A stimulus project for writers; imagine that

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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Great Raleigh News & Observer column here about the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration. We always hear about the road and building construction projects of the WPA during the Great Depression, but did you know there was a federal stimulus program for writers, too?

There was, and the signature work in North Carolina was published 70 years ago. “North Carolina: A Guide to the Old North State” was created as part of a series of WPA travel guides.

From the N&O:

Edwin Bjorkman, a Swedish-born translator, writer and one-time literary critic for the Asheville Citizen-Times, directed the Federal Writers’ Project in North Carolina from his home in Asheville, with offices around the state. The organization worked like a large newspaper, with field reports passing through a series of editors.

As many as 130 people worked for the Federal Writers’ Project in the state at a time. They included writer Manly Wade Wellman, novelist Bernice Kelly Harris and James Larkin Pearson, the state’s poet laureate from 1953 to 1981, who gathered data on Wilkes County for the guide. At the urging of national officials, the state operation hired several black researchers.