PORT TOWNSEND — A small poetry press will develop a new publishing technology, while a public library will sponsor a readership program to give young people insight into the causes of teen suicide, thanks to grants from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.
The foundation linked to the Microsoft co-founder and Seattle Seahawks owner announced Tuesday the awarding of a $100,000 grant to Copper Canyon Press of Port Townsend and a $50,000 grant to Port Townsend Library.
The press will use the grant to facilitate the development of a process to configure poetry for the increasingly popular electronic book format.
The Port Townsend Library plans to funnel the money into a readership program based on Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, a novel published in 2007 that tells the story of a young girl who commits suicide and its effect on her schoolmates.
The grants emphasize the long relationship the 20-year-old foundation has developed with Port Townsend, during which time it has provided $825,000 in grant money to local organizations.
“We administer these grants to organizations who are having trouble in the current economy,” said Jim McDonald, the foundation’s senior programs officer.
“We give them the tools to assume a leadership role.”
Copper Canyon has published poetry for 40 years and has carved a profitable niche in the fickle literary market.
Poetry has been underrepresented in the burgeoning electronic book market because the e-readers flow text in a single direction and cannot accommodate poetry’s style and punctuation anomalies, said executive editor Michael Wiegers.
“We want to preserve good design, which is the hallmark of a poem, and build a system that protects its integrity,” Wiegers said.
The technology has yet to be developed, so Wiegers and his staff don’t know exactly how the program will work.
But the goal is to ensure that poetry teachers, students, writers and readers will have access to the award-winning titles of the press in both traditional print and electronic forms in ways that uphold the integrity of the artists’ intent.
There are certain guidelines, such as finding a way to maintain line breaks, type style changes and punctuation variations for the different electronic book formats.
It will not be a proprietary system, and Wiegers hopes the process will be made available to any publisher who wishes to bring poetry to the electronic masses.
The $100,000 grant will be allocated over a three-year period, during which time some of Copper Canyon’s books will be offered electronically.
Wiegers said the new process will bring poetry to a wider audience and make it more accessible to all fans of literature.
“This will bring poetry to people who don’t know that it exists,” he said.
Thirteen Reasons Why has a potent message, but it is also a good story, which has made it popular with teenage audiences, said Jody Glaubman, teen librarian at Port Townsend Library.
The grant, which will be distributed over a two-year period, will fund the books for the community read, as well as a personal visit by the book’s author, who will address teens and explain the book’s theme.
Asher’s address is scheduled for May 7 at Port Townsend High School.
Also expected are community meetings that educate residents about teenage depression and suicide, to spur teens to read a compelling book and also strengthen the community’s responsiveness to youth depression.
McDonald said the Allen Foundation has become more particular about its bequests, and his division grants about 10 percent of the applications made for funding.
Even so, he said, the foundation will answer every query.
“We want people to know if they have something that fits in our mission that we will consider them,” he said.
For more information about the foundation, visit www.pgafoundations.com.
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Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
