Jim Milliot summarizes an Open Book podcast episode where National Book Foundation executive director Ruth Dickey walks through a new strategic plan through 2031: more than a hundred stakeholder interviews, help from the DeVos Institute, and a deliberate choice to expand programming while other arts nonprofits shrink. Concrete targets include 125 co-curated adult literary events nationwide (with at least ten in rural or tribal communities), 1.5 million free books for kids and families through public-housing partnerships, and a serious push to land a streaming deal for the National Book Awards telecast.
The framing is explicitly political - book bans, eroding public funding for literature - and Dickey argues this is the moment for the NBF to be "brave and expansive" rather than defensive. If you care about literary infrastructure, it's one of the clearer roadmaps out there for what a prize organization thinks it owes readers beyond a single night of speeches.