Robert Silvers, late cofounder and editor of The New York Review of Books, described by peers as “the most brilliant editor of a magazine ever to have worked in this country,” died in 2017, leaving behind an impressive literacy legacy — and some money, which he earmarked to fund a charitable trust to support writers. In his will, he named his friend and colleague Daniel Mendelsohn, a New York Review editor, author and Bard College professor, as director of the foundation in the making.
This assignment was news to Mendelsohn.
“I didn’t know about this until the will was disclosed. I didn’t know he’d created the foundation or that he wanted me to run it,” said Mendelsohn. Nor was he necessarily prepared for the job. “I never had any background running anything. I’m a writer. I never had to order anyone to do anything but myself.”
Silvers didn’t leave details about how he wanted the foundation to operate. So Mendelsohn asked himself, “Well, what do writers need? What would I have wanted when I was 28?” His answer: “Money and recognition.”
It took a couple years to set up what is now called the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, during which time Mendelsohn figured out a plan to provide more money and more recognition to serious nonfiction writers. Specifically, writers doing the kind of work published within the Review’s pages: high-level, longform, narrative journalism, arts reporting, criticism, and thoughtful, often counterintuitive writing about politics and social issues.
Big grants for a small pool of writers
In 1972, Esquire described The New York Review of Books as “the most respected intellectual journal in the English language” (a distinction the Review embraces, as evidenced by this quote appearing on its website’s “about” page). A group of writers, editors and intellectuals, including founding co-editors Silvers and Barbara Epstein, launched the Review in 1963 as a place where, as its website puts it, “the most interesting and qualified minds of our time would discuss current books and issues in depth.”
The publication has continued with this vision ever since, and Mendelsohn soon devised a two-part approach to using the Silvers money to support the Review’s mission. One is an annual grants program for works in progress, which it began giving in 2019. Works-in-progress grants can be for any amount up to about $10,000, depending on what writers need and request in their applications. There’s no official limit to the number of grants the foundation can give. During the past five years, the foundation has given grants to about 80 writers working on a variety of projects and topics.
The foundation’s second program is a series of prizes in three categories: arts writing, criticism and literary journalism. The foundation bestows two awards in each category every year, a lifetime achievement award of $30,000 and an emerging voices prize of $15,000. Following the model of the MacArthur Fellows program, the storied annual award series given out by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for “extraordinarily creative individuals,” the Robert B. Silvers Foundation does not accept applications for prizes. Rather, it similarly taps a network of nominators, including editors, writers, journalists and publicists. A board gathers information about the nominees and narrows the list down to semifinalists; from them, a panel of judges chooses the winners.
Through these grants and prizes, the Silvers Foundation is now giving out about $200,000 each year. This is not a huge amount of money in the broader world of philanthropy, but it’s notable among awards for writers of literary nonfiction, a category that tends to be undercompensated and, in some ways, underappreciated. Philanthropy for literature and creative writing in any form makes up just a tiny sliver of arts funding, and while we have seen interesting topic-specific prizes covering issues such as racism and mass incarceration, there’s not a lot of money out there for serious, thoughtful writing. (See IP’s State of American Philanthropy report on Giving for Writing and Literature to learn more.)
Mendelsohn said that the award series is part of the foundation’s crusade “to get people to recognize that these are serious kinds of writing, and they deserve serious kinds of awards. There isn’t enough for the kind of writing we support, particularly criticism. These are instantly among the richest literary prizes in the U.S.”
Krithika Varagur is the 2024 winner of the foundation’s journalism prize for emerging voices. The 30-year-old, Brooklyn-based journalist, author and sometimes contributor to the Review online, has worked mostly as a freelancer, living in and reporting from Southeast Asia and reporting from Bosnia, India and Nigeria. She is currently working on a book about three Punjabi princesses who lived in Victorian England.
“Daniel Mendelsohn called me and said I’d won it, which was unexpected. He just said, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing,’ which you rarely hear as a journalist these days. It’s usually something people tell you not to get into. The field has been beset by layoffs, and the number of publications has decreased in all of our lifetimes. It’s not a field known for job security. But a lot of us love to both read and write it, and our society wouldn’t function without it, so it’s really great to have encouragement.”
Varagur said she took Mendelsohn’s words to heart. “I sent some pitches to one of my editors after the award was announced; I felt some responsibility to keep doing what I’m doing. In 2022, for example, I went to Nigeria three times for a magazine story for Harpers. That was pretty intense and time-consuming. It felt really great that someone valued that kind of reporting.”
Contemplating a new chapter
Now that the foundation has settled into something of a routine with these two programs, Mendelsohn is thinking about the potential for growth. “We can keep doing what we’re doing and chug along, which I would be pleased with. We’re doing what Bob wanted us to do. Or, do we take it up a notch? That would mean needing more money, which brings us into different areas, like fundraising.”
Whether or not the foundation writes a new chapter titled “expansion,” it will continue to focus on getting the word out about its grants and prizes, Mendelsohn said. “I think it is important because it is underrecognized. This is something I now think is pressing. Nobody else is giving way money to these kinds of writers at this level and with this kind of consistency.”
