 Jack Hazard Fellow
Miami, FL -
Leticia Del Toro
2023 Jack Hazard Fellow
Moraga, CA -
Elizabeth DiNuzzo
2023 Jack Hazard Fellow
Albany, NY -
t'ai freedom ford
2023 Jack Hazard Fellow
Brooklyn, NY -
Emily Harnett
2023 Jack Hazard Fellow
Haverford, PA -
Jeff Kass
2023 Jack Hazard Fellow
Ann Arbor, MI -
Ariana Kelly
2023 Jack Hazard Fellow
Boston, MA -
Kate McQuade
2023 Jack Hazard Fellow
Andover, MA -
Tyson Morgan
2023 Jack Hazard Fellow
Hilsborough, CA -
Sharon K. Murayama
2023 Jack Hazard Fellow
Honolulu, HI -
Sahar Mustafa
2023 Jack Hazard Fellow
Flossmoor, IL -
Ky-Phong Tran
2023 Jack Hazard Fellow
Long Beach, CA -
Vernon Clifford Wilson
2023 Jack Hazard Fellows
Bronx, NY
Bonetti-Bell Fellowship Team
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Fiona McFarlane
Bonetti-Bell Fellowship Program Director
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Ariel Baker-Gibbs
2024 Bonetti-Bell Fellow
Girls Inc. of Alameda County -
Uttara Chaudhuri
2024 Bonetti-Bell Fellow
Girls Inc. of Alameda County
Previous years: 2020, 2021, 2023 -
Andrew David King
2024 Bonetti-Bell Fellow
Mt. McKinley High School; Contra Costa County Juvenile Hall Previous year: 2023 -
Eric Muscosky
2024 Bonetti-Bell Fellow
Northgate High School
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Camille Santana Considine
2024 Bonetti-Bell Fellow
Albany High School
Starn Fellowship Team
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Chris Feliciano Arnold
Starn Fellowship Program Director
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Camila Elizabet Aguirre Aguilar
2023-24 Starn Fellow
Emery High School
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Courtney Pizan
2024 Starn Fellow
Concord High School
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Allie Silvas
2024 Starn Fellow
Hayward High School
Our Friends & Partners
The Project came together in 2015 in partnership between the University of California, Berkeley, English Department, the world’s foremost English Department, in the world’s leading public university, and altruistic community leaders in the Bay Area. Our networks have since grown tremendously—below is a non-exhaustive list of our community.
Donors
DONORS 2017 - PRESENT
SURREAL
Patti James 📚 ⭐
Simpson PSB Fund:
Sharon Simpson 📚 ⭐
System Property Development Company 📚 ⭐
The Wood Family Foundation 📚 ⭐
EPIC
James Bell 📚 ⭐
Bell Investment Advisors Jen & Mario Di Prisco 📚 ⭐
Lafayette Library & Learning Center 📚
Literary Arts Emergency Fund 📚
Mellon Foundation 📚
Richard Morrison & Marie Seed Lichauco 📚
Lizzie & John Murray 📚 ⭐ Janet & Norman Pease 📚
Ginny & Mike Ross 📚 ⭐
Salesforce Foundation
Carey & Frank Starn 📚 ⭐
Kathy Garrison & David Wood 📚 ⭐
NOVEL
Miner Anderson Family Foundation
Karen & Tom Mulvaney
Joyce Carol Oates 📚 ⭐
Penguin Random House 📚
U.S. Small Business Administration 📚
LYRIC
Shanti & Matthew Ariker 📚 ⭐
Lela & Jim Barnes 📚 ⭐
Tracey Borst & Robert Menicucci 📚 ⭐
Ellen & Joffa Dale 📚 ⭐
Diane Del Signore & Scott Strait 📚 ⭐
Dodge & Cox 📚
Liz & Ralph Long 📚 ⭐
The McBurney Foundation 📚
Katherine & James Moule
Dr. David Nathanson
Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir 📚 Simon & Schuster Virginia Shuler 📚
NOVELLA
Andrea Alfano & Charlie Freiberg 📚
Jim Baldocchi & Carolyn Tawasha 📚 ⭐ Michael Barbee & Lisa Morbidelli 📚 ⭐
Heidi & Josh Bersin 📚 ⭐
Erin Bydalek & Patrick Bengtsson California Shakespeare Theater Carolyn & Greg Call 📚
Peter Chastain 📚
Laura Cogan & Chris Svenson 📚 Natalie Compagni Portis 📚
Kevin Delucchi & Joanne Slaboch 📚 ⭐
Deb Edack 📚 Bob Egan 📚 ⭐
Roberta Emerson Daniel Forman Diane & David Goldsmith
Graywolf Press Janie & Jeff Green 📚 ⭐
Anne & Marshall Grodin
JT Hanley 📚
George Holmes 📚 ⭐
Cynthia James 📚
Doris & George Krevsky Kathy & Anthony Laglia 📚 ⭐
J. Lohr Vineyards Lawrence & Emily Lohr Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Sue & George Miller Carol Olson 📚 ⭐ Genaro & Maria Padilla 📚
Jacinta Pister & Richard Whitmore 📚 ⭐
Christina & Peter Reynolds 📚
Pat Rudebusch Jeannie Simpson 📚 ⭐
Kate Stechschulte
Anna Strait 📚 ⭐ Donna Williams
📚: Multi-year Donors.
⭐: 5x or more Donors.
SHORT STORY
Altrinsic Global Advisors
Alice Benét
Benevity
Amy Berger 📚 ⭐
Kathy Bowles
Alice & Bob Breakstone 📚
Lorne Buchman & Rochelle Shapell 📚
Scott Busby
Patrick Cameron & Thomas Sun Bill & Susan Caplan 📚
Vicky Chong Jill Conner
Anne Cook & Chris Wornum 📚 ⭐
John Couch
Mary Ann Cropper 📚
Cathy Curtis Cindy & Brian Deans Leticia Del Toro & Michael Gasquy
Abby & Todd Donahue 📚
Ian Duncan 📚
Stephen & Cyndy Dustrude Philippa Kelly and Paul Dresher
Dave Egerter & Janna Tom 📚
Andrea Faber Sylvia Fernandez & Paul Ash
Debbie Goldberg 📚
Kara & Gary Gragg
John Gray 📚
Melinda Haldeman
Mary Ann Hoisington 📚
Martha & Eliot Hudson
Audrey Irwin
Blair Jackson & Regan McMahon 📚
Tyson Morgan Father John Kasper 📚
Judy Kelly
Susan LaMay Monya Lane Peter Laufenberg Jill Leukhardt 📚
Maryanne Lonsdale
Sheila & Michael Madary Carla Malden
Rob Malenfant Ian Maloney & Lauren Grandante 📚
Yoni & David Mayeri
Linda Bacon McBurney 📚
Charlotte McCaffrey 📚
Christine McQuade Hsu
Paul Morris
Katharine Ogden Michaels 📚
Frank Munzinger
National Book Foundation
Ethan Nosowsky
Karen Plessinger Peter Sackman
Pat & Sonny Scott 📚
Dagmar Serota
Christina Shih 📚
Kay Simon
Deborah & Michael Sosebee 📚
St. Perpetua Church
A. R. Taylor 📚
Robert Tembeckjian
Maria & Mark Triska Janet & Dave Van Etten 📚 Maureen Vavra Julayne & Clay Virgil
Sarah Williams Hertha Dawn Sweet Wong
Sponsors
Frequently Unasked Questions
Is New Literary Project a nonprofit and is my donation tax-deductible?
Yes, yowza, and big-time yes indeed, so thank you for considering, Ms. MacKenzie Scott, Mr. Warren Buffet, or whoever you may be. (No goods or services will be exchanged for your monetary contribution. Consult your tax advisor.)
New Literary Project, a privately funded 501(c)3 corporation, humbly appreciates the trust of generous individuals, as well as altruistic family foundations and corporate donors who subscribe to our vision and sustain our multifaceted programs.
Who or what is a Simpsonista?
Be advised: Once you cross paths with a Simpsonista, you may never be the same. For the truth is, a Simpsonista is an extraordinary creature, variously at home in the city or in the wild, from Brooklyn to LA, Chicago to Seattle, DC to Portland, Austin to Berkeley. Step lightly when approaching. They can be discovered in solitary contemplation or in teeming community, it all depends. You can identify a Simpsonista by its distinctive though invisible markings and plumage, its alternately plaintive and jubilant nocturnal cries, which echo resonantly through streets and forests, sometimes lingering long into the day. A Simpsonista is a storyteller and a teacher, a novelist and/or a short story writer, a passionate defender of artistic freedom, a visionary and a reliable worker, a risk-taker and a loyal friend, a courageous encourager of leaps toward literature as well as literacy, an avid reader and a dedicated writer, a student and a professor, a librarian and a high school teacher, a publisher and an editor. You know what? If you love a great story, you yourself just may be a budding Simpsonista.
How can I win the Joyce Carol Oates Prize?
As somebody once asked on a New York street: “Hey, Mack, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?” Same answer here: practice, practice, practice.
Seriously?
Okay, this is an annual prize for mid-career authors of fiction, and through 2022 we have awarded six such prizes of $50,000. For us that means an author who has published at least two notable novels and/or books of short stories, and has yet to receive capstone recognition, such as a Pulitzer, a National Book Award, or a MacArthur—but their day will definitely come. In the summer we announce a process for nomination, information that circulates nationally. There are many emerging writer prizes (some cranky person might even say enough already) and there are the establishment big dog prizes. Put it this way: The Joyce Carol Oates Prize goes yearly to an emerged and still emerging writer.
How is the University of California, Berkeley involved in the New Literary Project?
The English Department has been, from the first, a marquee partner, leading writing workshops, hosting events, participating in the prize jury, and helping in countless other, institutionally indispensable ways. We are beyond fortunate to be partnering with unquestionably the leading English Department in the world.
I went to Stanford, and I’m just curious. Is everybody with the New Literary Project required to say Go Bears all the time?
(Again, as a public service: no open-mic comic nights.) That’s a nice little university you got there, be a shame something should happen to it. But did we mention that the Berkeley English Department is the greatest in the world, as has been the case for generations? And that Berkeley is the greatest public university in the world? (For the record, though, some of our JCO Prize Winners were Stegner Fellows at Stanford, and another one of them is a psychiatrist at Stanford Medical School. So Go Bears yourself.)
Why is it called the Joyce Carol Oates Prize?
The Joyce Carol Oates Prize is named in honor of the iconic author, and our colleague, Joyce Carol Oates. For two years Joyce served as Simpson Project Writer-in-Residence at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center, as well as a leading member of the Project Committee. In this way, the Project gratefully acknowledges her inspiring lifelong impact as a teacher and writer without peer, someone who shares wholeheartedly our most deeply held commitments to literature and literacy, and a writer beloved for generations by legions of students, writers, and readers around the country and the world. It’s hard not to love and admire her and her work, that’s the main reason.
Hey, what happened to the Simpson Literary Project? You and Homer break up?
(Exhibit A: Why we don’t host open-mic comedy night.) No, nothing like that. Sharon and (the late) Barclay Simpson have been practically forever exemplars of generosity in California, for children, artists, social justice, and especially for the University of California, Berkeley. In the largest sense, we took to heart their example, and we wished to honor them for inspiring us: hence that was our name at the founding. The marvelous Sharon helped us take flight and she will always be a dear friend, and she and other members of the Simpson family have consistently stepped up over time, providing deep support of all types as well as friendship. We will always be grateful. We still hope to keep alive the Simpson name, through Simpson Fellowships in the Berkeley English Department and through our annual anthology of Project-related artists’ writing, Simpsonistas. But to everything there is a season. It’s a new day, with new challenges, new opportunities, and hence a new name: New Literary Project.
Are you open to adding new New Literary Project Writing Workshops?
Yes, indeed. Get in touch. We’re always interested in new opportunities to serve underserved kids in path breaking contexts and in innovative ways.
Is New Literary Project a literacy project?
This is a great question. Technically speaking, no, not exactly. But the thing is: A crucial democratic principle animates the New Literary Project. Literature creates community and inspires literacy. We are all storytellers. We tell our tales all the time, however reflexively and casually. When younger writers are supported and encouraged and taught well, storytelling leads to literacy.
Do you have a mantra?
Yes, and it evolves all the time. “Write your heart out,” as Joyce Carol Oates says, is a great one to live by. As is “Storytellers and teachers are essential personnel.” As is “Storytelling builds a literate, democratic society.”
How and when did New Literary Project come into existence?
As with all complex human endeavors and origin myths, it happened gradually, then suddenly (to quote Hemingway). Ready? Here goes the short version. On Wednesday, June 10, 2015, a fundraising event for the Berkeley English Department took place at a home in Lafayette, California, the event masterfully organized by Professor Don McQuade, Vice Chancellor Emeritus, and featuring English Department faculty. Only that day, for drought-ravaged California, an amazing thing occurred: it rained all day long. In June! When it hardly ever rains even during the good years! Great news, right? Yes, of course, except for how the expansive gathering was supposed to be situated outside between the pool and the gazebo. But then a little miracle: washed-clean skies dramatically cleared late in the afternoon and it became a warm, balmy evening. For the program, Genaro Padilla, the then-incoming chair of the English Department, made some of his typically generous, witty remarks, followed by Bob Hass, who read some of his US poet laureate poems. Then dinner was deliciously catered by Prima Ristorante, the first of what would turn out to be many occasions for them and the Project. And so…and so…well, people began to talk, to engage each other, to imagine new ways for the University of California to reach out into the community. The Lafayette Library and Learning Center was conspicuously there, too, represented by the radiant Library Manager Vickie Sciacca, along with the equally incandescent Sharon Simpson.
Behold. There was chemistry. That’s what happens at the best parties. In time, beginning that night, we started to dream of creating a new thing—we didn’t know what, but we knew there was need, and we began to meet over dinner and elsewhere. Many, many, many meetings ensued; thousands of emails and phone calls took place. Over the course of the next fifteen months we forged a plan to create this Project: an annual major national literary prize of $50,000; writing workshops taught at no cost to fledgling underserved writers, led by English Department creative writers; the Lafayette Library and Learning Center would kindly be our partner and fiscal sponsor for the near future, which is indispensable for a nonprofit; a Writer-in-Residence at the Lafayette Library, who would be Joyce Carol Oates; an annual anthology distributed nationally by an independent publishing house, Simpsonistas: Tales from the Simpson Literary Project, which would include work by the prize winners and finalists, along with many distinguished authors and others affiliated with the Project, including—especially—the younger writers from the workshops. After Vol 1 of Simpsonistas appeared, the CEO of Girls Inc.-Alameda County, the impressive Julayne Virgil phoned us to cry out in joy, “My girls are published in the same book with Joyce Carol Oates!” So that’s the very, very short version of how and when the Project was born. And thus it is that to this day it keeps being reborn.
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