117 New Big Read Grants. Rachel Deahl of Publishers Weekly reports that the NEA has increased the participation level in its Big Read program. The organization awarded 117 new grants, spending over $1.5 million in the process, more than doubling the number of communities participating in the program. Launched in 2006, the Big Read encourages people in cities and towns to jointly read one of a selected number of books and, is, according to NEA chairman Dana Gioia, a way to use reading as a community building tool. “By joining the Big Read, these cities and towns are showing that reading is necessary to the cultural, civic, even economic fabric of their communities,” Gioia said. The organization’s goal is to have 400 communities on board for 2008. The communities participating in the program this fall/winter will choose the novel to be read city-wide from among these American classics: Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya; Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury; My Ántonia by Willa Cather; The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald; The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett; A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee; The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers; The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck; The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan; and The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.