Humanities of Montana wins Pulitzer support

The Pulitzer Prize Board announced the award of $45,000 to Humanities Montana for a year of programming in celebration of Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry.

The award is part of a commemoration of the 100^th anniversary of the Prizes in 2016 through Pulitzer’s Campfires Initiative.

Throughout 2016 Humanities Montana will partner with a dozen Montana organizations to create over 70 events that celebrate great American poetry. Two large-scale readings and discussions featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning poets will bookend the year, but many of the planned events will involve children and young adults, and rural communities.

“Working with partners throughout the state, Humanities Montana will bring Montanans together to learn and reflect on moving, important poetry. What a wonderful gift to the state as the Pulitzer Prize Board celebrates its 100^th birthday,” said Ken Egan, Humanities Montana’s executive director.

Humanities Montana will be partnering with a large number of organizations to provide programming across the state, including Arts Without Boundaries, the Missoula Writing Collaborative, Big Sky Writers, Reflections West, Montana Public Radio, the High Plains Book Festival, the Montana Book Festival, The University of Montana, and Montana State University-Billings.

About the Campfires Initiative

To prepare for the centennial, the Pulitzer Prize Board announced the Campfires Initiative, which aims to ignite broad engagement with the journalistic, literary, and artistic values the Prizes represent. To inspire year-long programming throughout the country, the board partnered with the Federation of State Humanities Councils on the initiative.  After a review of grant proposals, the Pulitzer Prize Board awarded more than $1.5 million to forty-six state humanities councils.

The programs will feature Pulitzer Prize-winning work in journalism, arts and letters, and music. The goal of the board and the Federation of State Humanities Council is to engage American communities in discussion about the values these disciplines represent.  “We look forward to bringing the centennial to life next year with a diverse array of council programming that reconnects Americans with the nation’s amazing cultural production of the last 100 years,” said Esther Mackintosh, president of the Federation of State Humanities Councils.

The Federation and the Pulitzer Prize Board, which is headquartered at Columbia University, developed this initiative together.  It is supported by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the Pulitzer Prize Board.

To learn more about the Federation of State Humanities Councils, please visit www.statehumanities.org.

To learn more about the Pulitzer Prizes Campfires Initiative, please see their March 2015 announcement.

Humanities Montana is the state’s independent nonprofit state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Since 1972, Humanities Montana has provided services and grants to hundreds of Montana organizations in support of public programs in history, literature, values, and public issues. Among its many programs are its grants, Montana Conversations and Speakers in the Schools, Hometown Humanities, Letters About Literature, and the Governor’s Humanities Awards.