Center for Latino Arts and Culture Wins NEA Funding

Rutgers University received a $15,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts on behalf of Center for Latino Arts and Culture for the Latino/a Literary Imagination: Emerging Voices Residency Program, one of 12 New Jersey arts groups to win funding in 2012.

The NEA issued $1.2 million in grants to 12 New Jersey arts groups and $77.2 million to 928 arts groups across the country.

The Rutgers program provides free intensive writing workshops and reading tours throughout New Jersey and New Mexico.

Rutgers University and the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque will select 48 fellows from each region through a competitive application process to work with such authors as Jimmy Santiago Baca, Denise Chávez, Junot Díaz, Judith Ortiz Cofer, and Martín Espada.

The Princeton Festival also will receive a $15,000 grant from the NEA. The three-and-a-half-week festival offers lectures and a variety of artistic performances. This year's festival opens June 6 with a lecture on musical theater at the Princeton Library. The NEA grant, which was awarded in the Arts Works category, will a double bill of operas: Puccini's Gianni Schicchi and Rachmaninoff's Francesca da Rimini. The operas are a comedy and tragedy based on cantos from Dante's Divine Comedy.