NEA's mandate.(feedback)(Letter to the editor)

I appreciated Francine Fialkoff's editorial ("A Glimmer of Good News," LJ 2/1/09, p. 8) on the new National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) research report "Reading on the Rise," but since she asks why our study focused on the reading of fiction, poetry, and drama-instead of nonfiction--I want to offer this explanation.

The NEA has a congressional mandate to support artistic and literary excellence and to bring the arts to all Americans. In literature, we have been tasked with fostering and preserving great works of fiction, poetry, and drama. It is not unusual for a federal agency to try to learn as much as possible about the field it supports. Accordingly, since 1982, the NEA …