A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities will allow last year’s Langston Hughes celebration in Lawrence to expand on a national scale.

The $224,959 grant, awarded to Kansas University, will start poetry circles in 20 U.S. cities focusing on the works of Hughes, the Harlem Renaissance poet who spent some of his childhood in Lawrence. KU and Lawrence organized several events, including a national symposium, surrounding the 100th anniversary of Hughes’ birth in February 2002.

“We had hoped this was not a one-shot deal, that we’d have the symposium and that would be it,” said Maryemma Graham, the KU English professor who will administer the grant. “We hoped it would start a sustained interest in Hughes and written expression.”

Like the reading circles in Lawrence and throughout Kansas leading up to the symposium, the grant will fund four meetings of about 25 people at 20 sites across the nation, from New York City to Seattle.

The sites include five in Lawrence — Van Go Mobile Arts, Kansas Audio-Reader Network, St. Luke A.M.E. Church, the Douglas County Jail and the Haskell Cultural Center and Museum at Haskell Indian Nations University.

Though dates have yet to be determined, Graham said she expected the circles to meet in late winter and early spring. Representatives from the participating sites will be at KU later this month for an organizational meeting.

Participants will read works by Hughes and discuss them. The grant also will fund guest speakers, as well as cover the cost of a redesign of KU Continuing Education’s Web site on Hughes.

KU also won a planning grant for the project from the NEH in fall 2001. That grant was worth $40,500.

Barbara Watkins, project coordinator with Continuing Education, said response from the initial poetry circles was “off the charts.”

“We feel we have a very successful model,” she said. “It’s a model we’re taking on the road.”