The Georgia Review has been approved for a $ 10,000 Grants for Arts Projects award to support a special issue titled SoPoCo, for “Southern Post-Colonial,” celebrating the voices, history and cultures of diasporic communities that have established themselves in the American Southeast since the late 20th century.
The Georgia Review’s project is among 1,073 projects across America totaling nearly $25 million that were selected during this first round of fiscal year 2021 funding in the Grants for Arts Projects funding category.
“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support this project from The Georgia Review,” said Arts Endowment Acting Chairman Ann Eilers. “The Georgia Review is among the arts organizations across the country that have demonstrated creativity, excellence and resilience during this very challenging year.”
“We are thrilled to have the support of the NEA,” editor Gerald Maa said, “especially because this project is about how local details matter to national conversations, and vice versa.”
SoPoCo will be published in spring 2022. This project will demonstrate, on the one hand, that the vibrancy of current Southern culture cannot be fully appreciated without recognizing the critical contributions of the immigrant communities therein, and, on the other, that diasporic communities of the American Southeast have essential qualities that differ significantly from their more recognized sibling communities in coastal urban centers.
There will be a number of special components, including a cookbook as well as a dossier on the immigrant oral history project currently in the works at the University of Georgia’s Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The project also includes an Emerging Writer Fellowship Program, funded by The Georgia Review, in partnership with the nonprofit artist residency program AIR Serenbe. There will be an open contest for emerging writers from diasporic communities of the American Southeast. The winners will receive a one-month stay at AIR Serenbe and give a reading in Athens.
The Georgia Review, an award-winning quarterly literary journal, was founded at the University of Georgia in 1947. Visit www.thegeorgiareview.com or call 706-542-3481 to learn more. For more information on projects included in the Arts Endowment grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.