Three Iowa organizations have received National Endowment for the Arts “Big Read” grants this year to spark community discussions about a piece of well-known American literature.
The Carroll Public Library’s Foundation matched the $20,000 federal grant, is providing free copies of “The Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe” and the library is hosting events during the month of October. Wendy Johnson, director of the Carroll Public Library, said the National Endowment for the Arts gave libraries a list of books to choose from and they chose the collection of Poe’s work partly because of the proximity to Halloween. “It is exciting to people of different generations. Older people can read Edgar Allen Poe. Younger people read Edgar Allen Poe (and) everybody in the middle. It’s kind of spooky season in October, so that kind of fits in well.”
Poe’s best known work is “The Raven” — a poem that was first published in 1845. “Edgar Allen Poe was a poet. He has some really cool poems,” Johnson said. “He was also kind of one of the first people to do mystery stories in the mystery genre.”
Poe also wrote some of the earliest works of what’s now considered science fiction, including a story about a man who flew to the moon. There’s a reception at the Carroll Public Library tonight, giving visitors access to an exhibit about Poe’s works and the library will be hosting more than a dozen “Listen and Discuss” sessions on Poe’s individual stories and poems over the next few weeks. The library is passing out a punch card that people can use to earn points for prizes. “So if you go to a certain number of events you earn a free t-shirt, like an “NEA ‘Big Read’ in Carroll’ t-shirt that’s very cool,” Johnson said. “There might be some prizes at other events that you might fall into a little bit there.”
The Marion Public Library Foundation got a $10,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant and kicked off programming on September 12 that’s centered around “1776” by David McCullough, a work of non-fiction that chronicles the first year of the American Revolution. The third NEA grant in Iowa, of $10,000, went to Conservation Creations in Jewell, where they’re holding a community kick-off on Monday to distribute reading journals and free copies of “The House on Mango Street.”
