Yesterday, the National Endowment for the Arts announced its awards for the fiscal year 2013 grants, and 13 Oregon organizations are among the lucky recipients for a total state amount of $342,500. Among the highlights: the biggest prize, $100,000, goes to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, poet B.T. Shaw wins a literary fellowship of $25,000, and Portland Playhouse will recieve $10,000 to develop its world premiere of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, in collaboration with Hand2Mouth Theatre.

Here are all the deserving winners, their amounts, and their proposed projects:

• Homowo African Arts & Cultures (aka Obo Addy Legacy Project): $12,500
  To support The Masters Project, a tribute concert for NEA National Heritage Fellow Obo Addy. The focus of the project is to honor the life and legacy of Ghanaian drummer Obo Addy, who passed away on September 13, 2012.
• Miracle Theatre Group: $25,000
  To support the development and premiere of Dance for a Dollar, an original dance/theater play, co-created by writer Mariana Carreno King and director/choreographer Daniel Jaquez, exploring the contemporary urban immigrant experience through story, movement, and dance from traditional to folkloric styles.
• Neskowin Coast Foundation (aka Sitka Center for Art and Ecology) in Otis, OR: $10,000
  To support 28 residencies for American emerging and mid-career artists.
• Northwest Professional Dance Project: $10,000
  To support the creation and presentation of a new work by artistic director and choreographer Sarah Slipper.
• Oregon Children's Theatre Company: $40,000
  To support the commissioning of Eric Coble to create Gathering Blue, an adaptation of Lois Lowry's novel for young audiences. The play takes place in a futuristic society controlled by secretive, ruthless authorities, and is designed to spark discussions and critical thinking among middle school aged audiences.
• Oregon Shakespeare Festival: $100,000
  To support the world premiere production of The Liquid Plain by Naomi Wallace, directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah. The play tells the story of a 1791 slave ship murder and was commissioned by the theater as part of American Revolutions: The United States History Cycle, a series of commissions inspired by times of transformation, innovation, challenge, or conflict in American history.
• Portland Art Museum on behalf of Northwest Film Center: $20,000
  To support the Northwest Filmmakers' Festival and regional tour to Alaska, Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia.
• Portland Center Stage: $20,000
  To support the 15th annual JAW (Just Add Water): Playwrights Festival.
  Portland Opera Association Inc.: $15,000
  To support a new production of Handel's Rinaldo, its second collaboration with the Portland Baroque Orchestra.
• Portland Playhouse: $10,000
  To support The Left Hand of Darkness, a new play adapted from Ursula K. Le Guin's 1969 science fiction novel. Co-produced with Hand2Mouth Theatre (H2M), a Portland-based ensemble, and directed by H2M Artistic Director Jonathan Walters, the play will use the conventions of science fiction to explore bigotry and ask universal questions about tolerance.
• Shaw, B. T.: $25,000
  A literary fellowship for the gifted poet, who is leaving the state for Vietnam.
• University of Oregon on behalf of Oregon Bach Festival: $25,000
  To support the commissioning of a new work for chorus and orchestra by James MacMillan for the Oregon Bach Festival.
• White Bird: $30,000
  To support dance performances in the White Bird Uncaged series, which features companies like Compagnie Marie Chouinard (Canada) and Abou Lagraa (France/Algeria) at PSU’s Lincoln Hall.