The Lulu Fund is a new organization founded by Anna March, Ashley Ford, Jen Fitzgerald, and Ashley Perez dedicated to breaking down barriers within the writing community. The Lulu Fund mission statement says:
We support individual writers and organizations who demonstrate their commitment to these ideas by telling critical stories and lifting marginalized voices. Lulu offers financial support, takes and encourages direct action, and works to foster collaborations. We support writers of all ages and at all stages of their careers. We emphasize support for members of the LGBTQQIA community, people of color, the dis/abled, and those from diverse educational and economic backgrounds.
And they published a manifesto on Salon about the inherent biases within the writing community. In the piece, they note that:
The Lulu Fund collected data to offer more insight into who is winning literary prizes. Almost exclusively, we looked at prizes given to non-genre writers in fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry. This count, the flip side of our offering our own modest awards, shows that 75 percent of the top 23 prizes in literature go to those in academia. We offer this as evidence of academic predominance in literature.
Support the Lulu Fund by attending the first annual Lulu Awards, taking place during AWP, or by donating to the site.
