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Help for Needy Writers

WEAF Photo Fundraiser:
The Wordsmiths Project

The Writers Emergency Assistance Fund (formerly the Llewellyn Miller Fund) is administered through the ASJA Charitable Trust, which has 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. Its mission is to help established freelance writers across the country who, because of advanced age, illness, disability, a natural disaster, or an extraordinary professional crisis are unable to work. A writer need not be a member of ASJA to qualify for a grant. However, a grant applicant must establish a record of past professional freelance nonfiction writing over a sustained period of years, which means qualifications generally similar to those of ASJA members. The Fund does not award grants to beginning freelancers seeking funding for writing projects, nor does it fund works-in-progress of any kind.

Since 1982, the Fund has issued more than 150 grants. Among the recipients have been writers representing diverse backgrounds and interests, with an impressive list of honors and credentials among them. Each year numbers of such talented and deserving people appeal to the Writers Emergency Assistance Fund. For many, the Fund represents their last hope for help. Contributions are fully tax-deductible, and can be made online or by check.

WEAF Board of Trustees: Lisa Collier Cool (chair), Joan Rattner Heilman (secretary), Donna G. Banks, John Mack Carter, Greg Daugherty, Katie Davis Fishman, Pete Hamill, Florence Isaacs, Mary Ellen Keating, Caitlin Kelly, Al Silverman, and Grace W. Weinstein

Contributions

To donate online, click the Donate button.   

Contributions, which are tax-deductible, can also be sent to:

Writers Emergency Assistance Fund
American Society of Journalists and Authors Charitable Trust
1501 Broadway, Suite 302
New York, NY 10036

Checks should be made out to "ASJA Charitable Trust" with the notation, "for the Writers Emergency Assistance Fund."

Want to help WEAF without writing a check? Click here.

Grant Applications

To be eligible for a grant, an established freelance writer's normal writing capacity must be severely diminished or non-existent as a result of illness, disability, advanced age, a natural disaster (such as a fire or hurricane), or an extraordinary professional crisis (such as a lawsuit or having to care for a seriously ill spouse). Grants are available only to professional writers who meet certain standards.

The grant application can be downloaded from here in Word format. To be considered by the Fund's board, an application must include the following materials:

• Samples of the applicant's published nonfiction work, such as covers of books published by established publishers and copies of bylined full-length magazine or newspaper articles, or other nonfiction writing done on a freelance basis for major or significant publications, including consumer or trade magazines and Internet sites. It's also helpful to include a list of the applicant's magazine and/or book credits, author's bio, or c.v. An application should show a record of past professional nonfiction writing over a sustained period of years, which means qualifications similar to those of ASJA members. For information on ASJA membership requirements, click here.
• Financial documentation, including Schedule C of the income tax return from several years when the applicant made a living as a professional freelance writer and from one or more recent years when that income was diminished by disability, illness, or crisis. Also include recent bank statements, copies of medical, household and other monthly bills, and any other records that will help the trustees understand the applicant's financial needs.
• The application must be accompanied by professional and (where applicable) medical references to document the applicant's illness or disability. If the application is based on a natural disaster or an extraordinary professional crisis, include an explanation of the crisis or disaster and its impact on the applicant's ability to work, along with appropriate documentation.

Here's a look at some of the Fund's recent cases:

Mary Hutchins

54-year-old Mary Hutchins (name changed for privacy) is an accomplished author with numerous book and article credits. She's also the mother of a teenaged daughter. When Hutchins was diagnosed with breast cancer six years ago, she and her husband spent their life savings, then plunged into credit card debt to pay for her treatment. Since then, the family has lived month by month, primarily on Hutchins' earnings, which have been substantial at times. By fall, 2006, their finances were finally starting to improve, and they hoped to build up savings again.

That's when Hutchins received terrible news. Not only was her cancer back, but it had spread to her spine, brain, lungs and liver. By November, 2006 she was unable to work at all, as she underwent daily brain radiation--a grueling treatment that left her with confusion, trouble concentrating, and severe fatigue. With little money in the bank, no writing income, and significant medical expenses, including a $1,500 deductible on her plan, $650 a month for health insurance, and $1,000 a month for pain medications that her plan refused to cover, she turned to the Writers Emergency Assistance Fund.

Recognizing the urgency of her situation, the Fund's board voted to give her their maximum grant--$3,500. Hutchins, who is now receiving chemotherapy and hopes to resume writing in 2007, sent a note saying, "Thank you so much for all your efforts on my behalf. What a wonderful feeling to have the support of fellow writers at a time like this!"

Todd Goldsmith (not real for privacy)

Todd Goldsmith, 56 years old, had been a newspaper columnist and a theater and music critic for 22 years. His clips were voluminous. In 2005, however, the newspaper he wrote for, overhauling its entertainment pages, dropped his weekly column and diminished coverage of the folk/blues music in which he's always specialized. The cuts meant a significant loss of income, but the sort of misfortune we all, as professional freelance writers, learn to tolerate as part of the business. For the first half of the year, Goldsmith earned just $6,000 from writing, and as the summer began, it had trickled down to less than $100 a week. He recognized the need to look for other markets.

Before he could get very far, however, his old specialty dealt him a new blow. Goldsmith was covering a Crosby, Stills & Nash concert in New Hampshire when he tripped on a crowded staircase, fell and suffered a partially ruptured Achilles tendon. For the next two months, he would be housebound in a bulky cast, bereft of the last source of income left to him--reviewing the concerts and music festivals that proliferate during the summer. Goldsmith, essentially flat broke, applied to the Writers Emergency Assistance Fund for a grant.

What Todd Goldsmith experienced was the "one-two punch" (as we call it) that typically sends writers to seek our assistance. Professional writers--those who qualify for WEAF aid--don't run to us because business is bad. We only hear from them when something has happened to keep them from working. All of us who serve on the WEAF board marvel at how eager our applicants are to get back to the computer, to get out in the world, to earn a living according to their talent and skill.

Todd Goldsmith was not our hardest cases: We recognized that within a few months, this normally active writer in mid-career would be back in the marketplace and we voted him $2,300, a mid-level grant to tide him over until then. It wasn't a lot of money; we wished it could be more. But the letter we got from Goldsmith was so affecting. Better than anything we've read recently, it captures the depression and fear a writer feels when flattened by the one-two punch--and illustrates dramatically how vulnerable we all are.

In 2005, the Fund gave 10 grants, totaling $23,005. Some of the grantees suffered from cancer, multiple sclerosis, and emphysema and in two cases, they had experienced substantial property damage from Hurrican Katrina that prevented them from working. In the most severe cases, our maximum grant--$3,500--seems woefully inadequate. We ask writers who have experienced "ordinary" business crises, but not the extraordinary one, not the one-two punch, to share a bit of your better luck with colleagues in distress.

Writers Helping Writers

by Jane Louise Bouraw

"You have hepatitis C." They were just a few little words, but spoken by a doctor to my husband, they have the power to turn our lives upside down.

The diagnosis meant many months of driving back and forth to the University of Michigan Hospital--five hours from home--for testing, and eventually, a liver transplant for my husband. It also meant that our sole income from my freelance writing business would drop dramatically until we got through the crisis.

When a writer-friend urged me to apply for a grant from ASJA's Writers Emergency Assistance Fund (WEAF), my first thought was, "I'm not eligible since I'm not yet a member of ASJA. No problem, she said. The fund is open to all writers in need of financial assistance due to a crisis. And the fact that it was my husband, not me, having the medical crisis? Also not a problem, since my earnings would be severely impacted by our situation.

After thinking of a thousand reasons why I should not apply for a grant--I couldn't take charity, there were others more in need, we'd survive somehow--I decided to do it anyway. I tried to work as best I could, but the bills were piling up, and we were spending a lot of time on the road. Not only that, I wasn't exactly in the best frame of mind to work.

One day I went to the mailbox and instead of bills, I saw an envelope from ASJA. When I opened it and out fluttered a check for the highest grant offered, both my husband and I started crying. Who WERE these writers so willing to offer help to other writers they don't even know? The caring behind the check meant as much to us as the money it offered.

Formerly known as the Llewellyn Miller Fund, the Writers Emergency Assistance Fund has issued over 150 grants to writers in need since it began disbursing money in 1982. It is administered through the ASJA Charitable Trust, which has 501(c)(3) status, and it exists to help established freelance nonfiction writers across the country who, because of advancing age, illness, disability, or extraordinary professional crisis, are unable to work.

As I learned, a writer need not be a member of ASJA to qualify for a grant; however, the grant application must establish a record of past professional freelance writing over a sustained period of years--qualifications generally similar to those of ASJA members. The Fund does not award grants to beginning freelancers seeking funding for writing projects, nor does it fund works-in-progress of any kind.

Leigh Donaldson, a writer based in Portland, Maine, says the Fund saved his life in more ways than one. After a nasty fall down a half-flight of stairs--he was carrying a piece of sheet glass to the cellar, and it shattered and cut him in the abdomen--surgeons found a tennis ball-sized tumor lodged in his intestines. The benign, carsinoid tumor was removed and Donaldson still has regular check-ups to ensure that it won't recur in other parts of his body.

"This was--and is--both emotionally and physically draining," he says. "Assistance from the Fund helped me sit back and recuperate, since it was very difficult to keep up my regular work schedule. I'm very grateful to the Fund, and especially to Patricia Estess (past chair of WEAF Board of Trustees) for her kind words and hands-on support.

The Fund was also a life-saver for Jan Arrigo, but in a different way. After the New Orleans-based writer lost her home in Hurricane Katrina, she and her husband were forced to evacuate to Baton Rouge. "I went online trying to tell all my friends across the country that I was OK, and I got an e-mail from Brett Harvey (former executive director of ASJA) asking if I was Ok and whether I needed anything."

At first, Arrigo was reluctant to accept money from the Fund. "My husband and I were the ones who always GAVE to different charities, so it was very uncomfortable," she notes. "but then I realized that this is a give-and-take thing, and I look forward to being able to contribute to it as soon as I can."

Things are looking up for Arrigo and her husband, who recently made an offer on a house. But she will never forget the generosity of her fellow writers at a time when she needed it the most. "The Fund helped me pay my bills right away, but it also really bolstered me emotionally after seeing the devastation of the hurricane."

Related Links

For more information about the Fund, read these messages from ASJA presidents, published in The ASJA Monthly:

Bob Bittner, President's Letter

Jack El-Hai, President's Letter

Lisa Collier Cool, President's Letter

Jim Morrison, President's Letter