For Immediate ReleaseJuly 16, 2009
Contact: Susan Coleman
Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
145 Ednam Drive Charlottesville, VA 22903
PH: 434-982-2983 FAX: 434-296-4714
Email: spcoleman@virgnia.edu
http://www.virginiafoundation.org/bookcenter
For Immediate Release
July 16, 2009
Contact: Susan Coleman
Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
145 Ednam Drive Charlottesville, VA 22903
PH: 434-982-2983 FAX: 434-296-4714
Email: spcoleman@virgnia.edu
http://www.virginiafoundation.org/bookcenter
The Virginia Center for the Book, a program of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, announced today it has been awarded its 4th Big Read grant. Beginning in September, Virginians across the state are encouraged to read and discuss Ernest J. Gaines’s modern classic A Lesson Before Dying.
The National Endowment for the Arts awarded grants to 269 organizations nationwide to host Big Read celebrations next fall and spring. The “Big Read in Virginia” is the only Big Read program that is a statewide program lasting nine months.
Free Reader’s Guides, Audio Guides, and Teacher’s Guides will be available from the Virginia Foundation beginning in September. Organizations, libararies, schools, and book groups are invited to participate. To find out more, visit virginiafoundation.org/bookcenter or contact Susan Coleman at spcoleman@virginia.edu or 434-982-2983.
A Lesson Before Dying is set in the late 1940s in a rural Cajun town with residents living under Jim Crow laws and culture. Two men, one a prisoner and the other a teacher bound together by community and family, make a journey of self realization, human dignity, and redemption.
In addition, the Center encourages younger readers to learn more about African-American history in Virginia during a similar time period by reading Students on Strike: Jim Crow, Civil Rights, Brown and Me by John A Stokes. Mr. Stokes was a student at the Robert Russa Moton School in Prince Edward County and was a litigant in the historic Brown v Board of Education court case.
The Virginia Center for the Book is also home to the Virginia Festival of the Book, an annual event held each March in Charlottesville; the Virginia Arts of the Book Center; and the Virginia Literary Calendar. More information can be found at virginiafoundation.org/bookcenter.
The NEA presents The Big Read in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with Arts Midwest. Support for The Big Read is provided by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. It is designed to revitalize the role of literary reading in American popular culture. Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, a 2004 NEA report, identified a critical decline in reading for pleasure among American adults. The Big Read aims to address this issue directly by providing citizens with the opportunity to read and discuss a single book within their communities.
The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, based in Charlottesville, is a statewide non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the humanities, and to using the humanities to address issues of broad public concern.
In all of its programs, the Foundation works to make scholarship accessible; to promote understanding and discussion of enduring and contemporary issues; and to broaden the range of educational opportunities available to all Virginians.