Dear Friend of the Writers Institute:
We hope you are staying safe and healthy during the unprecedented hardship of the coronavirus pandemic. We empathize with those who have suffered losses due to the virus.
The holiday season is a time of reflection and gratitude, of sharing love and gifts with family and friends, and supporting the organizations and causes that touch our lives and matter most to us. We hope you will consider including the Writers Institute in your year-end donation plans.
Despite this time of turmoil, we set new benchmarks in 2020 through our acclaimed literary programming and extraordinary conversations with renowned authors, including record levels of audience engagement.
We wanted to share highlights of our successful pivot to online Writers Institute programming:
193: Number of posts since mid-March on this new blog, “The Conversation,” including interviews with 105 authors in all genres.
70: Total number of artists and writers published in our online literary journal Trolley in July.
96%: More visitors in 2020 to our website, two-thirds of them new visitors.
272%: Increase in viewership on our YouTube channel, which grew exponentially in 2020: 78 new videos, 3,800 subscribers, more than 653,000 views.
451%: more Instagram followers
21% more Facebook followers
11% more Twitter followers
In September, we presented the 3rd annual Albany Book Festival, a highly successful two weeks of online presentations. In October, we co-sponsored a month-long symposium examining systemic racism spurred by the killing of George Floyd, titled “The Time for Reckoning: Confronting Systemic Racism, Seeking Justice and Reimagining Society.” In November, we hosted a post-election symposium titled “Telling the Truth 2020” as a follow-up to our successful 2017 symposium “Telling the Truth in a Post-Truth World.”
Our staff assisted directly with pandemic relief by volunteering to deliver meals to UAlbany students in quarantine and contributing to a student emergency fund for those facing severe economic hardship.
We hope that you will consider making a donation to support vital Writers Institute programming as we celebrate the beauty of literature and address pressing issues of the moment with enlightening conversations. You can choose how to designate your tax-deductible gift from a list of options by visiting “Support Our Work.”
You can also mail your check, made out to The University at Albany Foundation, to the following address:
The UAlbany Foundation
PO Box 761
Albany, NY 12201
Please indicate in the check memo that your gift is for the NYS Writers Institute.
Thank you and here’s to brighter days ahead in 2021,
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