A six-figure grant has rescued UNC from the black list.
James Moeser, chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, announced his decision to invest a $200,000 grant from unrestricted private funds to support the North Carolina Literary Festival in a letter written Dec. 14 to President Richard Brodhead and the chancellors of North Carolina State University and North Carolina Central University.
The biennial festival, founded in 1998, rotates between UNC, NCCU, N.C. State and Duke as hosting schools. The next festival, which was originally scheduled for the spring of 2008 at UNC and is now set for the spring of 2009, was in danger of being discontinued due to a lack of funding.
"It was very good news," said Judith Panitch, director of library communications at UNC. "We are very grateful for this, and we are very excited. You never know when someone is going to step up and allow for something like this to happen."
Deborah Jakubs, the Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway university librarian and vice provost for library affairs at Duke, said the negative public outcry following news that the festival would be cancelled most likely had a large impact on the chancellor's decision to provide the funding.
"I'm very heartened to know that the university administration at the UNC system felt that they wanted to respond to the concern that they had seen in the community about what happens if the festival dies," she said. "Everyone kind of rallied. For us, in the library world, it's a wonderful thing. I'm pleasantly surprised but not really surprised, because I knew the festival had a lot of support in the community."
The festival has been praised for featuring both national and local writers. In his letter, Moeser described the festival as "an outstanding showcase for the area's important literary heritage."
When Duke hosted the event in 2006-calling it the North Carolina Festival of the Book-it drew big-name authors such as Tom Wolfe, Barbara Kingsolver and Pat Conroy and cost the University $280,000. Panitch admitted that additional funding will be needed for UNC to pull off a similar feat in 2009.
"We are in the beginning of the planning process," Panitch said. "Our very first step will be to hire a festival director. We know we have some additional fundraising to do as well as the work of actually scheduling the event, contacting the participants and deciding exactly what the theme is we want."
Anna Dahlstein, director of external relations for the NCSU libraries, said she was delighted about the news and noted the importance of this step in furthering collaborations between the Triangle university libraries.
"Now that Chapel Hill has been able to secure that [grant] from the chancellor we're very excited and looking forward to that and looking forward to continue cooperation," she said.
All four institutions will be counted on to aid in additional funding and planning for the 2009 event.
"I know that UNC is very committed to putting on a very excellent festival, and we'll be collaborating with them as well," Jakubs said. "I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more about it as it gets developed."
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