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2016 Festival Partners & Sponsors

We are grateful to these festival partners and sponsors. Their support—and yours—makes this festival possible.

MAJOR PARTNERS

Busboys and Poets is a community gathering place. First established in 2005, Busboys and Poets was created by owner Anas "Andy" Shallal, an Iraqi-American artist, activist, and restaurateur. After opening the flagship location at 14th and V Streets NW in Washington, DC, the neighboring residents and the progressive community embraced Busboys, especially activists opposed to the Iraq War. Busboys and Poets is now located in six distinctive neighborhoods in the Washington Metropolitan area and is a community resource for artists, activists, writers, thinkers, and dreamers.

The name Busboys and Poets refers to American poet Langston Hughes, who worked as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel in the 1920s, prior to gaining recognition as a poet.

Institute for Policy Studies Logo. The words The Institute for Policy Studies is a community of public scholars and organizers linking peace, justice, and the environment in the U.S. and globally. IPS works with social movements to promote true democracy and challenge concentrated wealth, corporate influence, and military power. As Washington’s first progressive multi-issue think tank, the IPS has served as a policy and research resource for visionary social justice movements for over four decades—from the anti-war and civil rights movements in the 1960s to the peace and global justice movements of the last decade. Some of the greatest progressive minds of the 20th and 21st centuries have found a home at IPS, starting with the organization's founders, Richard Barnet and Marcus Raskin. IPS scholars have included such luminaries as Arthur Waskow, Gar Alperovitz, Saul Landau, Bob Moses, Rita Mae Brown, Barbara Ehrenreich, Roger Wilkins and Orlando Letelier. Today the Institute’s work is organized into more than a dozen projects, reflecting our public scholars’ diverse areas of expertise.

PARTNERS

The Poetry Foundation & POETRY Magazine: The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. It exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience.

The Poetry Foundation works to raise poetry to a more visible and influential position in American culture. Rather than celebrating the status quo, the Foundation seeks to be a leader in shaping a receptive climate for poetry by developing new audiences, creating new avenues for delivery, and encouraging new kinds of poetry. In the long term, the Foundation aspires to alter the perception that poetry is a marginal art, and to make it directly relevant to the American public.

Established in 2003 upon receipt of a major gift from philanthropist Ruth Lilly, the Poetry Foundation evolved from the Modern Poetry Association, which was founded in 1941 to support the publication of Poetry magazine. The gift from Ruth Lilly has allowed the Poetry Foundation to expand and enhance the presence of poetry in America and has established an endowment that will fund Poetry magazine in perpetuity.

SUPPORTERS

Split This Rock Poetry Festival is also made possible in part by the Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz, Compton, CrossCurrents, Reva & David Logan, and Alice Shaver Foundations, the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and many generous individuals.