As I write with anticipation for this year’s University Press (UP) Week, and the support and superpowers of this community it celebrates, we’ve just closed our seventh grant cycle for Supporting Diverse Voices (SDV) book proposal grants—and we do so with gratitude to the over 150 applicants who have shared their science projects with our team. The range of creativity, and potential book-based impact, with each grant cycle continues to energize our acquisitions team, just as the books that will emerge from the program we anticipate energizing this press and many others in the university press community. Princeton University Press (PUP) launched our Supporting Diverse Voices Book Proposal Grants in 2021. It was created as one contribution to a larger Equity, Inclusion and Belonging strategic plan launched in 2018, with support from our Board, and more importantly, the enthusiastic embrace of our team as part of our commitment to evolve our publishing and ourselves. Our goal continues to be to institutionally forebrain equity and belonging in our actions and decisions, to ensure our words and statements were aligned with purposeful programs, and in support of creating a more inclusive publishing program.
We had introduced Global Equity Grants (GEG) in 2020 to support self-identified underrepresented authors who were under contract for PUP projects; the majority of these GEG grants have supported childcare, clearly a part of the academic ecosystem (and many others) that introduces inequities and impossibilities in completing manuscripts. To complement and expand the GEG program, we sought additional ways to intervene earlier in the lifecycle of the book to establish more equity and opportunity.
The idea for book proposal coaching grants was seeded by a conversation I had with one of our acquisitions editors who was struggling to find time to help an author create a reviewable proposal from a really promising idea. The time and expertise needed to create that proposal from an idea is a moment in the publishing lifecycle that is often too limited in resources and rife with inequity. Some scholars have access to engaged mentors, institutional support for workshops and the ears and time of acquisitions editors or series editors. But many many do not.
The idea germinated over a year and leafed as Supporting Diverse Voices Book Proposal Coaching grants in 2021. We launched Supporting Diverse Voices to intervene in this known area of inequity and with an intention of providing resources for under-represented scholars. The program also aligns with a few priorities of PUP publishing—community and collaboration. While publishers engage often in guiding authors through the preparation of proposals, we publishers don’t exclusively possess the expertise needed to coach authors; a vast and vibrant community of book proposal coaches exists because among presses and higher education institutions, there aren’t enough resources relative to promising projects. And those resources that do exist are not equitably distributed. Book proposal coaches are essential to the transference of knowledge, and the democratization of access to that knowledge. Collaborations with coaches are also essential to PUP’s ability to StepUP the book proposal grants program.
In the summer of 2020, seeking some positives and connection in those surreal early pandemic times, I sought out conversations with several of these coaches. Laura Portwood-Stacer was the first to accept my call and engage with encouragement for the idea of this program, and offered immediate introduction to others who might also be inclined—and who to our gratitude were! We launched the program with Laura, Michelle Boyd, Jane Jones and Margy Thomas, and since have been able to expand collaborations thanks to Helen Sword, Leslie Wang, Julia Boss, and Jordana Saggese—a coaching collective with superpowers!
Community and collaboration shape the SDV program in multiple ways. While we ask recipients to grant PUP the option to consider the proposals that emerge from the coaching process as part of their project application, we are transparent in noting we will not be able to pursue all projects, and that we were making an investment for the whole of the scholarly publishing community—investments of time of our acquisitions team, and capital in what we pay to coaches. Just last week I learned of a grantee whose proposal is now under review with a peer press, which excites us as much as those we are currently reviewing at PUP, as a goal was to invest in our community of UP publishing.
Launched in 2021, we have now completed six cycles of Supporting Diverse Voices, and have received over 2000 applications from self-identified, under-represented writers, many historically excluded from PUP’s publishing program. We have received numerous submissions from the global south, from institutions we have not adequately engaged on campus visits and from authors without institutional affiliation or support. Each application is an occasion for our team to establish new conversations with prospective authors and to learn from these, all in support of commitments to inclusive publishing we have centered as an organization. We have supported 60 authors through the proposal coaching process and by the end of this year, the science team will have selected another 8-10 grantees in the 7th grant round. We will open the calendar year with meetings among editorial, the coaches, and the grantees.
Another intention of the program is to generate professional development opportunities for our team. Members of the editorial department opt in to review the grants, and each review panel has included editorial assistants and editors, just as our Publishing Fellows program relies on current and prior fellows for recruiting. The energy these programs spark for team learning and collaboration is radiant.
The first projects to benefit from the insights and expertise of our partner coaches will soon be emerging as published books, carrying the PUP imprint as well as those of other UPs. We don’t reveal the grantees publicly, as in our early research the authors conveyed to us a preference that their need for writing support not be shared, and we continue to honor that learning and request. We celebrate them internally; each proposal is shared with our cross-team project review committee to ensure inclusive learning among the staff about the projects and their potential.
We also appreciate the chance to communicate with all of the applicants; while we are not able, given the volume, to provide detailed comments on each project submitted, we do provide follow up recommendations for resources on writing and submitting proposals to each applicant—and have much to thank the UP community for in stepping UP a wide range of wonderful resources (books and articles) that we encourage applicants who don’t receive the grants to engage.
Among the many comments we have received from applicants, which we consider a vital form of peer review for the program itself, we share this one, which captures the “why” of this StepUP:
“Whether or not I end up being selected for SDV at any point, I'm deeply grateful for that landmark statement. As a Black feminist scholar who has lived the trauma of these systemic issues, seeing this statement from your press is in and of itself incredibly healing and affirming.”