Federal Writers Project Popular Books

Federal Writers Project Biography & Facts

The Federal Writers' Project (FWP) was a federal government project in the United States created to provide jobs for out-of-work writers and to develop a history and overview of the United States, by state, cities and other jurisdictions. It was launched in 1935 during the Great Depression. It was part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a New Deal program. It was one of a group of New Deal arts programs known collectively as Federal Project Number One or Federal One. FWP employed thousands of people and produced hundreds of publications, including state guides, city guides, local histories, oral histories, ethnographies, and children's books. In addition to writers, the project provided jobs to unemployed librarians, clerks, researchers, editors, and historians. History Funded under the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935, FWP was established July 27, 1935, by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Henry Alsberg, a lawyer, journalist, playwright, theatrical producer, and human-rights activist, directed the program from 1935 to 1939. In 1939, Alsberg was fired, federal funding was cut, and the project fell under state sponsorship led by John D. Newsom. FWP ended completely in 1943 after the US entered World War II and funds were diverted to the war effort.An estimated 10,000 people found employment in the FWP. The project was intended not only to provide work relief for unemployed writers, but also to create a unique "self-portrait of America" through publication of histories and guidebooks. From 1935 to 1943, the project cost about $27,000,000 – 0.002% of all WPA appropriations. American Guide Series and other publications The American Guide Series, the most well-known of FWP's publications, consisted of guides to the then 48 states, the Alaska Territory, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C. The books were written and compiled by writers from individual states and territories, and edited by Alsberg and his staff in Washington, D.C. The format was generally uniform: each guide included detailed histories of the state or territory, with descriptions of every city and town, automobile travel routes, photographs, maps, and chapters on natural resources, culture, and geography. The inclusion of essays about the various cultures of people living in the states, including immigrants and African Americans, was unprecedented. City books, such as The New York City Guide, were also published as part of the series. Some full-length books are available online at the Internet Archive. The FWP also published another series, Life In America, and numerous individual titles. Many FWP books were bestsellers, including American Hurricane, a rapidly produced volume about the devastation wreaked by the 1938 New England hurricane. Others, such as Cape Cod Pilot, written by author Josef Berger using the pseudonym Jeremiah Digges, received critical acclaim.In each state, a Writers' Project non-relief staff of editors was formed, along with a much larger group of field workers drawn from local unemployment rolls. The people hired came from a variety of backgrounds, ranging from former newspaper workers to white-collar and blue-collar workers without writing or editing experience. Ancillary projects Notable FWP projects included the Slave Narrative Collection, a set of interviews that culminated in more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. Many of these narratives are available online from the above-named collection at the Library of Congress website. Folklorist Benjamin A. Botkin was instrumental in insuring the survival of these manuscripts. Among the many researchers and authors who have used this collection are Colson Whitehead, who drew from it for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Underground Railroad. Other programs that emerged from Alsberg's desire to create an inclusive "self-portrait of America" were the Life History and Folklore projects. These consisted of first-person narratives and interviews (collected and conducted by FWP workers), which represented people of various ethnicities, regions, and occupations. According to the Library of Congress website, American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1940, the documents "chronicle vivid life stories of Americans who lived at the turn of the century and include tales of meeting Billy the Kid, surviving the 1871 Chicago fire, pioneer journeys out West, grueling factory work, and the immigrant experience. Writers hired by this Depression-era work project included Ralph Ellison, Nelson Algren, May Swenson, and many others."Among several projects within these first-person narratives was the Southern Life History Project created by William Couch, head of the University of North Carolina Press, and Southeast Regional Director of the Federal Writers' Project. In These Are Our Lives, the only book published by the Southern Life History project, Couch explained that their goal was to "get life histories which are readable and faithful representations of living persons, and which taken together, will give a fair picture of the structure and working of society."The Illinois Writers' Project, was one of the few racially integrated project sites. Among its directors was Jacob Scher. The Chicago project employed Arna Bontemps, an established voice of the Harlem Renaissance, and helped to launch the literary careers of African-American writers such as Richard Wright, Margaret Walker, Katherine Dunham, and Frank Yerby.The Virginia Negro Studies Project employed 16 African-American writers and culminated in the publication of The Negro in Virginia (1940). Notably, it included photographs by Robert McNeill, now remembered as a groundbreaking African-American photographer. African-American writer Zora Neale Hurston was employed by the Florida Writers' Project. Years after her death, her unpublished works from this time were compiled in Go Gator and Muddy the Water: Writings by Zora Neale Hurston from the Federal Writers' Project (1999).A short-lived FWP project was called America Eats, a proposed book of the regional foodways of the United States. Writers in each state were tasked with gathering information about foods and food-related events unique to their area, and preparing essays about these. The country was divided into five regions: the Northeast, the South, the Middle West, the Far West, and the Southwest. While materials, in various quantities, were gathered from all five regions, the book America Eats! was never completed and published. The United States entry into World War II in 1943 resulted in a loss of funding for the FWP and its projects. Materials from the America Eats project are held in various archives and libraries around the country, including at the Library of Congress and the Montana State University Archives and Special Collections. A large digital archive called What America Ate has been created to house the digit.... Discover the Federal Writers Project popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Federal Writers Project books.

Best Seller Federal Writers Project Books of 2024

  • The WPA Guide to The Minnesota Arrowhead Country synopsis, comments

    The WPA Guide to The Minnesota Arrowhead Country

    Federal Writers' Project

    First published in 1941 as part of the American Guide Series, this lively book describes Minnesota's popular northern region. Special features include fifteen canoe trips; five map...

  • The WPA Guide to South Dakota synopsis, comments

    The WPA Guide to South Dakota

    Federal Writers' Project

    Rolling prairie grasslands in the east, surreal Badlands and lush Black Hills in the west: South Dakota is a state of vivid contrasts. In this classic and nowrare guide to Depressi...

  • Creating A Hoosier Self-Portrait synopsis, comments

    Creating A Hoosier Self-Portrait

    George T. Blakey

    The story of the New Deal program that helped to preserve the history and cultural heritage of Indiana during the Great Depression.From 1935 to 1942, the Indiana office of the Fede...

  • Henry Alsberg synopsis, comments

    Henry Alsberg

    Susan Rubenstein DeMasi

    During the Great Depression, Henry Alsberg, a journalist with a passion for social justice, directed the Federal Writers' Project, a New Deal program of the Works Progress Administ...

  • Nebraska during the New Deal synopsis, comments

    Nebraska during the New Deal

    Marilyn Irvin Holt

    2020 Nebraska Book Award As a New Deal program, the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) aimed to put unemployed writers, teachers, and librarians to work. The contributors were to colle...

  • Frontier Stories synopsis, comments

    Frontier Stories

    Ann Lacy & Anne Valley-Fox

    Between 1850 and 1912, the year New Mexico was granted statehood, the Territory of New Mexico was a wild and dangerous place. Homesteaders, cowboys, ranchers, sheepherders, buffalo...

  • Milwaukee in the 1930s synopsis, comments

    Milwaukee in the 1930s

    John D. Buenker

    What would it be like to take an intensive tour of Milwaukee as it was during the late 1930sat the confluence of the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the runup to World War II? ...

  • Long Past Slavery synopsis, comments

    Long Past Slavery

    Catherine A. Stewart

    From 1936 to 1939, the New Deal's Federal Writers' Project collected life stories from more than 2,300 former African American slaves. These narratives are now widely used as a sou...

  • The Truth According to Us synopsis, comments

    The Truth According to Us

    Annie Barrows

    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER  From the coauthor of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society comes a wise, witty, and exuberant novel, perfect for fans of Lee Smith,...

  • Stories from Hispano New Mexico synopsis, comments

    Stories from Hispano New Mexico

    Ann Lacy & Anne Valley-Fox

    The story of Spanish settlement in New Mexico begins with Francisco Vasquez de Coronado's expedition into the territory in 15401542. The conquistadors were seeking new lands, gold,...

  • American Guides synopsis, comments

    American Guides

    Wendy Griswold

    In the midst of the Great Depression, Americans were nearly universally literateand they were hungry for the written word. Magazines, novels, and newspapers littered the floors of ...

  • Dark Mirror synopsis, comments

    Dark Mirror

    J. J. Butts

    Dark Mirror: African Americans and the Federal Writers’ Project explores Black writers’ engagement with the emerging welfare state. J. J. Butts highlights the conflicting...

  • Portrait of America synopsis, comments

    Portrait of America

    Jerrold Hirsch

    How well do we know our country? Whom do we include when we use the word "American"? These are not just contemporary issues but recurring questions Americans have asked themselves ...

  • Republic of Detours synopsis, comments

    Republic of Detours

    Scott Borchert

    A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice | Winner of the New Deal Book AwardAn immersive account of the New Deal project that created statebystate guidebooks to America, in the...