The Federal Writers' Project (FWP) that Porter Sims works for was an actual part of the Works Progress Administration, part of President Roosevelt's New Deal. As a writer for the FWP, Sims was in good company; other notable writers involved include John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright.
Displayed on John-Boy's bulletin board are novelists Sinclair Lewis, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and Edna Ferber, playwright Eugene O'Neill and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.