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In the middle of so much news about the decline of –well, just about everything, here’s something encouraging: an article in today’s New York Times reports that, according to the National Endowment for the Arts, fiction reading is on the rise.  The NEA report is based on “The Survey of Public Participation in the Arts” conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2008.

Dana Gioia, NEA chair,  attributes the rise to community-based programs like the “Big Read,” the Oprah factor, the popularity of series like Harry Potter, and “the individual efforts of teachers, librarians, parents and civic leaders to create ‘a buzz around literature that’s getting people to read more in whatever medium.’”

This entry was posted on Monday, January 12th, 2009 at 10:12 pm and is filed under In the News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.