Conclusion: Forging a Critical Path—Other Considerations for Pursuing the FWP’s Literary Legacies

Abstract

This concluding chapter considers other avenues for exploring the FWP’s imprint on American literature—including the communities of writers that the Project engendered in its regional offices; the genre of historical fiction that surged after the war as exemplified by the work of former federal writer Frank Yerby; and the Project’s pioneering techniques in merging grassroots historiography with creative writing, which anticipated the rise of creative non-fiction in the postwar era. But the challenge of qualifying the FWP’s literary influence always rests on the available number of archival materials. Saul Bellow’s fictional work echoes the Project’s techniques, but few archival documents from the FWP bear his name. Nevertheless, attempting to reread the work of former federal writers through the lens of the Writers’ Project allows for a fresh perspective on these writers, while allowing us to reconsider the conventional boundaries between Depression-era and postwar literature.