"Rewriting America: New Essays on the Federal Writers' Project" with Sara Rutkowski

"Rewriting America: New Essays on the Federal Writers' Project" with Sara Rutkowski
[Roosevelt Reading Festival 2023]

00:00 – Introduction
00:46 – The Rewriting America Symposium on the Federal Writers’ Project
05:12 – How the Writer’s Project continues to reverberate in American culture
09:07 – The Writers’ Project hires 7,000 workers to record American stories
12:15 – The Writers’ Project’s literary, first person approach
13:47 – The Project hires most of the soon to be notable writers of the time
16:36 – Previously marginalized writers find their voices through the Project
21:19 – Summation of Rewriting America book
27:27 – Looking for new ways to use and access the work of the Writers’ Project
29:15 – The work of Alessandro Portelli regarding oral histories
32:05 – Q&A