Our Story

Genaro Padilla

Chair Emeritus, English Department; Vice Chancellor Emeritus, UC Berkeley

Is New Literary Project a nonprofit and is my donation tax-deductible?

Yes, yowza, and big-time yes indeed, so thank you for considering, Ms. MacKenzie Scott, Mr. Warren Buffet, or whoever you may be. (No goods or services will be exchanged for your monetary contribution. Consult your tax advisor.)

New Literary Project, a privately funded 501(c)3 corporation, humbly appreciates the trust of generous individuals, as well as altruistic family foundations and corporate donors who subscribe to our vision and sustain our multifaceted programs.

Who or what is a Simpsonista?

Be advised: Once you cross paths with a Simpsonista, you may never be the same. For the truth is, a Simpsonista is an extraordinary creature, variously at home in the city or in the wild, from Brooklyn to LA, Chicago to Seattle, DC to Portland, Austin to Berkeley. Step lightly when approaching. They can be discovered in solitary contemplation or in teeming community, it all depends. You can identify a Simpsonista by its distinctive though invisible markings and plumage, its alternately plaintive and jubilant nocturnal cries, which echo resonantly through streets and forests, sometimes lingering long into the day. A Simpsonista is a storyteller and a teacher, a novelist and/or a short story writer, a passionate defender of artistic freedom, a visionary and a reliable worker, a risk-taker and a loyal friend, a courageous encourager of leaps toward literature as well as literacy, an avid reader and a dedicated writer, a student and a professor, a librarian and a high school teacher, a publisher and an editor. You know what? If you love a great story, you yourself just may be a budding Simpsonista.

How can I win the Joyce Carol Oates Prize?

As somebody once asked on a New York street: “Hey, Mack, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?” Same answer here: practice, practice, practice.

Seriously?

Okay, this is an annual prize for mid-career authors of fiction, and through 2022 we have awarded six such prizes of $50,000. For us that means an author who has published at least two notable novels and/or books of short stories, and has yet to receive capstone recognition, such as a Pulitzer, a National Book Award, or a MacArthur—but their day will definitely come. In the summer we announce a process for nomination, information that circulates nationally. There are many emerging writer prizes (some cranky person might even say enough already) and there are the establishment big dog prizes. Put it this way: The Joyce Carol Oates Prize goes yearly to an emerged and still emerging writer.

How is the University of California, Berkeley involved in the New Literary Project?

The English Department has been, from the first, a marquee partner, leading writing workshops, hosting events, participating in the prize jury, and helping in countless other, institutionally indispensable ways. We are beyond fortunate to be partnering with unquestionably the leading English Department in the world.

I went to Stanford, and I’m just curious. Is everybody with the New Literary Project required to say Go Bears all the time?

(Again, as a public service: no open-mic comic nights.) That’s a nice little university you got there, be a shame something should happen to it. But did we mention that the Berkeley English Department is the greatest in the world, as has been the case for generations? And that Berkeley is the greatest public university in the world? (For the record, though, some of our JCO Prize Winners were Stegner Fellows at Stanford, and another one of them is a psychiatrist at Stanford Medical School. So Go Bears yourself.)

Why is it called the Joyce Carol Oates Prize?

The Joyce Carol Oates Prize is named in honor of the iconic author, and our colleague, Joyce Carol Oates. For two years Joyce served as Simpson Project Writer-in-Residence at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center, as well as a leading member of the Project Committee. In this way, the Project gratefully acknowledges her inspiring lifelong impact as a teacher and writer without peer, someone who shares wholeheartedly our most deeply held commitments to literature and literacy, and a writer beloved for generations by legions of students, writers, and readers around the country and the world. It’s hard not to love and admire her and her work, that’s the main reason.

Hey, what happened to the Simpson Literary Project? You and Homer break up?

(Exhibit A: Why we don’t host open-mic comedy night.) No, nothing like that. Sharon and (the late) Barclay Simpson have been practically forever exemplars of generosity in California, for children, artists, social justice, and especially for the University of California, Berkeley. In the largest sense, we took to heart their example, and we wished to honor them for inspiring us: hence that was our name at the founding. The marvelous Sharon helped us take flight and she will always be a dear friend, and she and other members of the Simpson family have consistently stepped up over time, providing deep support of all types as well as friendship. We will always be grateful. We still hope to keep alive the Simpson name, through Simpson Fellowships in the Berkeley English Department and through our annual anthology of Project-related artists’ writing, Simpsonistas. But to everything there is a season. It’s a new day, with new challenges, new opportunities, and hence a new name: New Literary Project.

Are you open to adding new New Literary Project Writing Workshops?

Yes, indeed. Get in touch. We’re always interested in new opportunities to serve underserved kids in path breaking contexts and in innovative ways.  

Is New Literary Project a literacy project?

This is a great question. Technically speaking, no, not exactly. But the thing is: A crucial democratic principle animates the New Literary Project. Literature creates community and inspires literacy. We are all storytellers. We tell our tales all the time, however reflexively and casually. When younger writers are supported and encouraged and taught well, storytelling leads to literacy.

Do you have a mantra?

Yes, and it evolves all the time. “Write your heart out,” as Joyce Carol Oates says, is a great one to live by. As is “Storytellers and teachers are essential personnel.” As is “Storytelling builds a literate, democratic society.”

How and when did New Literary Project come into existence?

As with all complex human endeavors and origin myths, it happened gradually, then suddenly (to quote Hemingway). Ready? Here goes the short version. On Wednesday, June 10, 2015, a fundraising event for the Berkeley English Department took place at a home in Lafayette, California, the event masterfully organized by Professor Don McQuade, Vice Chancellor Emeritus, and featuring English Department faculty. Only that day, for drought-ravaged California, an amazing thing occurred: it rained all day long. In June! When it hardly ever rains even during the good years! Great news, right? Yes, of course, except for how the expansive gathering was supposed to be situated outside between the pool and the gazebo. But then a little miracle: washed-clean skies dramatically cleared late in the afternoon and it became a warm, balmy evening. For the program, Genaro Padilla, the then-incoming chair of the English Department, made some of his typically generous, witty remarks, followed by Bob Hass, who read some of his US poet laureate poems. Then dinner was deliciously catered by Prima Ristorante, the first of what would turn out to be many occasions for them and the Project. And so…and so…well, people began to talk, to engage each other, to imagine new ways for the University of California to reach out into the community. The Lafayette Library and Learning Center was conspicuously there, too, represented by the radiant Library Manager Vickie Sciacca, along with the equally incandescent Sharon Simpson.

Behold. There was chemistry. That’s what happens at the best parties. In time, beginning that night, we started to dream of creating a new thing—we didn’t know what, but we knew there was need, and we began to meet over dinner and elsewhere. Many, many, many meetings ensued; thousands of emails and phone calls took place. Over the course of the next fifteen months we forged a plan to create this Project: an annual major national literary prize of $50,000; writing workshops taught at no cost to fledgling underserved writers, led by English Department creative writers; the Lafayette Library and Learning Center would kindly be our partner and fiscal sponsor for the near future, which is indispensable for a nonprofit; a Writer-in-Residence at the Lafayette Library, who would be Joyce Carol Oates; an annual anthology distributed nationally by an independent publishing house, Simpsonistas: Tales from the Simpson Literary Project, which would include work by the prize winners and finalists, along with many distinguished authors and others affiliated with the Project, including—especially—the younger writers from the workshops. After Vol 1 of Simpsonistas appeared, the CEO of Girls Inc.-Alameda County, the impressive Julayne Virgil phoned us to cry out in joy, “My girls are published in the same book with Joyce Carol Oates!” So that’s the very, very short version of how and when the Project was born. And thus it is that to this day it keeps being reborn.