A Colorado State University center that gives students real-world experience in the publishing industry has received an infusion of funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The grant will allow the Center for Literary Publishing to publish a new title in the Mountain West Poetry Series and two issues of Colorado Review.
The center, based in the Department of English, serves as a kind of publishing lab, employing CSU graduate students as interns and giving them skills in copyediting, typesetting, proofreading and design.
‘Profoundly grateful’
“This NEA funding is crucial to ensuring that the center continues to publish new and innovative books, as well as the journal, and thus offer our student apprentices opportunities to help produce them,” said Stephanie G’Schwind, the center’s director. “All of us at the CLP are profoundly grateful to the NEA for this funding, which helps us engage with writers and readers across a broad spectrum through Colorado Review, as well as celebrate the vibrant and diverse literary community of the Mountain West region through our poetry series.”
The grant will fund the publication of We Remain Traditional, by Arizona poet Sylvia Chan, the latest title in the Mountain West Poetry Series. In this ambitious first book, to be released in February, Chan interrogates a young woman’s childhood abuse, offering thirty-two consolations for the gendered history of Chinese American women—a break with and affirmation of their traditions. It will be available from the University Press of Colorado as well as online book retailers.
Colorado Review
The NEA funding also supports the publication of two issues of Colorado Review, the center’s 62-year-old nationally recognized journal. Published three times a year, it features short fiction, essays, and poetry by writers from across the country and abroad.
The $15,000 grant was one of only 48 Art Works awards given in the NEA’s “Literature” discipline nationally. It was part of $25 million in grants that the NEA announced Feb. 7 in its first major funding announcement of 2018. It is the seventh time the center has received NEA funding, and the first since 2015.
“It is energizing to see the impact that the arts are making throughout the United States,” said NEA Chairman Jane Chu. “These NEA-supported projects, such as this one to the Center for Literary Publishing, are good examples of how the arts build stronger and more vibrant communities, improve well-being, prepare our children to succeed, and increase the quality of our lives.”
About the center
Since the CLP’s founding in 1992, by Professor Emeritus David Milofsky, more than 300 students have interned at the center, helping to publish some 71 issues of Colorado Review and 46 books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.
Art Works is the NEA’s largest funding category and supports projects that focus on the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement with diverse and excellent art, lifelong learning in the arts, and/or the strengthening of communities through the arts. For more information on projects included in the NEA grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.
The Department of English is in CSU’s College of Liberal Arts. More information about the Center for Literary Publishing, including how to donate to the Colorado Review, is available at coloradoreview.colostate.edu.
