New Words Winds Ford Foundation Grant

CAMBRIDGE, MA. OCTOBER 24, 2000. "New Words Live" -- the non-profit sister organization of Cambridge's 26 year old feminist bookstore, New Words -- has just been awarded a $75,000 grant from the Ford Foundation. The grant will enable "New Words Live" to undertake a year of analysis aimed at identifying and strengthening the cultural roles that feminist bookstores play in the lives of diverse communities of women. The funding will make possible a strategic re-envisioning of the role of women's bookstores, with the ultimate goal the development of a national model for feminist bookstores.

Since their inception in the 1970's, feminist bookstores have always occupied a distinctive niche at the intersection of culture, arts, politics, and education. They have served important cultural roles: as outlets for new and emerging literary voices, introducing new perspectives on established authors, as spaces in which women find support and information about sometimes controversial and personal topics, as social and networking centers, as sites for political organizing, as safe places where women gather to celebrate shared experiences, as incubators of creativity and as catalysts for social movements.

New Words, founded in 1974, is one of the oldest and largest feminist bookstores in the country, and is currently the only one in the New England region.

Dorothy Allison, the acclaimed author of Bastard Out of Carolina, (among other books), writes about the importance of feminist bookstores: "My life as a writer has largely been made possible by feminist and alternative presses and the feminist and independent

bookstores. The first work I ever published was in a tiny feminist magazine. The first time I ever called myself a writer was when I read my stories in Herstore, a feminist bookstore I helped to found in Tallahassee, Florida. ..Without the bookstores, magazines, and presses that have encouraged and sustained my imagination I would not have known what to do with the stories I wanted to tell.. Feminist and independent bookstores offer a home to the kind of work that shapes and sustains the best of our communities, and they deserve -- need -- our support." Allison is enthusiastic about the Ford Foundation's commitment to addressing this important issue in contemporary cultural life.

"New Words Live" runs the bookstore's cultural-events series, including a Fall and Spring Reading Series which has featured, in recent seasons, authors such as Natalie Angier, Julia Alvarez, Edwidge Danticat, Leslie Feinberg and Barbara Neely. A more recent initiative, a monthly political/cultural performance series called "Cultureshock" is attracting a wider audience for its presentations by addressing the younger community of women who have not experienced the history of the bookstore.

Because of the national prominence of New Words, the "New Words Live" Ford-funded project is envisioned as a national model for reconfiguring the cultural role of feminist bookstores in the face of changing realities in the book-retailing business. New Words is one of the oldest and largest women's bookstores in the United States. It has provided a unique resource for the Boston area women's community since its founding in 1974, and has played a key role in making available written material by and about women to

readers locally, nationally and internationally. After more than two decades, New Words is committed to continuing its mission, to serve a new generation of women readers, and to continue a legacy of safe and open space for all women to explore issues of identity and political and intellectual change.

"New Words Live" Awarded Grant from Ford Foundation to Respond to Challenges of Today's Independent Bookstore Economy