2024 Impact Report
Our mission is to inspire others to write their hearts out—across generations, divisions, and differences. We teach, we engage, we inspire each other through writing. We believe writing has the power to change the world for the better.
New Literary Project (NewLit) drives social change by unleashing artistic power. NewLit instills, generates, and revels in awe. Awe: it’s what the arts generate within us, underscoring and reminding us of what our lives are for. Arts and arts education make for an absolute public good that is awe-inspiring. The world urgently needs artists and writers and teachers.
NewLit supports programs geared towards historically marginalized people. 100% of our workshops are free to participants. Students in our writing workshops live in juvenile facilities or attend schools where an average of 92% of students are eligible for free or reduced lunch.
“My daughter’s life will never be the same.”
NewLit community members, donors, volunteers, advocates, and employees are valued and respected—whatever their gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, age, sexual orientation, identity, economic status, education, or disability.
Page 1 - Impact Report Summary
Page 2 - Impact Report Summary
How we measure our impact
Engagement - Each year NewLit honors a number of creative writers through our awards, fellowships, and workshops. We honor mid-career authors through our annual Joyce Carol Oates Prize, in which we recognize our longlisted authors, finalists, and winners. In addition, we provide awards each year to a group of Jack Hazard Fellows drawn from applicants across the United States; while our Bonetti-Bell and Iris Starn Fellows provide workshops in and around the San Francisco Bay Area to teenage writers, many of whom have never taken a creative writing workshop before.
Outcomes - Beyond just the numbers, we’re struck by literature’s ability to transform lives. Here we’ve gathered some of the stories of our workshop participants, fellows, and award winners. In many cases, these talented writers have gone on to achieve bigger things and launched their careers, and well, we like to believe we may have helped along the way. We provide opportunities for creative writers at every stage of their career. Learn more about our impact through these personal stories.
Broader Impacts
Authors on the Value of NewLit’s Mission and Programs
“To have any chance of success, the American democratic project requires clear seeing, clear thinking, clear expression, otherwise it's doomed. To see reality for what it is, clearly, unflinchingly, and then to articulate that reality in language that fully captures the truth and complexity of a particular aspect of human experience, that's the basis for whatever long-term success we're going to have as a truly democratic country. Just looking at the numbers alone--in fellowships, workshops, classrooms, expenditures, etc.—NewLit's record is extraordinary by any measure.
“It's my sense that thanks to NewLit, a LOT of people are being introduced to the possibilities of literature who might not otherwise have had the opportunity. Which in turn raises another dimension of the democratic project, namely, imagination and possibility. It's the nature of authoritarian or totalitarian regimes to constrict our imaginations, to winnow the realm of possibility down to a very few things that serve to keep the powers that be in power. Whereas a democracy necessarily depends on imagination, both individual and collective. We don't have to be restricted to the present factual. We can keep—we need to keep—imagining more and better, keep expanding the realm of the possible. It's no accident that authoritarian regimes are in the habit of banning and burning books.”
—Ben Fountain, author of Devil Makes Three & Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk; 2024 Joyce Carol Oates Prize Recipient
“For any writer to reach midcareer is a kind of miracle and it is one that happens because of the engagement made possible by readers, librarians, booksellers, teachers, fellow writers, and everyone in the wide circle that is our literature. I am deeply grateful to receive the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and doubly so because I was eleven years between books and without a publisher for a time. My thanks to the many people, near and far, both friends and strangers, who kept encouraging me in my writing so that I could find myself here, stunned and yet elated by this recognition.”
—Manuel Muñoz, author of The Consequences; 2023 Joyce Carol Oates Prize Winner
“My mother was a high school teacher while I was growing up, as well as being a talented painter, but during the school year she was so passionate about teaching that she simply didn't have any time to dedicate to her art. I remember how happy she was when summer came and she finally had the chance to sit down with her oils and easel and canvas and get lost in the art she'd dreamed of making all year long. The Jack Hazard Fellowship is a brilliant way to ensure that our teachers who are also writers have the time and freedom to devote to the art that sustains them.”
—Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies, Florida, & Matrix; 2022 Joyce Carol Oates Prize Winner
“When I think of the people who have supported and encouraged me throughout my writing career, it is perhaps not surprising that so many of them are teachers. This is particularly true of creative writing; now when I think back of those who taught me, I realize that many of them could only have learned the delicate art of balancing innovation and creativity with hard work if they were writers themselves. What a wonderful, creative fellowship this is, rewarding those whose dedication often goes unsung, so that they might enrich not only their own work, but the gifts they pass along.”
—Daniel Mason, author of The Winter Soldier & A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth; 2020 Joyce Carol Oates Prize Recipient
New Literary Project needs your support so that we can continue providing opportunities to writers in all stages of their careers. Join us today in our mission to drive social change, and unleash artistic power.
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