WORD bookstores, Brooklyn, N.Y., and Jersey City, N.J., have launched WORD Association, an initiative through which the bookseller "is working with a new team of brilliant writers to raise money for the causes that matter to all of us." The project begins this week "with a full slate of outstanding aid organizations serving diverse populations and chosen in partnership with some of the most talented and giving writers we know."
Under the program, WORD will donate 10% of the purchase price of books by participating authors to causes of their choice. The authors and causes will change weekly. This week, for example, WORD will contribute 10% of the proceeds from books by Roxane Gay, Tracy O'Neill, and Lauren Francis-Sharma to the Black Mama's Bailout Fund of the National Bail Out collective and 10% of the proceeds from books by Valeria Luiselli, Molly Crabapple, Francisco Goldman, or Myriam Gurba to Make the Road New York.
WORD will collaborate with many more writers "to address the issues close to our hearts, strengthen our shared communities, and start taking better care of our friends and families, everywhere."
Noting that bookselling is "first and foremost about community, and ours is hurting right now," WORD said: "We're concerned about our friends who have shopped in our stores and attended our reading series, the folks who joined WORD's book groups and brought their children to our storytimes. No one has been untouched by this crisis, and all of us have felt the difficult circumstances it has created for our shared communities.
"It has been our privilege and our sincere pleasure to continue to be your bookstore through all of this. To send you the books you want and the books you didn't know you needed, to supply you with puzzles to pass the time and cards to keep up with your loved ones--the best of what we have to help make this difficult time pass as easily as possible. But we wanted to do more. And with that in mind, we began reaching out to some of our favorite authors to build solidarity with the causes we care about."