Nashville’s Southern Festival Of Books Faces Funding Threat In White House Budget

Humanities Tennessee, the nonprofit group that puts on the Southern Festival of Books, says that the annual event is in jeopardy. The budget proposal introduced by the White House last week would eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities which funds the organization that hosts the festival.

Aside from putting on the Southern Festival of Books, Humanities Tennessee provides grants to over one-hundred Tennessee organizations, publishes local writers on their website and brings authors to libraries and classrooms for readings.

If the White House’s most recent proposed budget were to pass, Humanities Tennessee would lose nearly 60% of its revenue. Timothy Henderson, executive director, says this is not the first time its funding has been threatened by politics, but it would be the first time they would be impacted this severely. He says they

“would have to scale back dramatically. And some of the programs we have been doing for years would be — if not eliminated — at least put on hiatus until we were able to generate even more private support for those programs.”

Budget proposals that would eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities have not been passed. In fact, some congressional Republicans are rallying in support of the NEA and NEH.
This week, activists will protest in Washington to implore Congress to reconsider eliminating federal agencies that fund programs like the Southern Festival of Books.

Last week, The Metro Arts Commission released a statement opposing the proposed federal cuts to the National Endowment of the

Arts

saying that it would have “
profound economic and social implications in Nashville.”