Dear Friends,

We write to you from our home state of North Carolina—also the home of many of our editors, authors, families and friends—where recent flooding from Hurricane Helene has caused incalculable damage to western North Carolina and beyond. Homes and businesses have been washed away, and entire main streets of small mountain towns have been obliterated beyond recognition, and many people have died or are still missing.

This region is home to an abundant literary community—poets, reading series, presses, festivals, bookstores—and it is reeling in the wake of Helene. Poets for Appalachia is a team effort between poets and publishers of poetry; our aim is to activate the wider literary community to help the wonderful people of this special place recover and rebuild.

By supporting the organizations doing boots-on-the-ground work, we can help get supplies to where they’re needed most, and bolster community-minded rebuilding in the region.

Here’s how it will work:

• Make a donation of at least $30 to one of the following organizations, each of whom has been working to address critical needs since day one. Be sure to include “Poets for Appalachia” in the notes field.

❤️ BeLoved Asheville (IG: @belovedasheville): Asheville-based org working to provide critical necessities like food, water, and healthcare in the short term and housing and heating in the long term;
🧡 ROAR (IG:_roar_wnc): Rural Organizing and Resilience, an all-volunteer mutual aid organization based in Madison County, NC with a focus on rural areas in WNC;
💛 MountainTrue (IG: @mtntrue): An environmental organization helping with recovery efforts and keeping people safe by testing for pollutants in streams, wells, and flood debris.

• Submit your donation receipt (dated between 10/18/24 and 10/31/24) and shipping information to Niina Pollari using the form here at: https://poets.fund or by emailing niina.pollari@gmail.com.

• At the end of this fundraiser, we'll send you a poetry book from one of our friends (see list below). We’ll include additional books if you donate multiples of $30. We’ll send you a note to let you know when it’s shipped.

With thanks to all the participating presses who have donated books in order to extend this fundraiser further:

Birds, LLC
After Hours Editions
Metatron
The Song Cave
Soft Skull
Wonder
Action Books
Nightboat Books
Publishing Genius
Barrelhouse
Rose Books
Black Ocean
Fonograf Editions
Factory Hollow
Third Man Books
Golias Books
Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative
Pinsapo Press
Ugly Duckling Presse
Ecotone Magazine
Sundress Publications

Warmly,
Poets for Appalachia