WLP Faculty Members Join Together for Racial Justice

Two Writing, Literature and Publishing (WLP) faculty members and a former WLP faculty member were in the news recently for their involvement with Writers Against Racial Injustice, a coalition to raise money for the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative.

Started by Senior Writer-in-Residence Lise Haines (When We Disappear), senior affiliated faculty member Delia Cabe (Storied Bars of New York), and former faculty member Elizabeth Searle (We Got Him), along with three other women writers, the Facebook-based initiative has blown past its initial fundraising goal of $10,000, to raise over $50,000, Publishers Weekly reports. Writers Against Racial Injustice also was featured in the Boston Globe‘s New England Literary News section.

From PW:

“After I started my day and opened the newspaper, I was feeling my mood get lower and lower. It was this feeling of utter helplessness,” Haines said. “There are so many of us who are aware of the inequities in our society that never seem to go away, or get a whole lot worse. Something in me snapped.”

The first 30 donors of $100 or more received/will receive a signed copy of WLP Associate Professor Jabari Asim’s book, We Can’t Breathe: On Black Lives, White Lies, and the Art of Survival.

The other founders of the group are Jessica Keener (Strangers in Budapest), Michelle Hoover (Bottomland), and Rosie Sultan (Helen in Love). The fundraiser will run until July 4.

Read more about Writers Against Racial Injustice in Publishers Weekly and the Boston Globe.