Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. With us now, Dr. Elizabeth Alexander, President of the Mellon Foundation, mostly to talk about their new $50 million initiative called the Literary Arts Fund. Why a literary arts fund? Well, the people at Mellon say literature, poetry, prose, creative nonfiction, other hybrid literary forms are the least funded artistic discipline. Now, this comes in the context of fewer Americans reading literature and what the foundation calls a risk to America's creative and cultural health. They cite a recent study that found reading for pleasure has declined by 40% in this country, 40% over the last 20 or so years.

Let's talk about literature, how it gets financed, and the place of reading for pleasure in our changing attention society. We'll also touch briefly on another Mellon initiative called the Jazz Legacies Fellowship. Elizabeth Alexander describes herself on X, in addition to president of the Mellon Foundation, as a poet, scholar, educator, author of The Trayvon Generation and The Light of the World, and co-worker in the kingdom of culture. Dr. Alexander, always good to have you on the show. Welcome back to WNYC.

Dr. Elizabeth Alexander: Brian, I'm so happy to be with you. It's great to be here. Thanks.

Brian Lehrer: Co-worker in the kingdom of culture. What do you visualize with that phrase?

Dr. Elizabeth Alexander: That is a quote from the great Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois. As you know, he was someone who was an incredible polymath. I mean, he was a scholar, he was an educator, he was a writer, he was an organizer, he built cultural institutions, he was a publisher, he was an editor, and he was one of our great theorists of Americanness. I think that in that description of himself, co-worker in the kingdom of culture, culture gets to be a kingdom because the majesty and the power and the beauty and the specialness of what culture offers us is a space where he and I feel honored to stand.

Coworker, I like the everydayness of that, that this is work that is work, and that, certainly speaking for myself, I labor to contribute to every single day as someone who writes, but now in this period of my work, as someone who is really proud to have the opportunity to support others who are giving us the culture by which we all live.

Brian Lehrer: I did not know that Du Bois quote, so I'm glad you brought it to our attention. We'll talk about your grantmaking, of course. Let's spend a few minutes first on the cultural backdrop for this. I'll read here from the article in The Guardian you sent us about reading for pleasure being down by 40%.

It says, "Researchers at the University of Florida and University College London found that between 2003 and 2023, daily reading, for reasons other than work and study, fell by about 3% each year. The number saw a peak in 2004, with 28% of people qualifying," I guess, meaning reading daily for pleasure, "before falling to 16% in 2023." That's the 40% drop. "The data was taken," it says, "for more than 236,000 Americans who participated in the American Time Use Survey. The study was published in the journal Science." It says, "The definition of reading in the survey wasn't limited to books. It also included magazines and newspapers in print, electronic, or audio form."

Dr. Alexander, that's a pretty broad definition of reading that even includes audiobooks. Why does this decline concern you? If people are doing other things by choice for pleasure, who might be getting hurt?

Dr. Elizabeth Alexander: Well, I think that the things that are to be found in books, I mean, just to sketch out the range, there's information to be found in books. Well, we can find information in a lot of different ways. I think a benefit of information that's found in books is that it's gone through a process of verification. We can trust it in a different way as the truth if it's been through an editorial process, if it's had many sets of eyes on it.

That's to the information concern, but to the transport that happens when we lose ourselves in reading, the way in which reading enables us, by design, to step into the experience in an immersive way of someone else, and that someone else might be in a different place, might be in a different time, and certainly is a different soul, even if we might be reading something by someone who has demographic similarities to us.

The profundity of that exchange, the way in which language, in its most artful form, enables us to come inside to another experience, and also, quite simply, gives us the beauty and power of the music that great language makes. I do believe that that is a primal thing. I think we never stop wanting rhythm, we never stop wanting pattern, we never stop wanting transcendence to shift in some kind of way to feel or think differently than we did before we entered the book. All of those things are what great literature gives us. That is something that I wish for everyone, and as much of it as possible. I think it's very, very important to our connected humanity.

Brian Lehrer: The article on the decline in reading for pleasure also noted that, "While all groups saw a decline in reading for pleasure, there were bigger drops among certain groups, such as Black Americans, people with lower incomes or education levels, and those in rural areas." Why do you think it would sort that way? Are those inequities among the reasons you launched this funding stream?

Dr. Elizabeth Alexander: Well, I think to the why of it, we're also talking about time and leisure time and even the sense that it is okay to take leisure time, to lose yourself, to disappear for a short while, from the day-to-day of your responsibilities. The payoff may not be obvious. I think that, again, what it makes of us, how it enriches us, how it stretches us, how it broadens us, is something that I wish for everyone to not only have the literal time to do, but also to feel they can take the time to do in the space of so many other demanding presses in order to survive.

The decline in reading is it did not catalyze this fund. This fund was catalyzed by several things. One, by a fundamental belief aside from declines or increases in the importance and power of literature. I'll say more about that, but I've kind of laid out those reasons. Another, and certainly just in our work at Mellon, we're always thinking about who has been underserved and what fields have been underserved by philanthropy. To find that, of all the arts, that the literary arts only get 1.9% of the funding. We knew that, with our partners, we could make a difference with a big vision to say this is how we really want to make a difference in this field.

Brian Lehrer: Now, listeners, any questions, comments, or stories for Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation, mostly related to their new Literary Arts Fund? 212-433-WNYC. Are you reading less for pleasure than you used to, as the study we've been discussing is measured as a national trend? If so, why? 212-433-WNYC.

Social media is a response, but not a wholly sufficient response. We'll probably get to that. Anything else you want to say or ask about this, or its impact, or how to address it, or if you're just a fan of Elizabeth Alexander's own writing, her book The Trayvon Generation, the poem she read at President Obama's first inauguration, her memoir, or anything else? Anything you always wanted to ask Elizabeth Alexander but never had her over for dinner is okay, too.

Dr. Elizabeth Alexander: [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can call, or you can text. Some listeners may be wondering why funding literature belongs in the philanthropy or grantmaking sector. Like, don't writers pitch book ideas or other literary ideas to publishers, and the ones they think can attract an audience get published? Because, unlike some other art forms, there is a commercial industry for this. For example, I looked this up today, getting ready to talk to you. Publishers Weekly cited a stat this summer that people bought more than 340 million books just in the first half of this year. Why philanthropy for literature?

Dr. Elizabeth Alexander: Well, I'm really glad you asked that because I think that it's important to understand that there is the world of commercial publishing and then there is the nonprofit world of publishing. Commercial publishing brings us many, many wonderful books, and sometimes brings us literary work, so books that are there because of the writer's skill and voice and style and not as the main purpose being delivering information. If you imagine a nutrition book or a diet book, those are books, too, that commercial publishing serves. We're not talking about those.

In the not-for-profit literary world, so, for example, all of the small presses where most literary fiction, most poetry, most translation is published, the other aspects of the literary world that help writers, if they are not published by commercial presses, get their work to readers. The writers' festivals, the writers' retreats, the literary organizations that do so much to serve readers. That's what we're looking to in philanthropy, not what happens in the commercial sphere, because the logic of the commercial is also that it has to make money. Sometimes, any book can make money, and that's fine. That is what makes a book purchased in the first place.

There are a lot of voices and a lot of genres and a lot of kinds of writing. Poetry is usually not going to be a big commercial hit. That's why you see so much poetry in the not-for-profit space. That space is a space that is sorely in need of funding.

Brian Lehrer: We're kind of familiar around here with the difference between commercial versus not-for-profit content. [chuckles]

Dr. Elizabeth Alexander: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: You go. Dominic in Riverdale, you're on WNYC with Elizabeth Alexander. Hello.

Dominic: Hi, Brian. Hi, Ms. Alexander. As I was telling the screener, I teach at CUNY. I teach composition and creative writing. My own reading for what used to be pleasure, I was an MFA major at City College, and reading for pleasure no longer happened. It was work, hard work. I think I still read a lot, but I'm reading off a damn screen into which I'm talking now. I think people are reading a lot more, but they're scanning. We knew this back in like 2008 with that wonderful article, Is Google Making Us Stupid?, where our brains interact with the information in a different way.

When I'm reading out of a book, it's a totally different world. I think I agree that people don't have the time because most workers are working. I also know, when I'm sitting on the subway, and I'm reading out of my paper book, that a lot of people are staring at their screens. They are reading, or they're watching films. I think that's wonderful.

I do want to sincerely thank you for keeping the flame going. I, too, have been published in the not-for-profit world, and I've made absolutely no money off of it. I'm proud to say that I don't write to make money, thank goodness. That's why I teach. I really appreciate this segment, and I hope we can get more people to read out of paper books. It might save humanity. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Dominic, thank you very much. Anything you want to say in reaction to that?

Dr. Elizabeth Alexander: Yes. Dominic, thank you. There are a number of things I think that are important in there. I hope that some of those people who are looking at their phones on the train, in fact, I know that some of them are reading poems, are reading other kinds of things. I mention poems because, oh, well, I'm a poet and I understand, well, there was always some other job to support the poetry. The reward of the poetry, the profound reward, the reward of a lifetime, is when you know that what you have offered and crafted and pulled up from within is reaching and touching someone else and perhaps even being of use to them. I do feel that that is the best reward of all.

What's interesting is, there was a study by the Academy of American Poets, where they noted that poetry reading actually sometimes goes up at certain times, and that, actually, they were able to measure, because of how much poetry is available online, people who clicked on poems like Langston Hughes's Let America Be America Again after election time.

I do think that I want to put poetry to the side a little bit of the are people reading more or less conversation to point out that some of our great poets, I think of Wanda Coleman, I think of Lucille Clifton, have talked about writing poems while waiting online. I believe that was Wanda Coleman who talked about when you're poor, you wait online. That is the space in which I make poems. Lucille Clifton talking about having six children and that the poems get written in between the spaces of this kid is sick at the kitchen table, and this kid is demanding that. "Why do you think my poems are so short?" said Lucille Clifton.

My point is that I do want to note that I think poems can fit in the cracks of lives that are sometimes pressured. I want us to remember that about their magic.

Brian Lehrer: Here is maybe a little counterpoint to bring in a musical term to what you're talking about from Kevin in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC with Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation. Hi, Kevin.

Kevin: Hey, you guys. How's it going?

Dr. Elizabeth Alexander: Hi.

Kevin: We develop neural games. How you doing? Hey. We develop neural games, and our perspective is that language is collapsing. An aphasia tells us this. If you read Ev Fedorenko's work at MIT, you'll see that language is kind of an arbitrary experience. It's not a real thing. It doesn't give us accurate, correlational, specific information. Our problem is, we probably have to replace language. Sorry, I just took a cup of coffee. I think our problem if we don't replace language is it eventually vanishes; it disappears.

Brian Lehrer: Replace it with what?

Kevin: We don't know. Something new.

Dr. Elizabeth Alexander: I think, friend in Brooklyn, I'm going to disagree with you on that one, because I would like to believe-- I mean, I do think that we need to constantly practice our use of language with each other. We need to constantly hone our language. That language is a living thing, that it's a developing thing. I also think that perhaps language is a thing that we can't erase, and so that the question then is how do we keep ourselves immersed in it, and how do we continue to hone it so that we can be more and more understood by each other, even as we recognize the power of language to surprise us and startle us and take us outside of ourselves?

Brian Lehrer: Kevin, thank you for raising the question, though. Interesting texts coming in along a similar thread to each other. One says, "I actually came back to reading for pleasure over this past year. Not exactly sure why, but the desire has come back, so much so that I use my local library." Another one says, "I am reading more than ever because hearing and watching the news is just too much to deal with. I also belong to a book club. I totally agree that reading takes you into another world, so maybe it's making a comeback anyway, as people get sick of the digital world being almost the only place that we consume words."

Sarah in Ditmas Park is calling in who works, I think, for a not-for-profit publisher. Sarah, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Sarah: Hi. Yes, I work for a nonprofit publisher, and I have a lot of young interns that I try to educate every semester about what nonprofit publishing is and why it exists. I explained to them the difference between Big Five publishing, nonprofit publishing, the fact that you can be a totally unsupported nonprofit publisher, like a small poetry publisher, or Yale University Press could be considered a nonprofit publisher. I often explain that two years in a row, the Nobel Prize went to Annie Arnault from France and Jon Fosse from Norway.

Both of them had been published in the US for about 20 years in translation, which only makes up about 2%, 3% of the US market. They had never been published by Big Five publishers. They had only been published by nonprofit publishers. After winning the Nobel, they're still only published by nonprofit publishers. They've never been supported by big publishers. Those are Nobel laureates after and before winning prizes, saying that they're the best in literature for 20 years straight. Who is the last American that won a Nobel Prize? It was Bob Dylan. He's not supported by American publishers either.

We say that we work at a literary nonprofit to publish books because readers deserve it, not because they make a lot of money, and not because they find a lot of support sometimes. Readers deserve to have access to the best literature. There are amazing American writers out there. They're just not supported sometimes. I was at the National Book Awards last week. Everybody who won, everybody who was there for the medal ceremonies, like poetry, that entire category is made up of two publishers, one of which is a tiny nonprofit publisher. All the poetry, the best poets in the entire country, are being published by two places. That's all you can pick from to that prized category.

Brian Lehrer: Sarah, let me, for time, end it there and get a quick response from Dr. Alexander. She's singing your song, I think.

Dr. Elizabeth Alexander: I was just going to say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. That is exactly right. That is exactly why we thought that this fund was important. I think that also if you're going to be in any kind of commercial space, then what you make has to be marketed. Again, there's nothing wrong with that. I think that what's paradoxical is poems and complicated literature, beautiful literature, is about human contradiction. It is about human complexity. Sometimes that can be difficult to market in a quick way that earns back the advance. That's another reason, just to amplify everything that you said. Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for your call. Now, I see from the press release, tell me if I'm getting it right, that your grants will go to nonprofit publishers, but also festivals and organizations that nurture creative writers. That list does not include writers themselves. We have a text here from a listener who asks, and I'm sure you anticipated this since you wanted to come on the show and talk about a new stream of grant funding. Listener writes, "Can individuals apply for grants to research and write a book, fiction or nonfiction? If so, how and what's the criteria?"

Dr. Elizabeth Alexander: We are simply because of the scale. This is a $50 million initiative done with Ford, MacArthur, Lannan, Hawthornden Poetry Foundation, and other philanthropies. We won't be looking at person-by-person grant applications, but the organizations that we fund, once resourced, will be the places where folks will go to get their work supported in various ways.

Brian Lehrer: On the return of reading, a little funny text that just came in, "Report from the field." The person writes, "A stylish young man just swaggered by, reading a book as he walked."

[laughter]

Dr. Elizabeth Alexander: We love that.

Brian Lehrer: There are others like that. The other two that I read, people talking about coming back to reading or the next generation, to some degree, coming back to reading. Before you go, I know you also want to mention Mellon's Jazz Legacies grantmaking program as well. Who are you funding and what are your goals with that?

Dr. Elizabeth Alexander: Well, we are really, really excited. Earlier in the year, we announced a $35 million initiative that is aimed at supporting the cultural preservation of our great American art form, jazz. We're championing the legacy of artists who have created this art form, who keep this art form alive. We're supporting jazz scholarship and other kinds of organizations who are making sure that we don't lose this legacy.

That particular fund got resources to a group of veteran jazz musicians who have contributed to this art form their whole lives. We were really proud to hold them up as exemplars of this art form. When I look at these two initiatives together, the literary arts and the jazz initiative, we're listening for the American sound. Who are we in music and in words? How is that necessary to our understanding each other, to our thriving, to our power, to our beauty, to our moving through hard times? That is what literature and that is what jazz helps us do. If you look at these two together, that the American sound is what we want to preserve and protect, and support for everybody.

Brian Lehrer: It's interesting that you call it the American sound, because as a jazz lover myself, which you know I am, we've talked about this before.

Dr. Elizabeth Alexander: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: It sometimes seems to me these days that jazz is flourishing more outside the United States than here, where it originated. I've been discovering younger jazz artists in recent years, like Jesus Molina, pianist from Colombia, Matteo Mancuso, a guitarist from Italy. Got to see him in New Jersey this year when he came to the States for the first time. Hiromi, the amazing jazz piano virtuoso from Japan. I'm just curious if you have an impression if jazz is actually flourishing more outside the United States than inside.

Dr. Elizabeth Alexander: Well, I don't know if it's flourishing more. I think, though, that it is a unique and dynamic and supersonic art form that has called others in all around the globe. I think that to the kind of legacy and scholarship and history and archives and cultural institutions aspect of this, the tent is large, but understanding the US roots of this art form, as it is grounded, as we know so well in our history, is where the thinking starts.

Brian Lehrer: Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation, always great to talk to you. Thank you so much for coming on today. Good luck with the fund.

Dr. Elizabeth Alexander: Thank you, thank you, thank you. So great to be with you. Happy Thanksgiving to all.

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