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December 2002

The Writers Emergency Assistance Fund: Help for all writers

by Jim Morrison

Several weeks ago, I e-mailed a writer whose essay I'd particularly enjoyed. She had written with rare honesty about working while dealing with a chronic, progressive disease.

I expected no more than a pro forma thank you for my praise. I certainly could not have anticipated the remarkable, rewarding reply I received several days later.

My note, she said, would join others in her Day Runner, where she keeps letters, notes and cards, and refers to them during difficult times when sitting in her doctor's office or waiting for a test. Among her collection are congratulations for her work being chosen for several The Best American Essays anthologies, a note from a famous author and a letter from ASJA's Writers Emergency Assistance Fund (WEAF), formerly known as the Llewellyn Miller Fund.

A couple of years ago, she lost her insurance coverage. Her new policy did not cover acupuncture, the one treatment that helped her continue to write through the pain. So she applied for a grant from the WEAF. She was fairly new to nonfiction writing and had only nine published essays. After originally turning her down, the assistance fund's board requested copies of all her work. After being moved by her writing, they reconsidered and awarded her a grant.

Of course, I had no idea she was the recipient of emergency assistance when I praised her work. The Writers Emergency Assistance Fund operates without interference by me or anyone else in ASJA's hierarchy. The fund's awards are confidential. The writer knew that, hence her letter.

"Rather than just send you a quick e-mail of thanks," she wrote, "I wanted to write this letter and tell you how much ASJA has meant in my life. The grant did so very much to give me -- at a very low time in my life -- the spirit to keep going."

A few days later we spoke by phone. I wanted to ask her permission to tell her story anonymously in this column. "I can't tell you how much it meant to me to be given that grant," she said. "It wasn't so much the money. It was what it meant. It meant my peers had read my work, appreciated my work and appreciated what I was trying to do."

The dollars helped, too, allowing her to get treatments for six months and giving her time to make other arrangements for continuing treatment. When she wrote seeking the grant, she had just begun to believe writing nonfiction was the right course for her career after years of writing fiction. She was also just beginning to think her work might be worthy of collecting in a book and she promised the awards committee that if they gave her money, she would one day come back with a book contract.

Now, partly thanks to the treatments, she has been able to continue to write and publish. She's added five more essays, including a searingly honest piece about realizing that she will never escape the pain of her illness. She has earned more critical plaudits. And she has enough material for a book. "I sit down each day at my PC, and through the pain, write in the hope that I might touch just one life," she told me.

For me, her story is a reminder about why we do what we do when we're at our best.

So I write this column in the hope that you will reach into your pocket over this holiday season and make a tax-deductible contribution to the Writers Emergency Assistance Fund. Voices like hers are needed. Her story is renewed testimony to the power every writer has to touch so many lives.

It has been a difficult year for many of us. But there are always those facing greater challenges, unexpected obstacles. They are obstacles that any one of us could face tomorrow.

So whether you have an extra $5 or an extra $500, please take the time to write the fund a check. Your voice may be the one we help continue to publish next year.

Mail your donation to the Writers Emergency Assistance Fund, 1501 Broadway, Suite 403, NY, NY 10036.

Thank you.

Jim Morrison, of Norfolk, Virginia, is President of ASJA