Growing and Catching Our Breath: “Cli-fi,” A Surprise from Julia Alvarez & More!

IMG_5194.JPGThings at GWP are in full summer bloom, along with the heirloom yellow lilies given to Dede and Robin by Howard Frank Mosher—actually, I should say stolen yellow lilies, for Howard, his wife, Phyllis, and a local woman, now deceased (who was a Kingdom legend and most likely in one of Howard’s stories), snuck over to an abandoned farmhouse and dug up quite a pike if bulbs last fall. Howard brought them down to us as a gift at our inaugural publishing launch!

Our big news is that Vermont writer, Middlebury College professor and champion of our press, Julia Alvarez, has just been honored by President Obama with the National Medal of the Arts! What is totally amazing and unexpected is that Julia wrote a brand new story for our Contemporary Vermont Fiction Anthology edited by GWP’s senior editor, Robin MacArthur, and due out Nov. 7th! ¡Gracias, muchas gracias, Julia!

More big news: Former United States Poet Laureate and one of the world’s most popular poets, Billy Collins, read his poem, “Snow Day,” from our noteworthy collection, So Little Time: Words and Images for a World in Climate Crisis, at Bookstock. It was a great honor to have the great poet, along with other great poets, David Ferry and Greg a Delanty, read as well!

Last but not least, GWP poet, Vermont farmer, a voice of the great state of Vermont, Leland Kinsey is going to be our first audio book! We are working on a sale and rights at this time. Leland is reading at some upcoming events—see below—in the fall, but having our first audio book is exciting. Other big news is Leland’s book, Winter Ready, was nominated by us for a Pulitzer Prize—announcement will be in Alril, 2015, so stay tuned!

Our summer intern, Desmond Peoples, is totally awesome and editing a few books, like our upcoming Why I Ride: Because the Bike Pedal Lasts Longer Than a Gas Tank by Hollie and Inja, reading our magazine submissions and our “slush pile.” We have the most incredible batch of submissions, all of them of such high caliber, and we wish we could publish them all. We want to thank everyone who has submitted, and apologize for being a bit behind in responding—As Vermont State Poet Laureate, Sydney Lea told us, “You are in the right place at the right time!”

Our inaugural magazine, GWP-zine, comes out end of October! We have short stories, poetry, and an environmental essay included! Check it out!

We also want to let our Crowdsourcing/Indiegogo funders know that if you haven’t received your gift, we are working on that, too! We are so grateful for the support we’ve gotten from our community of readers—from around the world!

That brings us to the interesting “problem” of selling foreign rights: we have a French publisher with an offer for The Bodies of Mothers, a German publisher submitting an offer, and we are also pleased that our distributor is taking a few of our books to the Frankfurt Book Fair in October!

We are thrilled to tell our followers that our first published novel, That Year in Boston, is now in the hands of a film agent with a strong connection to Ben Afleck’s production company! Fingers crossed for GWP author, Gail Spilsbury, who also has an upcoming reading in Exeter, NH on September 7th.

Another recent development is the inclusion in a tight-knit and growing movement for a new genre in book publishing called “Cli-fi,” and with the help of Dan Bloom, a former Vermonter who now lives in Taiwan, we are being featured more and more in the media—our fall list is mostly Cli-fi!

So much to report! We had our first author, Jade Beall, give a TEDx Talk in April, and she is going global with her book The Bodies of Mothers, now in its second printing at our Vermont printer, Springfield Printing! We love you, Jade!

We also LOVE our Vermont printer, whose kindness, support and generosity has helped us grow. Springfield Printing is a FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) Certified printer, and they have incorporated sustainable practices into all of their products and processes. They print using vegetable-based inks and water-based aqueous coatings that are environmentally friendly, and in 2013, recycled 387,035 lbs. of paper and 4.7 tons of aluminum printing plates. WTG, SPC!

Our print-on-demand printer, Lightning Source, is located in LaVerne, Tennessee, and they are FSC-certified now, so we are able to print short run titles there!

Josie Goes Green
On September 8th, 2014, we will publish the first children’s fiction book about taking action on climate change. Josie and the Fourth Grade Bike Brigade is the first in a forthcoming series about Josie Garcia, a feisty nine-year-old girl from Brooklyn who becomes a crusader for preventing disastrous climate change and other environmental threats. In each book, Josie takes simple, ingenious actions that bring real changes to her neighborhood and the world. The book is for ages 7-11 and is appropriate for schools, school districts, children’s social issue book clubs, and families.

Amazon
Since May, Amazon’s negotiations with Hachette over the cut of sales from e-books have spilled into the open, with the world’s largest online retailer blocking some Hachette titles on the site.

Authors took out an ad in the NYTimes to protest Amazon’s bullying.

Many of our GWP readers and followers know that I used to work at Little, Brown and now I am an indie publisher in Vermont. I’d like to suggest a follow up for my “localvore” movement in the publishing industry, and our fall list of books (mentioned above) has a four titles that are part of a new genre Amazon won’t recognize—it’s calked “Cli-fi.”

We are growing rapidly! A number of our titles have sold out and into second printing—Lasting Words, The Bodies of Mothers, and The Beavers of Popple’s Pond. We buy our books locally, and encourage our readers to support indie bookstores to keep new ideas growing and fresh and out of the realm of corporate giants like Amazon. Bullying behavior does not make for good business, Prime or no Prime. Amazon exists and sells a lot of books that might otherwise not be in print, etc., but many consumers and book lovers want to be part of our new model, the localvore publishing kind! Here is video of me (Dede) at “Bookstock”—one of Vermont’s premiere book festivals in Woodstock, Vermont.

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Please join us—Donate (on our Donate page) and be part of a growing movement! We have a fabulous group of volunteer editors (Melissa Scott) and proofreaders (Elizabeth Stouman), too, and we are so grateful for everyone’s support! More to come! Stay tuned to follow us at these upcoming venues where we are being featured—or see photos and video of the events that have already happened:

JUNE
Bread Loaf Orion Environmental Writers Conference
Nantucket Book Festival
JULY
Bookstock, in Woodstock, Vermont
AUGUST
Greensboro (VT) Writers Conference
SEPTEMBER
Josie Goes Green Launch
Burlington Book Festival
OCTOBER
Brattleboro Literary Festival
Northwoods Writers Conference

June 11-12
Orion/ Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Confernce
Middlebury College/Bread Loaf Campus

June 21st
Green Writers Press will be at the Nantucket Book Festival!

July 27-29
BookStock, Woodstock, Vermont
Overview of Green Writers Press with Q&A
Reading from So Little Time, with poet Greg Delanty
Reading from The Beavers of Popple’s Pond with Patti Smith

August 18-23
Greensboro Writers, Vermont
Dede will be on an Editors’ Workshop with Writers
Poet Leland Kinsey will read from Winter Ready

Friday September 12, 2014 5:30 PM
Josie and the Fourth Grade Bike Brigade
Special Event, Children’s Event, Author Event
Josie Garcia is a feisty, optimistic 9-year-old girl from Brooklyn who becomes a crusader for preventing disastrous climate change and other environmental threats. Josie takes simple, ingenious actions that bring real changes to her neighborhood.

B&N / Park Slope
267 7th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11215
718-832-9066

September 19-20
Burlington Book Festival
Poet Leland Kinsey will read from Winter Ready

October 4-6
Brattleboro Literary Festival
Don Bredes will read from Polly and the one and a Only World

October 17-19
First Annual Northwoods Writers Conference
Dede will be on the Publishing/Editorial Panel
Poet Leland Kinsey will read from Winter Ready
Patti Smith will read from The Beavers of Popple’s Pond
Howard Frank Mosher will do a Keynote & ReadingIMG_5194.JPG

Thanks for helping us spread the word! Shop at your local bookstore / write a review on Amazon (shhhh, they will never know!)
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