Fiction Writers Review » charity

Help give away 1,000,000 books on World Book Night!

Celeste Ng — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:00:13 +0000

If you love a book, then give it away. Isn’t that how the saying goes?

World Book Night launched in the UK in 2011, with thousands of people handing out copies of paperbacks. This year, it’s taking place in the U.S. too, on April 23, with plans to give away a MILLION books for free to “new or light readers.” The list of books includes lots of great titles, including The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Little Bee by Chris Cleave, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Colllins, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, and many more.

Want to get involved? Apply to be a volunteer WBN Giver—the deadline is February 1! You don’t need to buy the books; you just have to explain which book you want to give away, why you love it, and where you plan to give your copies. If you’re chose, you’ll pick up 20 copies of your chosen book at a local bookstore to give away on April 23. Says the event’s website:

Q. Do I have to buy the books?
A. There is no charge for these special, not for resale editions. We’re just looking for enthusiastic readers to help get some books into the hands of new and light readers. Givers will be responsible for any expenses incurred in picking up their carton and distributing the books. We expect that such expenses will be negligible. World Book Night U.S. is supported by American book publishers, the American Booksellers Association, Barnes & Noble, the American Library Association, the Association of American Publishers, and Ingram Book Distributors. Through their generosity, we are able to make the books available free of charge.

To apply or find other ways to get involved, visit the World Book Night website.

Milk + Bookies

Celeste Ng — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:00:28 +0000

In addition to possibly having the best name for a literary charity ever, Milk and Bookies has a worthwhile mission: to bring children books AND to teach children about giving. Says the organization’s site:

At Milk + Bookies^TM events, boys and girls are provided the opportunity to select, purchase and inscribe books that are then donated to their peers who do not have access to books of their own. The fun-filled events feature music, story time and, of course, milk and cookies. [...]

Milk + Bookies^TM combines two essential and worthwhile efforts: literacy promotion and service learning. While the book donations are imperative to our mission, just as important is instilling the seed of giving into each host and their young guests, sparking feelings of importance, self-confidence and the desire to give and give again.

For example, the site offers suggestions on throwing a Milk + Bookies birthday party, in which guests bring a book to donate in lieu of a gift. My son recently had his first birthday, and my husband and I decided that for each subsequent birthday, we’d teach him to give a gift to someone else as part of his celebration. Giving books might be a good way to start!

For more information on Milk + Bookies, watch this video and visit their website:

Further Reading:

Visit our archives to learn about other organizations that bring literature to children, including Reader to Reader and Read This.

Reminder: Dzanc Books Fourth Annual Write-a-Thon Fundraiser Starts Today

Jeremiah Chamberlin — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:30:05 +0000

Each year Dzanc Books hosts a Write-a-Thon to raise money for their charitable endeavors–The Dzanc Prize, the Dzanc Writer-in-Residence Program, Dzanc Day, and numerous other service-oriented endeavors that put writers in communities and classrooms around the country. This year’s Write-a-Thon starts today and runs through Sunday.
Though there’s still time to participate!

Sponsor a Writer

The easiest way to support Dzanc is to sponsor one of the participating authors, a line-up that includes such writers as Laura Van Den Berg, Matt Bell, Eugene Cross, Kellie Wells, and Brian Sousa. Click here for the complete list.

Donate

No donation is too small. And because Dzanc is a 501(c)3 non-profit, your donations are tax-deductible (to the to legal limits applicable). However, Dzanc will also be offering several incentives to individuals who donate, whether via sponsoring a writer or donating directly:

Your choice of one of the following e-books as a “Thank You”: Kamby Bolongo Mean River, Asunder, The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats, Based on a True Story, Temporary People, or The Consequence of Skating. (All of Dzanc eBooks work on Kindle, Nook, PC/Mac, and all other reading devices.)

In addition, anybody donating over $100 will receive a one-year membership in Dzanc’s eBook Club (a $55 value), as a further token of their appreciation.

Everyone who donates will also be entered in a random drawing after the Write-a-Thon is over, with one lucky winner receiving a full run of Dzanc titles, from All Over (2007) through No Near Exit (2011).

Finally, each day Dzanc will also give both the author raising the most funds and the person donating the most money during the 24-hour period (ending at midnight EST) their choice of a free eBook from their catalog.

Participate

It’s not too late to participate yourself! If you’re a writer and would like to participate in the 2011 Write-A-Thon, please let Dan Wickett know and he’ll get your information listed on their website. Write: dan [at] dzancbooks.org.

In addition to the donor rewards, Dzanc is also offering several, targeted donation raising goals for participants:

All writers raising $500 will receive three Dzanc titles of their choice.

All writers raising $1,000 will receive six Dzanc titles of their choice.

The author that raises the most money will receive a full run of Dzanc titles, from All Over (2007) through No Near Exit (2011).

The first five authors to raise $750 will each receive a free membership to the Dzanc Books eBooks Club.

If you have any questions, please feel to email event organizer Dan Wickett: dan [at] dzancbooks.org.

Lit doing good

Celeste Ng — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 13:00:28 +0000

Image credit: Twitter @popongap

It might be made up, but fiction can still do a lot of very practical good in the world Here are three recent examples:

1. Tornado relief: In the wake of the tornadoes that devastated Alabama in April, author Shiloh Walker pledged to make a donation of $1 to United Way for every comment left on her blog post. (Via.)

2. Japan earthquake relief: In collaboration with Japanese editor Motoyuki Shibata, A Public Space has launched Monkey Business: New Voices from Japan, an annual English-language version of Shibata’s Japanese journal Monkey Business. To aid relief efforts for the recent earthquake and tsunami, 25% of all sales will go toward the Nippon Foundation/CANPAN Northeastern Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund. Vist A Public Space’s website to order a copy.

3. Support for homeless teens: More Than Words is a bookstore in Waltham, Massachusetts (in the metro Boston area)—but it’s much more than that. Reports the Boston Globe:

More Than Words is a bookstore filled with stories, but few may be as compelling as the stories of its employees — teenagers whose lives have been turned upside down by addiction, abuse, or neglect, who often end up in foster homes, homeless shelters, or the court system.

The same teenagers run the little Moody Street bookstore, finding stability, support and social services that help them build a resume and rebuild their lives. Hundreds have completed the program, now in its sixth year. Two years after completing the program, 80 percent of teens were involved in some combination of school, whether college courses or a certificate program, and work.

Okay, writers and publishers may not be flush with cash, but they have a history of stepping up to offer what help they can during recent disasters. And let’s not forget one of the most important things authors do to help: perhaps even more powerful than monetary aid, writers can make you understand what it’s like to be in the affected areas—and why it’s crucial to rebuild. Novelist Marie Mutsuki Mockett (whom FWR interviewed in 2010) has been drawing attention to the impact of the Sendai earthquake in the New York Times, in Glamour, and on NPR.

That’s harnessing the power of literature for good—after all, fiction makes you understand what it’s like to be someone else. As novelist Ian McEwan put it, in words that crystallize why FWR loves fiction: “Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality.”

A story with that cardigan?

Lee Thomas — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 13:00:18 +0000

In keeping with the shorter nights of winter, and later retail hours of the holiday season, throughout December Anthropologie will offer Bedtime Stories Reading Hour for kids at locations across the country. Now, I’m normally wary of attempts to lure me into stores – but this hits home. I remember an infamous visit to the department store that ended in a trip to the dentist for my brother when he careened into a clothing rack during a game of chase. Yep, we were those kind of kids. Our mother would have been so grateful for a story hour to keep us entertained, and make holiday outings feel like an adventure.

Anthropologie will combine the story hours with a book drive to benefit the nonprofit Reader to Reader. The store writes:

This holiday season, online customers can donate select storybooks to Reader to Reader, a nonprofit organization dedicated to stocking the bookshelves of our nation’s neediest schools and public libraries.

So bring your story-hungry youngsters, and while you shop for a cardigan for Aunt Ida, help out children in your own community by donating a book.

We also want to hear about book drives and initiatives in your communities, so please let us know what’s going on in Toledo, Texarkana, or Tokyo.

Give a kid your favorite book

Lee Thomas — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 13:00:09 +0000

First, thanks to Jeffrey Rotter for bringing this to FWR’s attention. This Saturday, ReadThis hosts Book Drives for NYC Kids and Teens in three locations around New York. Have a book that changed your life when you were 8? I always think of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful flights of imagination, A Wrinkle In Time gave me the craziest dreams as a kid, and made the woods seem full of mystery and magic. Give that experience to a kid in our community:

What: Book Drives to collect gently used (or new) books for NYC kids in need

When: Saturday, December 4, 2010

How: Scan your shelves for books your kids no longer need, or buy a copy of your favorite book from when you were a young reader. These children and teens need everything from picture books to high-school level literature. The only caution is that the nonfiction needs to be up-to-date. Also please do not donate books with underlining.

Why: ReadThis has identified 7 Public School locations in great need of books
For more information about the event + book drop locations, click here.

Now, FWR readers are spread across the world, but there are probably schools in your area that would be grateful for a donation of some new books to their libraries. Perhaps there are programs similar to ReadThis in your city. What books would you choose to put into a young person’s hands this December?

3rd Annual Dzanc Books Write-a-Thon

Jeremiah Chamberlin — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 21:03:02 +0000

Take a day off to write next week. Or maybe just an afternoon. Either way, you can disconnect for a few hours, put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, and in the process help raise money for Dzanc Books. Each year Dzanc holds a Write-a-Thon to raise money for their Writer-in-Residence Program and the Dzanc Prize. These charitable programs help put writers into schools and other places like VA hospitals, prisons, and refugee communities. So you’ll not only be helping a great nonprofit organization, but also setting aside some time for yourself and your work. As someone who’s participated in the past, I can say that this is a great excuse to turn off everything but the word program on your computer. In fact, the most recent story I published (”What We Can,” which appeared in the Summer 2010 issue of Glimmer Train) was written almost in its entirety during the 2008 Write-a-Thon, which had the theme of “change” as a prompt. So I hope you’ll join me for this year’s event.

The 2010 Write-a-Thon will take place September 2nd-5th. Choose a day, choose an afternoon, or choose just a few hours to set aside. As always, a prompt will be supplied if you’d like a theme to write on (though this is certainly not an obligation). And if you choose to write during more than one day, you will receive variations on the prompt.

Participating is very easy:

Send an email stating your interest to info@dzancbooks.org. This is not a commitment, simply a way to register so that you’ll receive the daily prompt and have access to the website.

Promote the event via email or Facebook or on your blog, with the hopes of both spreading the word and finding sponsors. Sponsors can donate as little or as much as they’d like, and it can either be a single amount or based on the number of hours that you end up writing. Whatever they prefer.

At the end of the day, send in your work to the email above. Once the Write-a-Thon has finished, Dzanc will create a special pdf of collected work that they’ll send to participants and sponsors as a digital anthology. Note: you can state whether you want your work included or not.

The writer whose sponsors donate the most will receive a full run of the 2010 Dzanc titles:

Further Adventures in the Restless Universe, stories by Dawn Raffel

The Taste of Penny, stories by Jeff Parker

The Best of the Web 2010, guest edited by Kathy Fish

Pirate Talk or Mermalade, a novel by Terese Svoboda

Asunder, stories by Robert Lopez

For questions, please contact Dan Wickett: wickettd@yahoo.com

Tin House: Buy to Submit; Dzanc: Buy to Donate

Celeste Ng — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 14:30:20 +0000

Tin House Books has a new way to encourage you to support bookstores. GalleyCat reports:

Between August 1 and November 30, 2010, Tin House Books will accept unsolicited manuscripts with one special condition–the submission must include a receipt that proves the author has purchased a book at a bookstore.

Any manuscript sent without a receipt will be returned unread. The new policy is part of Tin House’s “Buy a Book, Save a Bookstore” campaign. The Tin House Books website notes:

Writers who cannot afford to buy a book or cannot get to an actual bookstore are encouraged to explain why in haiku or one sentence (100 words or fewer). Tin House Books and Tin House magazine will consider the purchase of e-books as a substitute only if the writer explains: why he or she cannot go to his or her neighborhood bookstore, why he or she prefers digital reads, what device, and why.

Writers are invited to videotape, film, paint, photograph, animate, twitter, or memorialize in any way (that is logical and/or decipherable) the process of stepping into a bookstore and buying a book to send along for our possible amusement and/or use on our Web site.

Fellow independent publisher Dzanc Books has responded with a campaign of their own:

In response to Tin House’s new submission policy, we at Dzanc Books are motivated to reply with what we hope is an alternative solution to one of the issues Tin House seems to be raising; to wit the decline of books being purchased – and purchased at independent bookstores. [...] For the month of July, we at Dzanc will donate a book to a school/library for each proof of purchase provided to us of a book bought at an independent bookstore. The book bought should be a work of literary fiction, though does not have to be a book published by Dzanc Books or any of our imprints.

Just send a copy of your receipt to Dzanc and they’ll donate a book to any school you choose. Full details and the address are here.

THIS WEEKEND: Haiti Relief at Greenlight Bookstore

Anne Stameshkin — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 13:54:54 +0000

In my old (and much-missed) neighborhood of Fort Greene in Brooklyn, the fabulous Greenlight Bookstore is doing its part to raise money for Haiti. NYC-based readers, shop at Greenlight today and tomorrow to help! Via the store’s newsletter:

A lot has been given to us at Greenlight Bookstore. It’s high time for us to give back.

The earthquake in Haiti has affected many of our Brooklyn neighbors, and we want to do what we can to assist in the relief efforts there.

So, this weekend, Saturday January 23 and Sunday January 24, Greenlight Bookstore will donate 10% of all sales before tax to the American Red Cross for Haiti relief.

With your purchase at Greenlight this weekend, your book-buying dollars can contribute to something greater. And read on for a chance to partner with co-owner Rebecca Fitting to do even more good.

Thanks for all the support you’ve offered us. We hope you’ll join us in offering our support to the organizations working to help the people of Haiti.

Best,
Greenlight Bookstore

A challenge from Rebecca

At Greenlight we have been very fortunate in the short life of our new bookstore and we are mindful of it every day. We are thankful for our store’s good fortune, and for our own personal fortune for living in a part of the world that has an infrastructure and amenities that are sorely lacking elsewhere. The past week’s news about Haiti is an especially tragic event and it makes us want to give back in return. With that very much in mind, Greenlight Bookstore is pledging to donate 10% of our store’s sales for Sat 1/23-Sun 1/24 to the Red Cross for aid to Haiti.

Taking this a step further, if any customer is willing to match the bookstore’s donation of 10% of the weekend’s sales, I will also personally match what the store donates. Just think – if you pledge to match Greenlight Bookstore’s donation, all of a sudden one sum becomes tripled because I will do the same. That’s some strength in numbers, for sure, and it would mean a lot to me if one (or a few) of you would step up to this challenge.

If you stop by the store today, author Nick Flynn will be signing copies of his new memoir, The Ticking is the Bomb (portions of which appeared in Tin House, Esquire, and Open City), at 3 PM.

Greenlight Bookstore is located at 686 Fulton Street (corner of S. Portland) in Brooklyn, NY. / Hours: 10 AM – 10 PM Monday through Saturday, 12 noon – 8 PM Sunday

Publishers Send Aid to Haiti

Celeste Ng — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:03:25 +0000

a devastated neighborhood in Port au Prince / photo: United Nations Development Programme

They may be in dire financial straits, but several publishers are reaching out to Haiti anyway. GalleyCat reports that Random House is donating $100,000 to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief Fund and Partners in Health. Its parent corporation, Bertelsmann AG, is adding 100,000 euros, while Time/TIME Inc. is releasing a book on Haiti with proceeds to benefit earthquake victims.

If you’re still looking for ways to donate, here are some options:

SMS text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief effort; it will appear on your phone bill
SMS text “YELE” to 501501 to Donate $5 to Yele Haiti’s Earthquake Relief efforts
Donate directly to the Red Cross at their website
Donate to UNICEF or CARE using Google Checkout or through any of the links listed on that page
Visit MSNBC’s comprehensive list of ways to donate

Every little bit helps.