Amherst, MA, September 17, 2020 — The Common, the award-winning literary journal based at Amherst College, is a recipient of a grant from The Literary Arts Emergency Fund, which provides aid to nonprofit literary arts organizations, magazines, and presses that have experienced severe financial losses due to COVID-19. The fund, launched and administered by the Academy of American Poets, the Community of Literary Magazine & Presses (CLMP), and the National Book Foundation, will be distributing more than $3.5 million to literary organizations and publications across the country.

Leaders of the three national literary organizations—Jennifer Benka, Mary Gannon, and Lisa Lucas—united to raise funds and establish the Literary Arts Emergency Fund in response to the lack of institutional support for the nonprofit organizations and publishers that sustain literary culture in the U.S. by presenting poets and writers at events and by publishing and distributing thousands of poems, stories, and essays in books, magazines, and through open online archives.