Tag Archives: books

2017 Green Earth Book Award “Long List” Announced

2017 Green Earth Book Award “Long List” Announced — Brattleboro, Vermont
indie publisher has 3 titles on the list!

Geen Writers Press has recently been notified that three of our children’s books from the Sprouts for Kids Children’s Book line have been long listed for a national award for environmental stewardship in publishing, the 2017 Green Earth Book Award. The Nature Generation created the Green Earth Book Award to promote books that inspire children to grow a deeper appreciation, respect, and responsibility for their natural environment. This is an annual award for books that best raise awareness of the beauty of our natural world and the responsibility we have to protect it.

The Green Earth Book Award recognizes books in five categories – Picture Book, Children’s Fiction, Children’s Nonfiction, Young Adult Fiction, and Young Adult Nonfiction. In each category, the author/illustrator are awarded $1,500.  The winners will be announced on Earth Day, April 22, 2017.

1. Broken Wing

Green Writers Press has recently published Broken Wing posthumously by celebrated Vermont poet David Budbill. Broken Wing is the story of one man’s love for birds and efforts to save a rusty blackbird that can’t fly south for the winter. The author worked closely with publisher Dede Cummings in order to finish the book before he died in late September of this year. The publisher enlisted local artist Donald Saaf, who illustrated the pages with stunning black and white collages that bring the book to life. The book is appropriate for young adult readers and adults. In Broken Wing, David Budbill has composed a monumental love letter to the natural world, an astute and minutely observed portrait of the avian inhabitants of a mysterious hillside orchard. The Man Who Lives Alone in the Mountains, a reclusive keeper of the earth whose soul is devoted to one injured rusty blackbird, embodies a narrative voice compelled to witness, in the rhythm and brutality of the seasons, the intimate patterns of the wild creatures surrounding his home. Budbill’s lyrical storytelling effortlessly transports the reader into his realm with a rare and poetic beauty.

2. KABOOM!

KABOOM! is the candidly comical and dynamic story of Cyndie and Ashley, two spunky and spirited teens from coal country West Virginia, who become activists overnight when their beloved mountain is threatened by Big Coal. This expertly crafted coming of age and rise to activism novel tracks the girls’ experience as they start their own club, Kids Against Blowing Off Our Mountaintops, as they explore the power of grassroots activism, and even as they both begin to fall in love for the first time.  KABOOM!, published on Earth Day (April 22, 2016) by Green Writers Press, utilizes humorous narration and the lively dialogue of impassioned characters to make serious environmental issues more accessible for adolescents. This Young Adult novel can be categorized as a Romantic Comedy “Cli-Fi” (Climate Fiction), one sure to inspire teens to evoke positive change in the world around them.

 The author, Brian Adams, is a recently retired professor Emeritus of Environmental Science at Greenfield Community College in western Massachusetts. His first novel, Love in the Time of Climate Change, was a Foreword Reviews IndieFAB Gold Medal Winner for Humor. He is active in the environmental movement and now devotes his time to writing romantic comedies centered on environmental activism. Brian lives with his wife in Northampton, Massachusetts.

2. Did Tiger Take the Rain?

Charles Norris-Brown was born in the small town of Warren, Pennsylvania. He completed a PhD degree in Social Anthropology and Sociology at Lund University, Sweden, in 1984, based on fieldwork in the inner hills of Uttarakhand, India. His other research his took him from India to the rainforest of Borneo, and to forest communities in eastern Canada and the Appalachian region of the USA. While visiting the Corbett National Park in India, he decided to combine his art, anthropology, and concern for the environment to focus on writing and illustrating children’s books. In time, he would visit western Nepal in 2011 and 2012, and develop what would become his first children’s book, Did Tiger Take the Rain?, an exquisitely told and illustrated tale of a Himalayan land without rain, of frightened farmers, and of courageous girls who go into the forest seeking an answer from the tiger they believe has stopped the rain out of anger. As one of the girls, Anjali, learns, ‘We all live under the same sky.’ The combination of gorgeous watercolors, a forest adventure, and the notion that children can act to make life better, creates a vibrant emotional message that welcomes multiple readings.

Review copies available upon request by contacting the publisher or distributor.  Authors and artists are available for interviews (David Budbill’s daughter, Nadine Budbill, is the spokesperson for her father).

Upcoming spring titles include: Horse-Drawn Yogurt: Stories from Total Loss Farm by Vermont legend and communard, Peter Gould; One Man’s Maine by environmental essayist, Jim Kroschell; A Field Guide to Murder and Fly Fishing by fiction writer Tim Weed; Walking Through the Seasons: Observations and Reflections by Marilyn Neagley; Learning to See in Three Dimensions by Pamela Spiro Wagner; Roads Taken: Contemporary Vermont Poetry edited by Chard deNiord and Sydney Lea with an introduction by Dan Chiasson; Last Correspondence poems by Leland Kinsey, edited by Howard Frank Mosher; Clothesline Religion poetry by Megan Buchana; and for Children: Josie Meets a Jaguar, Book 2 in the Josie Goes Green Series by Beth Handman and the Bruno family of Brooklyn, NY. 

April 7th, at Next Stage Arts in Putney, Vermont, the press will be featured at the annual Earth Day celebration and reading.

OF NOTE: Our children’s picture book, Ralph Flies the Coop, will be “flying” to the Bologna International Children’s Book Fair this spring.

All titles are distributed by Midpoint Trade Books, New York and Tennessee and available wherever books are sold.

Green Writers Press is a Vermont-based, global publisher whose mission is to spread a message of hope and renewal. Read more at http://www.greenwriterspress.com.

Thank you for helping us spread the word!

A Vermont Poet Shines Forth & Welcome New Interns & Summer Fellows

(Book Review)
Galvanized: New and Selected Poems by Leland Kinsey

By David Nilsen

galvanizedGalvanized, the new collection from Vermont poet Leland Kinsey, is a document of the hardship and rough-hewn beauty of living close to the land, in reach of its temper but also its embrace. Kinsey grew up on a Vermont farm, the child of a long line of such folk who clung to existence in the face of a cold north wind, working impossibly hard because to do less was to starve. These poems–some new, most from his seven previous books since 1991–are more closely tied to a particular place than any others I’ve read, and bring Vermont into a vivid focus, painting a landscape and a way of life I had never associated with the state.

Kinsey’s poems are beautiful but brutal pastorales, uncompromising in their depictions of the strain and heartache of living off the land. At times these poems feel like catalogs of woe, running through lists of injuries and tragedies, but they are never self-pitying, and they are never dishonest. The occasional joys of such hard lives are also given their turn, from necessary late night swims in glacial ponds to wash off the sweat and chaff after a day of baling, to summer baseball games, to barn dances to thank the neighbors for helping rebuild a burnt down farm building. Kinsey remembers sledding as a child, the near-suicidal danger of this diversion, the danger less impending than that of their farm work because it was chosen:

“We mostly slid at night to tell
if cars were coming,
no stopping at the corner
except by ditching at forty miles and hour,
blood and fractures either way.”
– page 97

More than anything, these poems chronicle survival, an endeavor that for Kinsey’s family was often a fraught and unforgiving one, but one that laid down from time to time in the shadow of joy. There is a wry humor underlying much of this poetry, rarely spotlighted but often teasing at the edges of harder truths, a humor that undoubtedly served its own role in the family’s endurance. In “Riding in the Open,” Kinsey recalls countless rides on top of farm loads in his youth, experiences that were sometimes fun, a chance to rest, and sometimes quite dangerous, and often both:

“I think of how we mostly could not talk,
mouths agape,
cheeks puffed out by the force of wind,
any conversation blown back passed us,
ears wind stopped,
and of the holding on,
and in the face of the black despair
we were all prone to,
wild laughter.”
– page 96

There is a section of the book containing poems from his 2004 collection In the Rain Shadow, a series of poems he wrote during his extended visit with his cousin in Tanzania. These poems present a jarring change of landscape and culture initially, but it quickly becomes apparent to the reader–as it did to the poet–how much there is in common between the experience the inhabitants of this impoverished nation have had in trying to scrape a living from the harsh African environment and the struggle Kinsey’s own family and ancestors had in prying a living from the glacier-scoured hills of northern Vermont.

Galvanized concludes with selections from Kinsey’s most recent collection, 2014’s Winter Ready. Living as close to (and off of) the land as Kinsey and his family have, many of his poems deal with the seasons, the heavens’ rationing of sunshine and rain, and the cruelties and wonders of winter, but this final section hones in on the way the calendar in a cold-weather climate bends around the gravity well of winter. Spring is about escaping it and planting as soon as the ground warms. In summer it can almost be forgotten as crops grow high and the sun beats down. But by fall, everyone knows what’s coming. Crops are gathered, wood is chopped, repairs are made, food is laid in. Winter will spare no one who isn’t ready. These poems perfectly encapsulate the simple clarity with which Kinsey documents the hardship of living as he and his family have, wasting little regret or resentment over the fairness of their lives. There simply isn’t time for it, and nature is as unforgiving with human life as it is with animal. In one of the new poems in the book, he summarizes this while talking about a recent fishing excursion. He set two trout eggs on a rock by the river, and while he had his back turned, they were snatched up by an opportunistic gull he hadn’t noticed a moment before:

“Eggs, and no gull noticed,
gull, and no eggs to be seen,
no one’s rights involved,
just, quick as that,
life’s magic
act.”
– Fish Eggs, page 7

I was unfamiliar with Leland Kinsey before this anthology, and I look forward to backtracking through his work in the future. He is a singular poet, deft with his words but aware his greatest asset is the strange and wondrous life he’s lived; he forefronts those experiences over flourishes of language, using his narrative skill to show us a scene, a people, and a place, and he trusts in the raw beauty and grace and pain of those details to do the work for him, which they certainly do.

REBLOGGED FROM:

(Book Review) Galvanized: New and Selected Poems by Leland Kinsey

 

NEWS:
Leland and many of our GWP aithors will be at BOOKSTOCK Literary Festival this summer! You can read about them here: http://bookstockvt.org/2016-presentations/

SummerInternsandFellows
Our interns and summer fellows officially start on Monday!
Please welcome them!

MARGARET SWEENEY, Editorial Intern and Publicity
Processed with VSCO with f2 presetMargaret Sweeney is a native of Brattleboro, Vermont and a recent graduate of Bennington College, where she studied literature and writing. While at Bennington, she interned for the literary organizations Poets House and the Center for the Art of Translation and served as co-editor-in-chief of plain china, the first national anthology of undergraduate student writing. She now lives in Western Massachusetts and works as a part-time bookseller at Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley.

JESSICA JAUNDOO, Editorial Intern and Marketing
meJessica is an upcoming sophomore at Bennington College and was born and raised in Boston, MA. She has always had a lifelong interest in nature and her friends always find her trying to adopt any animal or critter into her life. With her interest in the field of Biology and the Environment still in its exploitative stages, her long term hobby has always been writing her own stories and coming up with ideas with friends. Inspiration never fails to strike her at any moment and many who know her are curious to see which book she may publish in the future.

RON ANAHAW, January-February Field Work Intern and 2016 Summer Fellow
RonAnahawRon Anahaw has three things close to his heart: RonAnahawCandid
his loved ones, writing, and Korean fried chicken. With a hand on playwriting, poetry, journalism, and fiction, he considers himself a jack-of-all-trades in writing. He is a big believer in trying to keep the world habitable. He is as quick to crack a joke as he is to ask you to collaborate. Ron is a first-year student at Bennington.

 

KAIYA LEWIS-MARLOW, Editorial Intern
KaiyaLewis-MarlowKaiya is a first term Bennington student with a passion for literature and social change. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and was raised with close ties to the local farm movement and community there. In her spare time, she enjoys writing speculative fiction, hiking, and making jewelry out of found mechanical objects and polymer clay.

 

KAITLYN  PLUKAS, January-February Field Work Intern and 2016 Summer FellowKaitlynP
Kaitlyn is a first-year student at Bennington College with a passion for any and everything Literature oriented. She firmly believes in the power of literature; both in the way it completely transforms perceptions of the world and in the way it inspires unity amongst communities. Her many years as a Girl Scout and Gold Award recipient have inspired her to enact social and environmental change. Kaitlyn is an avid sock collector, an outdoors adventurer, and is a right-handed writer who is preferential to pens.

April: Poetry Month & Earth Day is Coming!

April is National Poetry Month and we have news to share!

POEM CITY, Montpelier, Vermont is one of our FAVORITE annual events….

GWP's poet Leland Kinsey

GWP’s poet Leland Kinsey

On April 13 at 7:00 pm in the Kellogg-Hubbard Library, Leland Kinsey, Pushcart Prize nominee, will be reading from his new book Galvanized: New and Selected Poems, published by Green Writers Press in April 2016. Kinsey is also author of Winter Ready and six other books of poetry. He writes of the hard, dark life of the countryside in a haunting, spellbinding manner. Join Kinsey for an evening of poetry at the Library.

Later in the month . . .
A Round-table Discussion on Nature Poetry with GWP publisher Dede Cummings & Vermont poet Diana Whitney at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library.
April 30th at 1:30 at PoemCity 2016
Kellogg Hubbard Libray in Montpelier VT

AND NOW ONTO EARTH DAY (BIG) NEWS! 

green-earth-book-award-2016

Order of the Trees Cover final._zpsgslhmlelI’m super excited that The Order of the Trees is on the Nature Generation’s Green Earth Book Awards shortlist!  I’m thrilled to see us—a Vermont based publisher — on this list with the major New York publishers. It is an honor to be included in this collection which features books that have a strong environmental stewardship message.

The winner and honor books will be announced on Earth Day, April 22nd 2016. Stay tuned!

 

HERE IS A PHOTO OF THE AUTHOR—This is the kind of reading she does for kids at libraries and schools . . .

cropped-launch-photo-higher-res

 

 

EARTH DAY IS COMING! Green Writers Press is so pleased to help promote our fantastic children’s list for Earth Day. Along with The Order of the Trees, we have another exciting children’s book series we’d like to tell you about—our 2014 title/first in the series Josie Goes Green.

Layout 1Green Writers Press is proud to 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. Nine-year-old Josie Garcia is an ambitious girl from Brooklyn who becomes an advocate for preventing disastrous climate change and other environmental threats. The feisty heroine in “Josie and the Fourth Grade Bike Brigade,” Josie was inspired by the children of P.S. 321 in Park Slope. Kenny Bruno; his wife Beth Handman, assistant principal of P.S. 321; and their daughter Antonia Bruno, who went to school at P.S. 321, co-wrote the new children’s book, which they refer to as children’s “cli-fi” — climate fiction.

Families and book lovers of all ages are invited to “Go Green With Josie” to learn about children taking action to preserve our planet this Earth Day 2016.

Josieandthe4thGradeBikeBrigade_smacxcoverThe book just came out as an audiobook, too, narrated by the wonderful Rosi Amador!
A GREAT EARTH DAY GIFT 🙂

Rosi Amador, voice of Josie.

Rosi Amador, voice of Josie.

Here is the website for the book. http://www.josiegoesgreen.com Josie won the Honor Book Award last year for the Green Earth Book Award sponsored by Next Generation.

Thanks for helping kids feel like they CAN make a difference on Earth Day!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Other News

AWP16collage

From left to right: Dede with author (and great friend) Sophronia Scott and (top right) with Tin House editor, Cheston Knapp, (bottom left) the women of VIDA, and Dede and agent Elaine Trevorrow from Blue Flower Arts in the photo below right. Next year, GWP hopes to have funding for a BOOTH!

AWP—The Association of Writers and Writing Programs—had their 39th annual convention and book fair in Los Angeles at the beginning of April. Dede went out and had a GWP table. It was thrilling to be around so many writers and avid readers and here was a great deal of interest in our press!

PARTIES! We love ’em!
Don’t forget our two big bashes in April.

flyer screen shot
The Hopper Launch Party is April 15th from 6:00-8:00PM at the Dianich Gallery at 139 Main Street in Brattleboro.

GWP_April 24 at NSA_FinaluseMKTOur 2nd Annual GWP Earth Day Celebration at Next Stage Arts in Putney, Vermont, is on April 24th from 5:00-8:00 PM with readings/slides/music. Hosted by Vermont’s celebrated writer, Howard Frank Mosher.
LINK for info: http://nextstagearts.org/event/green-writers-press-second-anniversary/?instance_id=19674

Happy Spring (though we just got more SNOW in VERMONT!

Spring News for March 2016

We are a growing Vermont publisher with exciting news to share!

9780996135771-PerfecBandCt.inddBlackberries and Cream ~ a Classic Children’s Novel from Green Writers Press Selected for the Alabama Book Festival and named a finalist for the Foreword Review’s IndieFAB Book of the Year

Other news on upcoming books:

Clarence MajorHaving written more than eight novels, including My Amputations and Dirty Bird Blues, alongside a dozen books of poetry, Chicago Heat and Other Stories is Clarence Major’s second work of short fiction and first book with Green Writers Press is coming out September 6, 2016. Here is a quote from Clarence—and we are honored to be his publisher!

At the same time one of the most pressing issues for all of humanity is the environment, namely climate change. I would like to support efforts to bring about awareness of the problem. We are running out of time. —Clarence Major

And last, but not least: We are so excited about Green Writers Press having 5 finalists in the annual Foreword Reviews IndieFAB Book of the Year Awards:

Richard Jarrette, A Hundred Million Years of Nectar Dances—Poetry
M Jackson, While Glaciers Slept: Being Human in a Time of Climate Change—Memoir
Lauren Alderfer, Teaching from the Heart of MindfulnessEducation
Leslie Rivver, Blackberries and Cream—Juvenile Fiction
Sydney Lea, What’s the Story? Reflections on a Life Grown Long—Essays

“The 2015 INDIEFAB finalist selection process is as inspiring as it is rigorous,” said Victoria Sutherland, publisher of Foreword Reviews magazine. “The strength of this list of finalists is further proof that small, independent publishers are taking their rightful place as the new driving force of the entire publishing industry.”

GWPIndieFabFinalists

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Please welcome, ANNA MULLEN, Marketing and Outreach Coordinator, Assistant Editor!

AnnaMullenAnna is a poet, naturalist, and aspiring morning person from the suburban foothills of the North Carolina Appalachians. She has special love for writings about the sea, speculative fiction, animal consciousness, psychologies of climate change, and queer ecology. She studied Environmental Literature at Middlebury College and as a poetry fellow at Bread Loaf Orion’s Environmental Writers’ Conference. Most recently she served as Treleven, Inc.’s writer-in-residence, working on poetic and scientific sketches of their sheep flock in New Haven, VT.

Thanks for taking the time to help support our growing list!

We are dedicated to the “LOCALVORE” movement in bookselling.

 

And now a word from one of our interns . . . !

IceandAmysView

View of the Connecticut River from Amy’s Bakery Arts Café on Main Street in Brattleboro, Vermont. Photo by Kaitlyn Plukas.

~~~~~~~~~~

From inside Amy’s Bakery, you can watch the ice floes drift on the Connecticut River like a herd of large, groggy fish moving downstream, or somewhere, or nowhere.

Alongside this, I’ve learned a lot during my first week in Brattleboro. I’ve learned: how to code manuscripts; that I have a hidden love for Thai food, courtesy of my host family; that copy editing is far more backbreaking than I expected; that when it’s cold enough, you can ice skate on the Meadows; and that Dede Cummings and her vibrant personality is a cure-all for gloom, doom, and any other word that can threaten your day.

I always pictured myself romping around in New York City
with a Didion-esque experience ahead of me

I’ve also learned that I’m happy to fork over pretty much all my money to Mocha Joe’s, as long as their magic brews helps me stay up long enough to finish work for a press as great as Green Writers Press. And, thanks to my irresponsible nighttime-sips, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Brattleboro’s sky from dusk to dawn.

I’m eating, laughing, exploring, learning, and most importantly, I’m doing work that I love. While I always pictured myself romping around in New York City with a Didion-esque experience ahead of me, yellow curtains and all, I’ve learned that I’d be happy to work away in a place like Brattleboro, for a place like Green Writers Press. (As long as I can get some of Bamboo Garden’s pad Thai, that is.)

—Ron Anahaw, Bennington College intern/Field Work

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

A note from the editor: The American Library Association’s 2016 Midwinter Meeting and Exhibits took place January 8–11 at the Boston Convention Center. GWP had a table for the first time. Our resident Bennington College interns Ron, Kaitlyn, and Emy love libraries! Our far-flung interns, Ferne and Kaiya, are holding down the fort and Skyping in from New Orleans and Chapel Hill, respectively.

BenningtonInternsGrid

Our fabulous interns, from left to right: Kaiya Lewis-Marlow, Ferne Johansson, Emy Blohm, Kaitlyn Plukas, and Ronald Anahaw.

We are lucky to have such a great group of hard-working students from Bennington College!

 

Bodies of Mothers Wins Top Printing Award

pinnacle-awardThe Printing Industries of New England (PINE), a major trade group that has been around in one form or another since 1887, recently presented our Vermont printer, Springfield Printing Corporation, with three awards as part of their 2015 Awards of Excellence Competition. The competition was stiff; they were up against 40 companies from all over New England, who submitted over 300 entries.

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Our New Poetry Editor and News

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Please welcome Sierra Dickey! She joins editors John Tiholitz, Jenna Gersie and Rose Alexandre-Leach.

Sierra Dickey is a young writer and editor native to Cape Cod, Massachusetts with auxiliary roots in the Northeast Kingdom. In 2015, she graduated from Whitman College, where her honors thesis on ecofeminist literature was the recipient of the Linda Meyer Award for Best Environmental Essay. She is passionate about both print and digital media, as well as long walks and good coffee. Continue reading

Our Summer Locavore Book CSA & Some New Faces

ALEX FISCHER, from Brattleboro, is our new bookkeeper

AlexFischerAfter years of organic farming and working as a bookkeeper, Alex decided to take the plunge and start Open Bookkeeping. The business is rooted in the values and experiences learned from social justice organizing and managing the finances of small businesses and nonprofits.  Alex holds an MBA in Managing for Sustainability from Marlboro Graduate School in Brattleboro, VT. Grounded in past experiences on farms, at farmers markets and in restaurants, Alex understands the reality facing small business owners and sees the need for innovative and alternative business models, such as Community Supported Businesses (ie CSA farms), worker owned cooperatives and other vertically integrated structures. In Vermont, Alex co-founded HomoPromo, a queer events promotion collective, volunteers with Vermont Worker’s Center and Migrant Justice and facilitates anti-oppression and anti-racism workshops and trainings.Carley, Dede’s rescue dog is already excited to have Alex on board!  Continue reading

Our First High School Intern & News

LindseyVachonHSInternGWPLindsey Vachon is Green Writers Press’ first high school intern. She is a junior at Leland and Gray Union High School in Townshend, Vermont, where she lives, and hopes to learn everything there is to learn about writing and the publishing world. She loves writing, mostly fiction, and besides that, has a love for creating pottery, traveling and learning about the stars. Please welcome the talented and wonderful, Lindsey Vachon!

Lindsey is helping to edit this young adult/middle grade reader fiction coming out in May, The Order of the Trees.TheOrderoftheTreesFrontCover

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Jade Beall’s Celebration of the Mother’s Body

Photographer Jade Beall is on a nationwide mission to celebrate the mother’s body, un-Photoshopped and unretouched. The impetus for the book project, The Bodies of Mothers, started with her own feelings of inferiority of her body after she had her first child. According to Beall:

As I first sat down to think about the beauty of the mother’s body—stretch marks, cellulite, and saggy-ness included—I was immediately struck by how hard we try to hide what we deem as ‘unattractive.’ In this project, women are more then shedding a little clothing; they are tearing away the self-imposed layers, exposing their insecurities and laying vulnerable for all to see. This is what beauty looks like, more than supple skin or tight abs—beauty is the ability to see oneself and the power of creating new life. It is accepting it all, without labeling it good or bad, with hands wide open—no matter how they may shake in the beginning.

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Summer Recap & The Climate Rally

-cbbf001afadaaa2fAs I sit on the Amtrak “Vermonter,” hurtling through the Connecticut countryside, I’m reflecting on how amazing the summer was for us at GWP: the Bread Loaf / Orion Environmental Writers’ Conference, Bookstock in Woodstock, the Greensboro Writers’ Forum and my poetry workshop — “Making the Global Personal: Using Poetry as an Activist Tool”—were just a few of the highlights of the summer, along with hiking, biking, swimming in Vermont’s rivers and gardening, of course.

GWP poet, Greg Delanty, had a beautiful poem published in The Atlantic, and under his name, they mentioned our book, So Little Time! We are so proud and honored to have Greg as one of our authors. He will be down in New York City with us, this Sunday, for the Climate Rally, along with thousands of Vermonters.
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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!

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Our Summer Intern is here! Meet Desmond Peeples

dspeeplesDesmond S. Peeples is a writer of fiction and nonfiction loosely based in Vermont. His work is either available or forthcoming in Big Bridge, Cultural Logic, and Goreyesque.  During his time at Goddard College in Plainfield, VT, Desmond completed the manuscript of a speculative novel, and he is currently hunting for literary representation. Most recently he founded Mount Island, an online literary magazine now accepting quality prose and poetry for its debut issue.

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New E-books & Spring is Finally Here

GWP party tabloid.pubLast night, Phoenix Books in Burlington, Vermont, hosted the “Green Writers Press Celebration Party.” What a great event! Photos TK. Here is the swell poster Kristen at Phoenix made.

Join us to meet Dede Cummings, the publisher behind Green Writers Press, as well as authors from the new press. Phoenix Books is partnering with GWP — a new, Vermont-based publisher that prints their books in Vermont and seeks to change the way books are printed by using only post-consumer waste paper and not virgin timber — to celebrate this new indie publisher.

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“Is Amazon Bad for Books?”—”Yes it is,” according to Vermont author Howard Frank Mosher

This post is so good, we decided to reblog it here:

In the era of the Kindle, a book costs the same price as a sandwich. Dennis Johnson, an independent publisher, says that “Amazon has successfully fostered the idea that a book is a thing of minimal value—it’s a widget.” Construction by Ian Wright.

In the era of the Kindle, a book costs the same price as a sandwich. Dennis Johnson, an independent publisher, says that “Amazon has successfully fostered the idea that a book is a thing of minimal value—it’s a widget.” Construction by Ian Wright.

There’s an excellent article in the combined Feb. 17 and 24 issues of THE NEW YORKER magazine, by George Packer, called “Cheap Words: Is Amazon’s Business Model Good for Books?”
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Happy Holidays from Green Writers Press

Our Radio Show/PODCASTS

Vermont author, Howard Frank Mosher, and publisher, Dede Cummings, commenced the first-ever “Author-New Publisher Tour of Vermont Bookstores.” This trip was Howard’s idea. “Why not tour the bookstores, take the pulse of book selling in Vermont, see what people are reading and buying, and just talk on the way,” he asked me, ending with a chuckle. As we drove, I held the mic and asked him to tell me some stories. This is the first of 4 Podcasts. Enjoy, and Happy Holidays from Green Writers Press!

LISTEN HERE

PHOTOS FROM THE ROAD TRIP: