A book festival lost funding due to DOGE cuts. Utah's book community came together

SALT LAKE CITY — To understand the challenges the Utah Humanities Book Festival faced this year, you have to go back to April 3.

That was the day, according to Jodi Graham, the executive director of the nonprofit Utah Humanities, that the organization received an email out of the blue, letting it know that its operating support grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities had been canceled.

That meant a loss of over $1 million — half of Utah Humanities' operating budget.

The email came as DOGE, a department headed up by Elon Musk earlier this year, was tasked with cutting government spending. Utah Humanities, which has hosted programs and offered grants to organizations across Utah for 50 years, was hardly the only group affected. Arts groups across the country saw their funding slashed overnight.

But for Utah, this had real impacts on events and programs across the state, and for Utah Humanities, it meant pausing its 50-year-old grant program and dramatically reducing its Humanities in the Wild events.

Which brings us back to the Utah Humanities Book Festival, which is on its 28th year and is the only statewide book festival in Utah. After the funding cuts, the festival's budget was cut by 30%.

This meant that the festival had some hard choices to make — and some difficult conversations with organizations the festival had partnered with in the Utah book community.

But those festival partners, said Kase Johnstun, who is program manager for Utah Center for the Book and has run the festival for the last three years, weren't going to let it drop. So with help from groups across the state — from local libraries to bookstores to universities — the Utah Humanities Book Festival is back this year with a "robust" lineup that includes author readings, discussions and workshops. It even, for the first time in 10 years, has brought back the Utah Book Awards, which celebrates the work of local authors and the state's literary culture.

"We're just glad to be here this year," Johnstun told the Deseret News.

28 years of the Utah Humanities Book Festival

The festival has certainly grown from its beginnings in 1998, when it was known as The Great Salt Lake Book Festival. In its first year, it was a one-day event. Now, it's expanded to host events throughout the entire month of October.

The goal of the Utah Humanities Book Festival is different than that of many other book festivals, according to Johnstun, who is is an author himself and is also Utah's representative to the Library of Congress.

That goal "is to really create statewide conversation based on whatever book we're discussing and whatever author that we bring in," Johnstun said.

"We're using the book as the vehicle and the author as the driver to really open up conversations."

In order to spark those conversations, Johnstun says the festival's events are organized to be interactive, making sure to leave plenty of time for audience discussion.

Those events include appearances by authors, including a "Reese's Book Club Mystery Night," featuring authors like Ally Condie whose books have been included in actress Reese Witherspoon's book club, and (for the first time) a Utah Horror Day with authors Philip Fracassi and Stephen Graham Jones.

Johnstun also prioritized bringing back the Utah Book Awards after a 10-year hiatus, honoring work this year by seven Utah authors, including Maggie St. Clair, Jennifer A. Nielsen and poet Paisley Rekdal.

Another important goal of the festival is making sure that communities across the state of Utah, not just in the Salt Lake area, are included.

"One of the really biggest advantages is being able to get not only local authors but national authors to places that typically wouldn't be able to host them," said Graham, who's led Utah Humanities since 2018. "So really giving opportunities for communities to participate when they aren't on the Wasatch Front."

How the festival lost its funding — and Utah's book community stepped in

When Utah Humanities received the email on April 3, letting them know their federal funding had been cut, it went to their "malicious emails" folder, because it hadn't been sent by a government email address, Graham said.

But the email said that it was from the head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, a government agency that has provided funding to Utah Humanities for 50 years. Since it was created in 1965, the endowment has awarded over $6.4 billion in funding to over 70,000 projects in all 50 states, according to The New York Times.

"Half of our operating support budget comes from the National Endowment," said Graham. "So when we received that email, we literally lost, we just lost half our budget overnight."

Through fundraising efforts and some assistance of the Federation of State Humanities Councils, Utah Humanities has received some support over the last few months. But things still haven't been easy.

The book festival had to make do with a much smaller budget this year — which was a challenge for Johnstun, particularly as he worked to coordinate with the festivals' many partners, including libraries, bookstores and universities, across the state.

"There were multiple times this spring when I teared up because I had to call partners and say, 'We're not where we were,'" Johnstun said.

But the festivals' partners from across Utah's book community stepped up.

Read the full story at Deseret News.

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