It's the Brian Larry Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone.

With us now, Dr. Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation, mostly to talk about their new $50 million

initiative called the Literary Arts Fund. Why a literary arts fund? Well, the people at Mellon

say literature, poetry, prose, creative nonfiction, other hybrid literary forms are the least

funded artistic discipline. Now this comes in the context of fewer Americans reading literature

and what the foundation calls a risk to America's creative and cultural health. They cite a

recent study that found reading for pleasure has declined by 40% in this country, 40% over the

last 20 or so years. So let's talk about literature, how it gets financed,

and the place of reading for pleasure

in our changing attention society.

We'll also touch briefly on another Mellon initiative

called the Jazz Legacy's Fellowship.

Elizabeth Alexander describes herself on X,

in addition to president of the

Mellon Foundation, as a poet, scholar, educator, author of the Trayvon Generation and the Light of

the World, and co-worker in the Kingdom of Culture. Dr. Alexander, always good to have you

on the show. Welcome back to WNYC. Brian, I'm so happy to be with you.

It's great to be here. Thanks. Co-worker in the Kingdom of Culture. What do you visualize with that

phrase? Okay, so that is a quote from the great Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois. And as you know, he was someone who was an incredible polymath. I mean,

he was a scholar, he was an educator, he was a writer, he was an organizer, he built cultural

institutions, he was a publisher, he was an editor, and he was one of our great theorists of

Americanness. And so I think that, you know,

...