Art by Jim Behrle, a dedicated Annual New Year's Day Marathon Volunteer

The Poetry Project’s Annual New Year’s Day Marathon will turn 40 this year and we’re going to need all the help we can get to celebrate its legacy and, most importantly, raise enough funds to support the 160+ readers and performers who present their work at our 80-90 events every season!

Typically, 80 or more volunteers are on deck throughout the day to help with set-up, reader/performer check-in, selling the hundreds of awesome, generously donated books, chaps, and mags at our impromptu bookstore, dishing up donated food and bevs from local purveyors of yum, and helping us clean it all up at the end. In exchange for a 2 hour shift, there’s free admission in it for all of our volunteers.

We’ve been grateful to have had the support of a really terrific bunch of neighborhood food and beverage donors, as well as book donors from across the country, throughout the years. For them we have extreme gratitude – and we’re always looking to expand with the generosity of new donors, too.

If you’re interested in donating food from your restaurant, cafe, bakery or publications put out by your small press, we would be honored. We thank our all of our New Year’s Day donors with generous, grateful public acknowledgement.

If you’re interested in volunteering or donating books, food, and/or other delectables, please contact Nicole at nw@poetryproject.org