Like many stories as they first break, I don’t have full details of what a major new $50 million initiative will actually offer. But the Literary Arts Fund has committed to giving that much money to nonprofit organizations that directly support writers and creators by 2031. I wanted to report on the initiative now because the first call for grant applications is due to open next Monday, November 10. So mark the date in your diary and be sure to visit the site then to see exactly what the eligibility terms and the nature and size of the grants will be.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
A $50 Million Commitment to Writers
The initiative caught my attention in part because of its sheer scale, but also because of the way it is funded—through major one-off gifts by large foundations. One of those is the MacArthur Foundation, whose MacArthur Fellowships I have reported on several times over the years. Often awarded to writers and other creatives, these are $1 million fellowships that allow individuals to pursue whatever their heart desires in the field in which they excel. It’s a model I really like, and I very much hope this new fund might provide similarly axis-shifting possibilities for writers.
Bluesky Reaches 40 Million Users
Bluesky hasn’t been in the news much of late, but it has continued to grow steadily ever since it emerged as one of the leading alternatives to X when that platform began losing some of its formerly loyal creative communities. It has now announced that it has surpassed the 40 million active user mark.
Bluesky has also been steadily releasing new features. That can be a sign of confidence and the growing maturity and solidity of a platform. It can also be the point where the original purity and looser appeal begin to fade in the bid for scale and revenue. Bluesky’s latest new feature is a “dislike” button. Rather than being an opportunity to launch pile-ons, the dislike button appears to be more of a personalization tool: the message will not be delivered to the person who created the disliked post but will instead adjust the experience of the user who no longer sees similar content in their feed. It’s all part of an inevitably tricky transitional phase as Bluesky seeks to morph from interesting outsider to established player, with all the structural needs required to do so.
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