AWM Holds NEH-Funded 'Charrettes'

Great ideas emerge when you gather leading minds together in one room and brainstorm ideas for the AWM. With funding support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Writers Museum Foundation hosted brainstorming sessions, or charrettes, in Chicago recently. Invited participants were literary, museum and design experts from around the country. The all-day sessions focused on the future of the museum, possible exhibit ideas, and the overall experience for visitors to the American Writers Museum. There was no shortage of creative ideas about how the museum could enlighten, entertain, and inspire readers and writers of all ages. A common denominator is the concept of the museum reflecting the range of emotions, surprise, humor, and inspiration that is integral to writing and reading. Additional charrettes are planned.The ideas generated from these lively forums will be used in developing a conceptual plan for the museum.

Chicago Literary Advisory Council Is Formed

AWM Elects Three New Board Members

The AWM Foundation has elected three additional members to its newly formed Board of Directors: Jerre Stead, CEO and Chairman of IHS, Inc; John Estey, President & CEO, S&C Electric Company; and J.D. Bindenagel, Vice President for Community, Government and International Affairs, DePaul University. For bios of all members of the AWM Board of Directors, click here  

AWM to Help Establish Association of Author Homes and Museums

The AWM Foundation is spearheading an effort with directors of authors' homes and museums throughout the U.S. to create a national association. Regis Delmontagne, a member of AWM's executive planning team, says the new group will be wholly independent and he sees the museum as simply a facilitator to creating the means by which these sometimes isolated directors throughout the country can come together to share marketing strategies; use their collective buying power for services; share peer-to-peer advice about everything from membership drives to community relations and legislative issues; aggregate web resources; discuss the latest trends in exhibit technology; and perhaps meet face-to-face for educational forums or regional conferences. To become involved, contact Regis Delmontagne at delmontagne@americanwritersmuseum.org. Read more here.   

AWM Sponsors Panel at Pages and Places Book Festival

National Book Award nominee Aleksandar Hemon, author of The Lazurus Project, and Teju Cole, street photographer, art historian and author of Open City, participated in an authors' panel sponsored by the AWM Foundation at the recent Pages and Places Book Festival in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Noreen Tomassi, Executive Director at The Center for Fiction and a member of the AWM Foundation's National Advisory Council moderated. The Festival was celebrating its fourth year, along with the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the influential work by Scranton-born urban theorist Jane Jacobs. 

Spotlight on an AWM Friend: The Newberry Library

The Newberry Library was founded in 1887 as a provision in the will of Chicago-based businessman Walter Newberry. In 1892, the Newberry was officially incorporated by Illinois state law. Today, the library's evolving collections include more than 1.5 million books, 5 million manuscript pages, and 500,000 historic maps. The Newberry's core collections feature research and reference materials from the medieval period to the 20th century, including manuscripts by American writers Tennessee Williams, Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, Ben Hecht, and many others. David Spadafora, President and Librarian of The Newberry, is a scholar of seventeenth to mid-nineteenth century European thought. Daniel Greene, Vice President for Research and Academic Programs, serves on the AWM Foundation's Chicago Literary Advisory Council. To learn more about the Newberry and its holdings, visit www.newberry.org/.

Ellen S. Dunlap Joins AWM Foundation's National Advisory Council

The AWM Foundation welcomes Ellen S. Dunlap, the newest member of our National Advisory Council. Dunlap has been President of the American Antiquarian Society, a national research library of American history in Worcester, MA since 1992. Previously she was director of the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia and research librarian at the Humanities Research Center (now the Harry Ransom Center) at the University of Texas at Austin. 

Strategic Communications Firm, Res Publica Group is Newest AWM Pro Bono Partner 

AWM Name-the-Author Contest

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