tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35637693795404691112024-03-05T21:53:33.155-08:00Upper Hand PressUpper Hand Presshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05577667981623288336noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-32024567507124668912019-03-08T06:26:00.001-08:002019-03-08T06:26:37.180-08:00Editing Ambitions<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">A student at my alma mater, Kenyon College, contacted me during the winter to ask me, through an alumni network, for my advice about "moving up the ladder" as an editor. The question arrested me and made me think as I hadn't before about just what I aspire to as an editor. These are the thoughts I shared.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">_______________________________________________________________</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">"…As for editing, I think it
is less a question of ambition and </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">"moving up a ladder" than it is of becoming a
fine editor, and that requires study and humility. As the primary editor at my
press (I have a four-person editorial consulting board) I do two things: I
select what I'll publish, and I help authors make their books as good as they
can be for readers. In these capacities, my ambitions are for the authors and
for readers, so I put myself aside. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">"I guess there's the element
of ambition for my press, but that is fulfilled by the care I take for the
others. My greatest achievements as an editor have been with the two brand-new
authors I've chosen. One was straight from her MFA in fiction-writing. The
other was a retired public-school teacher who had never written before. I saw an
important but poorly-shaped story. The writer definitely had the drive to make
the book work, and I guided him for two years—including referring him to an outside
editor—to bring it to publication and to eventual achievement of a YA-prize. I doubt
that many editors would have given him the time of day. But I think that's what
an editor should do: Look deeply into the author's potential and the potential
for bringing something important to the public. It's not a matter of burnishing
oneself or the press with authors’ reputations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">"To get into editing, prepare
yourself by understanding what writers do by studying their work through
reviewing. You might join NetGalleys as a reviewer and review a couple of new
books every month, reading and reviewing them with the knowledge that your
words will help shape the prospects for that book, and will count to the author,
the publicist, and the public. Get used to framing an opinion that has a real
effect, one that you take responsibility for. Another place you can do this is
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Washington Independent Review of
Books</i> and similar publications that invite reviews. If you write for these,
you practice taking responsibility for authors and for your opinions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">"I'd advise reviewing as
many genres as you can, to broaden your information and tastes, to improve your
literary "muscle tone," and to know what's out there. This can serve
you well when you present yourself to potential employers. Having a variety of
areas of knowledge, and to show breadth in a review portfolio will be an
advantage. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">"The other thing you can do
is to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">write</i> and have someone read you
and discuss your work routinely. You need to be very aware of the difficulty of
writing, to know that it is all about error, editing, patience, time,
application, attention, and excellent thinking. You'll get to understand how
much all of those count, and that none can be missing. You'll appreciate how difficult
it is to bring a book about. And it will make you both compassionate and
demanding as an editor. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">"If I were to hire another
editor, I'd want someone secure in her own judgment, but I'd want to know that
her judgment was solidly based on critical thinking, reading, writing, and
focus on authors and readers. Ultimately, to you, I say, treat editing as an
avocation and a privilege, not an ambition, and you’ll be on the road to excellence."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">—Ann Starr, Publisher and Editor</span></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br /></div>
STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-37874797870098146472019-03-04T07:11:00.001-08:002019-03-07T05:56:22.269-08:00An Interview with publisher, Ann Starr<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><b>For a course in publishing at Columbia College in Chicago, Margaret Smith</b> chose Upper Hand Press for her final project, and interviewed publisher Ann Starr. This is a selection from her final paper. We thank her for sharing it with us!</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpqIm0_Bmwh2Tpm-1B2GqMSz0WbneQYFPMzNOrvAMNzYfLzQ9diB3qlrhQa0w7mmJ3VGvnA_H38Kbo1KoBfmpocC8k4c40iiJs6Rzz0PbQoo1chgbaMusMMQKWXNqjNhryleOg96QWIrYo/s1600/Logo+250+px+copy.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1287" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpqIm0_Bmwh2Tpm-1B2GqMSz0WbneQYFPMzNOrvAMNzYfLzQ9diB3qlrhQa0w7mmJ3VGvnA_H38Kbo1KoBfmpocC8k4c40iiJs6Rzz0PbQoo1chgbaMusMMQKWXNqjNhryleOg96QWIrYo/s320/Logo+250+px+copy.png" width="256" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">"Ann Starr is the founder and editor of Upper Hand Press in Columbus, Ohio. She is </span>also the author of <i>Sounding Our Depths: The Music of Morgan Powell.</i> She is an artist of many mediums, giving recognition to motherhood and her travels as major influences in her life and work.</div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b>Interviewer:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">How did you get started in the publishing world?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
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<b style="color: #2d2d2d; font-size: medium;">Ann Starr:</b></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I got started on a mission. A dear friend whose work I'd been reading in manuscript, who had and </span><span style="font-size: small;">published in journals for years, had an "orphan"</span><span style="font-size: small;">novel. The work had twice been taken up by Big </span><span style="font-size: small;">Five publishers but then released because of negotiations over a second book. I'd known the novel since she'd begun work on it, and I'd always loved it and thought it wise and beautiful. I decide that I'd get the book into print myself, I felt so committed to it. I opened my press to publish </span><i style="font-size: medium;">One Hundred Years of Marriage. </i><br />
<i style="font-size: medium;"><br /></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Not wishing to experiment on <i>One Hundred Years of Marriage, </i>now it its second edition, I published my own book of essays, <i>Sounding Our Depths: The Music of Morgan Powell </i>first.<i> </i>I'm glad I did that, because I learned the basics. There are errors of presentation that I learned not to make again, and I got to know my printer well. So, you see, I am a naif who plunged in and have been learning by making mistakes and taking big leaps ever since. I have little information beyond what I've needed to make the next book. I founded in late 2015, and I'm getting better with every book. I wish I could afford a staff, and I'm still some ways from profit. I fund the Press entirely from my own pocket—a part-time job, Social Security, and a small alimony. I live frugally.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b>Interviewer:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">What is the biggest error a writer can make when it comes to submitting their work?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b>Starr:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I read manuscripts thinking not that it will be rejected, but that with the mindset that this is potential for my press. What I'm reading may be golden. It's like the teacher who tells the class that everyone starts with an 'A.' But I do see some big mistakes that are easily avoidable and tell me a lot. Ill-written cover letters can be a deal breaker. Errors of grammar, syntax, and spelling; unsuitable tone, especially pomposity. Evident lack of research into my press's character, or the assumption that the audience for the book will be "anyone who likes books and reading"—that is, writers who haven't thought specifically or realistically about the future of the book.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b>Interviewer:</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Is there a book or collection, recent or from the past, that has come out that you wish Upper Hand could have gotten their hands on?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>Starr:</b></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-size: small;">No. Every press is defined by the editorial choices it makes. To wish I had another press's title would be to wish for something that's probably not really definitely of Upper Hand Press. There are lots of books I admire, but if I really had them, they might refocus my list. I think not only of my books, but of the family of my authors with whom I keep in touch and share news about one another's successes. They are all in relation to one another. When I choose books, I think about the ways the book and author will fit. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>Interviewer:</b></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-size: small;">As a writer yourself, do you have a motto or words to live or write by?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>Starr:</b></span><br />
Don't try to be an author. Just write as well as you can.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>Interviewer:</b></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-size: small;">As an editor, do you have any wise words to writers?</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-size: small;"><b>Starr:</b></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-size: small;">I can't overemphasize the importance of the first page. If it doesn't sparkle, it's heavy lifting to bring the reader along afterwards. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">Books are made of sentences. Sentences are composed of well-chosen words ordered grammatically, correctly spelled, and thoughtfully punctuated. When sentences depart from norms, the writer's reasons must be emphatically clear. Good sentences take time to write, and every one matters. Books are made of sentences and they are made of time. When any of these critical elements—good words, technical astuteness, strong sentences, or time—is missing, it's easily detected."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<br /></div>
STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-86676781727767318152018-10-12T13:54:00.000-07:002018-10-16T03:15:03.362-07:00Announcing new titles for 2019; Thank you to our submitters<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Submissions season is over for 2018. It was a boom year for submissions and I'm grateful for the number and quality of authors interested in publishing with Upper Hand Press. I tip my hat to the many who submitted their work for my consideration and my editorial board's. It is a pleasure and an honor to be entrusted with so many writers' works and ambitions in thirty-page blocks. I am never uninterested in the people who send their work. Everything we receive is full of life; work and commitment can't fail to show. So thank you to everyone who took a risk and sent their best to Upper Hand Press and my eye.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><br /></span>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5yVwYWIWG5_-TxlqiU9ZWOZma-VlFV75GuYpcK6xhKP2ExBtcCEK22rJfSo4eTynsBjSje_wVZUfMxUvcMwZQ36Dhb-Vx2Hcv1xo1RI-Wi8nA8z1wYe0n1lNFGvXxW-W97qUOWQKcyUc3/s1600/41iXSRnFtPL._SX321_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="323" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5yVwYWIWG5_-TxlqiU9ZWOZma-VlFV75GuYpcK6xhKP2ExBtcCEK22rJfSo4eTynsBjSje_wVZUfMxUvcMwZQ36Dhb-Vx2Hcv1xo1RI-Wi8nA8z1wYe0n1lNFGvXxW-W97qUOWQKcyUc3/s200/41iXSRnFtPL._SX321_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" width="128" /></a><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">In the upcoming months, we'll be publishing three books, two by previously published authors, and one by a newcomer. On August first, we'll bring out <b><a href="https://www.nickfowlerauthor.com/">Nick Fowler</a>'s</b>, <i>My Virtuous Sister. </i>Nick wrote <i>A Thing (or Two) About Curtis and Camilla</i> in 2002 and it was a hit for Random House. It got reviews in places like the <i>Times</i> of New York and of Los Angeles and was a best seller in the United Kingdom. His new book, like his first, is set in New York City, but is a little more melancholy in tone as a younger brother seeks his beloved big sister, a rock star on hard times, in lower Manhattan. </span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCW6kAssjVMAg8SQiyyUnMcXrxta4FKsJnJDngHbR-DKFU8xrDoTpduY1NzRyrolFmcLB5JJXh8go2lRw6NWiGTYzStb_wkLGFM2z3Zdb-bL2LUGVWopxbaar_pWD5TZ-eWLvZxT8oiAMz/s1600/516eaFO3EzL._AC_US218_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="218" data-original-width="218" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCW6kAssjVMAg8SQiyyUnMcXrxta4FKsJnJDngHbR-DKFU8xrDoTpduY1NzRyrolFmcLB5JJXh8go2lRw6NWiGTYzStb_wkLGFM2z3Zdb-bL2LUGVWopxbaar_pWD5TZ-eWLvZxT8oiAMz/s200/516eaFO3EzL._AC_US218_.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">In December, we bring out <b>Alice Lichtenstein's</b> <i>The Crime of Being. </i>Alice comes to us from Scribner's, where she </span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">published her novel <i>Lost, </i>enthused over by NPR and the <i>Time Book Review. </i>Her earlier novel was <i>Genius of the World,</i> published with the late, lamented literary press, Zoland Books. In <i>The Crime of Being, </i>Lichtenstein cooly visits the hot territory of a hate crime's effects on juvenile perpetrator and victim, their families, the judicial system and population of the small town where it happens.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><a href="http://www.pendulinepress.com/author-article-archives/shift-change/"><b>William Cass</b></a>'s illustrated book <i>Sam</i> will open 2020 for us. This exquisite story sits in a comfortable chair that children and adults will share. The story is about a young girl who lives with her mom and plays by herself and the lonely, elderly man who can see her outside his window. Their friendship is told with warmth and penetrating insight into each generation. Young readers will love it; younger children will love to hear it; any adult will be happy to give it voice. Cass is a retired elementary principal, with many literary credits in fine journals.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Keep up with our home page to see the details about these books as they are posted. It's exciting to have designers deliver us the new covers and to begin preorders. <i>My Virtuous Sister </i>is already up, so take a look, and be sure to visit the music website of our only rock-and-roll author: <a href="https://www.nickfowlermusic.com/tour"><b>Nick Fowler's music</b>.</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">--Ann Starr, Publisher</span></div>
STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-11291831476800795682018-09-22T06:34:00.000-07:002018-09-22T06:35:14.133-07:00Wil Haygood, Young Adults, and Young Writers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Last night I was among the many inspired by the towering
historian and journalist Wil Haygood, who was back not only in his hometown of
Columbus, Ohio but in his first alma mater, East High. The 1968-’69 championship
basketball and baseball teams of East, composed all of black players in years
of civil rights upheavals locally and nationally, are the subject of his book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tigerland, </i>which he launched on this
joyous occasion.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9aysNcBn9_-OTQz6-mCK1qQ_EBcA0WFURE9QdQZA5SwUwEQwZ2TjnUtk7e-9VAZs6a_eEKMy3MuVGSbeRBjnR1IB6Os1uqi-_Tv6VXr72YlPETqpmC0-LdkC_dBSfFcilj2XDjA_OhqHK/s1600/Haygood1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="800" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9aysNcBn9_-OTQz6-mCK1qQ_EBcA0WFURE9QdQZA5SwUwEQwZ2TjnUtk7e-9VAZs6a_eEKMy3MuVGSbeRBjnR1IB6Os1uqi-_Tv6VXr72YlPETqpmC0-LdkC_dBSfFcilj2XDjA_OhqHK/s320/Haygood1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Wil Haygood at the University of Vermont</span></td></tr>
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Haygood brought many members of those extraordinary teams
back for the occasion, and the stories of their teenaged struggles and triumphs
were the meat of his generous, uplifting presentation. He stood as tall and
square-shouldered as a basketball hero, but spoke as a preacher, with arm
lifted and finger pointed heavenward as, time and again, he addressed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Students. </i>If <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Students</i> need inspiration; if they need models; if they wonder how
to proceed in life; if <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Students </i>seek
goals, then they can look to these men who in their youths filled with
hardships and scant of resources, made their ways through discipline and
courage to excellence and high achievement in adulthood.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I praise Haygood not even for his humble focus on others—so
becoming in a man whose list of honors for his many books (including <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Butler) </i>and his long career at the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Boston Globe </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Washington Post</i> recommend him to every reader and citizen. He persisted in pounding home the centrality of supporting
high school students. He praised the youths who begat the excellent men
assembled in the front row, calling for their coaches, families, and teachers
to rise from the crowd and be recognized.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrgkMi-ROtiKKs_pebQmRjgDrxGhDujtKi8htJ5_k54j5tBiEc3D8-4udNM7FrN9BVWnL1hixLQhOUAmCbB-xcSb9rgDb57WYoGpZpYJjZL-HiD56pZywqUaRmDGhc-lYZVk-rVCjbTf5N/s1600/9781524731861.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="302" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrgkMi-ROtiKKs_pebQmRjgDrxGhDujtKi8htJ5_k54j5tBiEc3D8-4udNM7FrN9BVWnL1hixLQhOUAmCbB-xcSb9rgDb57WYoGpZpYJjZL-HiD56pZywqUaRmDGhc-lYZVk-rVCjbTf5N/s320/9781524731861.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
<o:p></o:p><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Best of all for me, a publisher, he made a point of asking
students to come forward with their questions after his talk, even though none
had dared enter the long line of adults waiting for the microphone. Two young women stepped up and asked intelligent questions focused on how Haygood
broke into publishing.</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="font-size: 12pt;">Tigerland </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">is a deeply
researched book about how teenagers made it; the endings are necessarily multiple,
complex, and in different keys.</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Haygood didn’t write <i>Tigerland </i>for a YA market, but for a fully
human one, that includes teens who will become adults. As the topic of Haygood’s book and very presence suggested, his book can inspire teens who want to write as
adults about human experience—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">who write
not as teens, but as aspiring adults, </i>like the young women who took the mic to engage with him.</div>
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By reading widely in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all</i>
literature and nonfiction, young writers can learn their craft; from their
teachers and by taking the opportunities to hear writers like Haygood in their
communities, they can find inspiration and practical knowledge to help them to their goals. We publishers too
have a role in the advancement of young writers, by not assuming we publish content for<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> limited ideas of </span>supposed “teen level” or “teen taste,” but by
aspiring for youth when we choose and market books that inspire next year's writers.</div>
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STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-20439063987888434752018-07-19T07:50:00.000-07:002018-07-20T12:24:37.208-07:00A New Service for Self-Publishers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1z7TLpkNof9X5VesQvFLZF9DE5rWYh-ummasunMvNK_8WP8d5qoVbGayMnlW3BOsiTt446YpUG01B8QItP9KWb6Ue6sIbN546HaIr_S1L7YHWryQ4Mw4TgoP3bDvhKCxBvxpsaBycDBmW/s1600/KPB_logotype++115+KB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="697" data-original-width="1041" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1z7TLpkNof9X5VesQvFLZF9DE5rWYh-ummasunMvNK_8WP8d5qoVbGayMnlW3BOsiTt446YpUG01B8QItP9KWb6Ue6sIbN546HaIr_S1L7YHWryQ4Mw4TgoP3bDvhKCxBvxpsaBycDBmW/s200/KPB_logotype++115+KB.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Upper Hand Press is adding an imprint. You may have seen it already on Facebook or Twitter; its webpage will be coming soon.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Kensington Place Books will serve the needs of a kind of writer whose work we often see but can't accommodate. These are people who offer good books for publication, but whose ultimate goals are <i>to publish a book rather than to build a career as a writer. </i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">For these authors, self-publishing is probably the best course. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Are you writing an intimate memoir; writing a family history; organizing a volume of poetry for limited distribution? Are you in a writing group that wishes to publish a volume of work; an educational institution that would like to do an anthology of student writing? </span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">These are the clients we anticipate serving.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Our designer is John Hubbard, who </span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">designs catalogues</span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> for museums and art galleries around the world, and whose work has been awarded by the Art Libraries Society of North America. He is designing a standard layout and a standard cover into which an author's artwork can be placed. His design features excellent typography integrated with the client's art. This arrangement offers the writer a world-class design at greatly reduced cost.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Upper Hand Press's long-standing connections offer printing in any quantity, ebooks, warehousing and distribution with Baker & Taylor, Amazon, and Ingram if needed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Best of all, there's no dashboard. After the initial inquiry, everything is handled personally with our publisher/editor, Ann Starr, who will answer all your questions and guide you through the process to just the book you want.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">If you think this may be the way to publish for you or for someone you know, contact Ann Starr either through a message on the KENSINGTON PLACE BOOKS Facebook Page, or through the message box at Upper Hand Press.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Take a look at our model cover. The title is made-up, but the design is not. This lettering and layout will sit atop the author's photo or art; or, Hubbard can produce an entirely new design.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><br /></span>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFFFOdvENbc2MjepeXro6qKK4Xb9M5Z3FdJmb00u4ifBl_y5IVaPbx4n9ZxQyxoUmJ2pkTUOut_ap5nWMVkl7sMxqK9TuE3Xfb3OpDSVvUVab0DqZBM8fMZ8XTrkZUuNQO71t7-3sBSvlo/s1600/KPB+cover+1+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1130" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFFFOdvENbc2MjepeXro6qKK4Xb9M5Z3FdJmb00u4ifBl_y5IVaPbx4n9ZxQyxoUmJ2pkTUOut_ap5nWMVkl7sMxqK9TuE3Xfb3OpDSVvUVab0DqZBM8fMZ8XTrkZUuNQO71t7-3sBSvlo/s320/KPB+cover+1+.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><br /></span></div>
STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-24598249782893577802017-09-02T07:37:00.000-07:002017-09-02T16:30:45.329-07:00BEST SELLERS and READERSHIP<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: 10pt;">The book business is more complicated than my beginner’s
enthusiasm permitted me to imagine in 2014. Enthusiasm, that bane of the 18</span><sup style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">th</sup><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: 10pt;"> century (“What
can we reason, but from what we know?”) does indeed invite flights of
reckless optimism. If there are boulders in the road and a learning curve that
would dizzy a gymkhana contestant, well, “Love will find a way,” my inner Eubie
Blake retorted to my entrenched Alexander Pope.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTZUJYkAiraiPO6qsg3Po1xgHLMtSeC9_u6Ksh33tXCronXBOoqIvW2c6Z2IPiyLqRMi3_NuxcpMIs59loLwp8DzWxzB8PraWOD9z6NqWNqvjeeiCeOInwtptdhssmGzxhyQvTioEhbFMR/s1600/Cadillac%252C+Oklahoma+COVER+50+dpi+copy+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="317" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTZUJYkAiraiPO6qsg3Po1xgHLMtSeC9_u6Ksh33tXCronXBOoqIvW2c6Z2IPiyLqRMi3_NuxcpMIs59loLwp8DzWxzB8PraWOD9z6NqWNqvjeeiCeOInwtptdhssmGzxhyQvTioEhbFMR/s200/Cadillac%252C+Oklahoma+COVER+50+dpi+copy+2.jpg" width="157" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">However arduous or silly the process of learning by doing
continues to be for me, one big thing has been indisputable from the start: <i>Everyone
in publishing wants a best seller.</i> Certainly the author does: Fame and
fortune should reward the years of dedication and craft sparked by fire in the
belly. The printer is eager to keep the presses rolling. The distributor’s
bottom line is to move as much merchandise as possible to bookstores and
retailers who are eager to sell, sell, sell!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">And the publisher obviously wants to turn out best sellers, right?
If an Upper Hand Press title sells millions, the income will secure an
immediate future in which I can expand my press and its reputation. Even one
best seller will boost sales of all the books on our list; it will attract the
attention of authors who may not have previously considered publishing here.</span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #990000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9HTxjAu17FDq9eY0ML_SrIMO7UmvB-ZsyPov2H_zZkfSbaBTe1ctzxRQDmzVFvGEfAXTWpXX8WqOZssCfDT1LUlJDA8rg9OufW8KJJ-GaRtWn_snpZ6IBw13RgmAsrcX1moMsTZ38v09m/s1600/100+YEARS+FINAL+COVER+3%2522+tall+300+pixels.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="602" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9HTxjAu17FDq9eY0ML_SrIMO7UmvB-ZsyPov2H_zZkfSbaBTe1ctzxRQDmzVFvGEfAXTWpXX8WqOZssCfDT1LUlJDA8rg9OufW8KJJ-GaRtWn_snpZ6IBw13RgmAsrcX1moMsTZ38v09m/s200/100+YEARS+FINAL+COVER+3%2522+tall+300+pixels.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div>
<span style="color: #990000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">A best seller for <i>one</i> of my authors could
reassure <i>all</i> my authors that I’m working overtime to support
their efforts. Best sellers reflect not only the literary skills, but the
nigh-full-time commitment to promotion by the authors themselves. But it requires
successful, well-focused and well-funded marketing on the publisher’s part.
Reaching influential reviewers and publicity-generators; making best use of
industry-only sources; keeping up with the industry through conferences,
newsletters, new products; selling to libraries and book clubs—these are
the <i>unpaid</i> tip of the marketing iceberg, the part I can presently
afford, even if I am deficient in time to execute. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Upper Hand Press is self-funded by this
publisher-staff-of-one. Marketing budget comes after production budget,
which leaves little to spend. (For the authors, marketing costs to supplement
what the Press provides are as great as they feel they can invest.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiCj8IGiJ-5698SHNsBGWBRAencZJGL1omrh_-8TlmRAZYsOOp8_nhwJ20eYC9DPDDyY8dqSJJQd0dq_MrSsori_0pVk_6FNYlnmpb4RKaLJH2jzkdYstCB9Qdz0iwrwpQUYX4FUoSYt46/s1600/saving+phoebe+murrow+cover+HertaFeely.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="977" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiCj8IGiJ-5698SHNsBGWBRAencZJGL1omrh_-8TlmRAZYsOOp8_nhwJ20eYC9DPDDyY8dqSJJQd0dq_MrSsori_0pVk_6FNYlnmpb4RKaLJH2jzkdYstCB9Qdz0iwrwpQUYX4FUoSYt46/s200/saving+phoebe+murrow+cover+HertaFeely.jpg" width="128" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">For established large publishing house with well-funded, dedicated
advertising budgets, the possibility for <i>creating</i> a best
seller is substantial, sometimes from even modest literary material. Add
full-page ads in prominent media, signs and promotional items, pop-up ads on
Internet sites, access to appearances on major media, and long-standing
relationships with taste-makers, and one is on the way.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">So it is that best-selling books are unlikely to have the imprints
of small, independent presses. The promotion budget comes after the costs of
book production are met. For me, promotion is the pursuit of reviews from
low-cost and free opportunities, entering relevant competitions, and creating
connections for individual titles and for the Press. What’s left to budget for paid
advertising is not much once the designers, typesetters, printers, and
distributors are paid. Persuasive prose is our most useful marketing tool.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #990000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1Eof5ppH1B8CN1Rrl6XVGoRpR_1J1VY2eYC0lyPU-Aw6tpOIksnwt3VdRDKrcco-Kq5Vl2VT7-Pu1LS_WEv0E4X7R5GohhfoLYlAUdCxby_b_CzmoWBMzIBir3AzOr2BIOucCEfX7aryC/s1600/Naming+of+Girl+Cover+300px%252C+5%2522+copy.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="942" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1Eof5ppH1B8CN1Rrl6XVGoRpR_1J1VY2eYC0lyPU-Aw6tpOIksnwt3VdRDKrcco-Kq5Vl2VT7-Pu1LS_WEv0E4X7R5GohhfoLYlAUdCxby_b_CzmoWBMzIBir3AzOr2BIOucCEfX7aryC/s200/Naming+of+Girl+Cover+300px%252C+5%2522+copy.tiff" width="125" /></a></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The question remains, though, whether making best sellers is the
ultimate goal? About this I write for myself alone in answering that it is not.
I would be overjoyed were an Upper Hand title to become a best-seller, but I
don’t believe that by selling millions I’d feel that the mission of my press or
that my personal mission was necessarily accomplished.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">As an editor I look for material that invites the reader to engage
deeply with the writer—I am a matchmaker between writers I believe in and the
readers they long for and deserve. I choose the authors to publish, the ones I
believe will endure by virtue of their literary skill and significant
themes. While I understand readers’ love of stories about romance,
adventure, speculative pasts or futures, my love is in invitations to stretch
the mind and explore our humanity, whatever form those come in. I just look for
books that don’t end with the last page.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Read the reviews: Excellent, unique, convincing books are
published all the time by publishers large and small. They win awards from
learned bodies with acute judges, and they receive the highest praise from the
most thoughtful reviewers. What their sales are, though, one can only guess.
The reviews help, no doubt, but reviews alone don’t make best sellers. Big
budgets are the bedrock. It’s likely that you’ll get sales commensurate to what
you pay. But the world is ennobled, enlightened, and advanced by all the
authors that small, independent presses bring to us in small editions, whatever
their business models.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: #990000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Developing readership is an uphill task for a small, independent
press in a world of readers and writers that loves best sellers. Upper Hand books are currently
finding readers our authors are writing for, but there are many more we want to
reach. I know we will find them with constant and steady--and someday
expensive--promotion. But the dream of the best seller is a dream of winning
the lottery; a dream of winning something for no more effort than a wish, and we all
know that things don’t work that way without laboring masses and pots of money behind the
curtain we'd like to pretend isn't there.</span></span></div>
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STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-33227244543600657172017-05-04T11:44:00.001-07:002017-05-05T09:58:22.563-07:00Diversity is a Knotted, Uncomfortable Thing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Educators, parents, librarians, and young readers are asking us publishers for more <i>diversity</i> titles for the "young adult" and "YA/crossover" markets. The United States is no longer (if it ever was) a nation of Dicks and Janes, blue-eyed kids in single-family houses with picket-fenced yards. Contemporary readers want books to reflect America's polyglot demographics and dreams. Young readers (and their adults especially) expect books to reflect diverse life in a complex society, with characters linked to their own neighborhoods and to global issues alike.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEyBIboVs2q1SpsdJAxRIaq5qrfQrqpEmItM3BCgT4eYPsgfuocqlP0F2VL7M5MfNec82XquQX06D3TDqgIau7x7FQB1MAC8JKOCJ5_c3oRn0DuhdLxknRMMfwAChF7EWq5isuxByHdfh2/s1600/Naming+of+Girl+Cover+300px%252C+5%2522+copy.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEyBIboVs2q1SpsdJAxRIaq5qrfQrqpEmItM3BCgT4eYPsgfuocqlP0F2VL7M5MfNec82XquQX06D3TDqgIau7x7FQB1MAC8JKOCJ5_c3oRn0DuhdLxknRMMfwAChF7EWq5isuxByHdfh2/s320/Naming+of+Girl+Cover+300px%252C+5%2522+copy.tiff" width="200" /></a><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">I'm unaware if there are any unfavorable reviews of diversity titles now on the market. The eagerness for this content tends to make diversity itself the topic, illustrated by the story. But as with any revolution, we won't know its effects until a few years hence: Which books will have become classics? Which will have been forgotten? Will books focused on current expressions of diversity feel as helpful to readers in ten years? Will the stories hold up as natural and true? These are the questions that arise with the energetic impulses of any new movement, literary or social. <i>To Kill a Mockingbird </i>is now "diversity literature." It hardly needs to be. It was a great literary novel and humane document before, and it will survive as both however it is used in a moment.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">By next September, Upper Hand Press will have two "young adult/crossover" titles, both of which could be entries into the diversity market. If anyone chooses them for that reason, I'd be honored and I think the authors, Rhonda G. Williams and Nicholas H. Bradley, would be too. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">In both, the</span><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> protagonists are children: in </span><i style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new", courier, monospace;">The Naming of Girl (2016), </i><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">it's </span><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">a nine-year-old girl; in </span><i style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new", courier, monospace;">Rickie Trujillo (2017), </i><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">a high school boy. </span><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The moving narratives transcend the limits of any reader's prejudices about appeal of stories about kids. In both books, the language is natural, sophisticated, and undiluted; the protagonists' challenges are with the natures of their fully-described, lived-in worlds. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Each book seems quite to fit into the diversity environment. Each has a vivid "minority" protagonist fighting adverse circumstances; each needs allies where there seems to be none; each has to use limited knowledge of the world and a brutalized sense of justice to fight for self-definition and survival.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw1iVGIduOjX6vn3G4eISXbs2O7IPaBHyynQC2hnMQKcdwpQf2PV1428-xumyhyphenhyphenPZX-qZj3J1sVTSdtSQFbB0FFwBVQIVcYwojQveg5MMjHBCV02IOn1RDK1aGmc1JPcdZKmNR5HtcHtU1/s1600/COVER%252C+front%252C+RICKIE+TRUJILLO.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw1iVGIduOjX6vn3G4eISXbs2O7IPaBHyynQC2hnMQKcdwpQf2PV1428-xumyhyphenhyphenPZX-qZj3J1sVTSdtSQFbB0FFwBVQIVcYwojQveg5MMjHBCV02IOn1RDK1aGmc1JPcdZKmNR5HtcHtU1/s320/COVER%252C+front%252C+RICKIE+TRUJILLO.jpg" width="224" /></a><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">But neither Girl Brown nor Rickie Trujillo really has a good chance despite all their efforts. The odds are against them in their impoverished, bleak worlds that don't nurture children. Children have weak advocates and are left to fight with all they have against opponents they can't beat.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><i>The Naming of Girl</i> is a gothic novel, Rhonda Williams reminds us: It's the nature of that genre that all the characters are damaged people who have to live with their flaws and the effects of those flaws upon one another. But within that context, Girl Brown lives in a <i>real</i> world. The setting is a South Arkansas backwater in which we see rural poverty as it is almost never represented in contemporary literature.</span><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> </span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Ignorance, poverty, and the greed that attends them are as much characters as the people. And the people in Girl's world are her guardians who are a Viet Nam amputee and mean drunk, and his drug-addict girlfriend. They also house a mentally disabled adult man, nine-year-old Girl's best friend. Girl is bullied by three vicious</span><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> little boys egged on by her guardian. Her guardian puts a black teenager in the hospital after beating him up; the black boy's mother is the only civilized person in Girl's life. You want diversity? That's just the beginning.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><i>The Naming of Girl</i> is not <i>about</i> diversity, though. <i>Diversity is the nature of Girl's world</i>. Poverty, racism, retardation, drug addiction, and mean ignorance make "diversity" a very complex concept. All are intertwined, all reinforce and magnify one another. Girl is not fighting a single person or prejudice; the world is indeed against her and her strength is manifested in her fight on all fronts with only nine-year-old will to live.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><i>Rickie Trujillo, </i>a YA/crossover novel,<i> </i>is grittily realistic——based on a real character, in fact. But, as in <i>The Naming of Girl,</i> diversity is neither a single issue nor the point. The characters are all teenage boys living in the East San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles, many the children of undocumented Mexicans. As in <i>The Naming of Girl, </i>though, poverty, racism, juvenile crime, the failure of adult care and mentoring, and the impotence of dreams are as active enemies as rival crews of taggers and neighborhood gangs. But diversity? This is a novel for our moment of concern with Hispanic youth, urban poverty, and juvenile crime. Again, all of these issues aggregate and won't be teased into easy morals or examples.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Neither Rhonda Williams nor Nicholas Bradley rewards the reader with a simple conclusion for their protagonist. For each child, life is crushing. Do these books meet the diversity goal of reflecting diverse realities? Of course they do; alas they do. Are they uplifting? Yes. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">I chose these books to publish because each is complex and loving with its hard truths. Each is on the side of the angels, and each teaches the reader about the difficulty of remaining there, especially with a child's insufficient resources. Both of these novels should make us humble as adults; both remind young adults about the legitimacy of anger and the importance of strategy.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Race, lovelessness, vicious role models, poverty, ignorance, abandonment, experiencing or witnessing abuse: It <i>is</i> a diverse world, rarely packaged neatly. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><i>The Naming of Girl</i> and <i>Rickie Trujillo</i> are two brilliant novels for adults and teens alike to learn from and grow with.</span><br />
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STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-30902751098590074232017-03-03T06:47:00.004-08:002017-03-03T06:54:44.309-08:00Julianne Buchsbaum has died<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> <i>Goodbye fine rain falling,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Goodbye idea of the good. </i>Outside,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> daylight is blue against spruce trees</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">and a dead girl lives again in your memory</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">--Julianne Buchsbaum, "Phantoms of Utopia," <i>A Little Night Comes, </i>2005</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Julie Buchsbaum agreed in 2014 to be a member of the editorial board of my brand new press. She was, in her always modest way, proud to be asked, and we hoped that it would give her a center and focus to help her weary mind. She agreed because of our fast friendship, though she had her doubts. Lyme disease, from which she'd already been suffering acutely and painfully for several years had undermined her ability to concentrate or write, to think, to muster the energy to walk her tiny companion, the beloved dog Gilbert, whom she carefully tucked into his seatbelt whenever they drove out to buy groceries. She was living in a little house in Lawrence, Kansas, where she had been a librarian at the University, receiving medical care from doctors untutored in the treatment of Lyme, and living on disability.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">When I met Julie in 2002, we were both underemployed artists and thinkers at Kenyon College in Ohio. The poet (a Paul Engle Fellow from the Michener Foundation at the Iowa Writer's Workshop) had become a computer-competent librarian to feed herself, and we'd laugh (what else to do?) about her days spent "crawling under the desks of rude English professors to fix their computer problems." I was then a visual artist who had lectured at to the British Society of the History of Medicine, at that point having my fingers slapped by my former-elementary-school-teacher supervisor at the library circulation desk when I made mistakes. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Julie and I were displaced persons, mutual admirers, and instant soul-mates. </span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">We often met at the little bar next to the laundromat</span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> to drink (beer for the Milwaukee native, liquor for me) and spend long evenings laughing over the absurdity of our lives there. We'd imagine our liberations. She pursued hers. She bought a Honda Rebel motorcycle and rode her intellectual and spiritual restlessness to the University of Missouri, where she became a G. Ellsworth Huggins Fellow and earned her PhD in English. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnOCYMlCAFyr2Vz-rK7Kn46_fsV2yYzHKaszvA4u8TxKzfubB6qibESmYqTzxKfllgw9OayfF48F_dOecM0JNd_SSYI6BCxPaAuXo2jDcTKMPJrp46DlxE4s1fVkf75hr-xOAxUVqOKizP/s1600/Slowly%252C+slowly%252C+horses.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnOCYMlCAFyr2Vz-rK7Kn46_fsV2yYzHKaszvA4u8TxKzfubB6qibESmYqTzxKfllgw9OayfF48F_dOecM0JNd_SSYI6BCxPaAuXo2jDcTKMPJrp46DlxE4s1fVkf75hr-xOAxUVqOKizP/s200/Slowly%252C+slowly%252C+horses.jpg" width="129" /></a><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Julianne Buchsbaum published three volumes of poetry in her 47 years. <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Slowly-Horses-Julianne-Buchsbaum/dp/0967266874">Slowly, Slowly, Horses </a></i>was her first, from Ausable Press in 2001. I read it when we met and it was part of our love. Her powers of observation were so acute as to be almost a burden, and her bravery in seeing whatever there was acquainted her reader with the junk and bruises of the world in ways that raised them to the spiritual. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">During the years we were separated she published <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Little-Night-Comes-Julianne-Buchsbaum/dp/0974822965">A Little Night Comes, </a></i>Del Sol Press, 2005. Her last poetry was <i>The Apothecary's Daughter, </i>Penguin, 2011. <i><a href="http://nationalpoetryseries.org/books/the-apothecarys-heir/">The Apothecary's Heir</a></i> was a National Poetry Series winner, chosen by Lucie Brock-Broido. I was delighted to review this mesmerizing book in my blog, <i><a href="http://starr-review.blogspot.com/2012/08/new-poetry-from-julie-buchsbaum.html">Starr Review,</a> </i>in 2012.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Brock-Brodio's citation said, "<i>The Apothecary's Heir, </i>is riddled with 'venom and wonder,' heavy with the freight of mystery and magical thinking. This is a world where a branch 'is deranging the air,' where flies 'burgeon' in a 'broth of gold light.'...The poems are elixirs."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">In April, 2017, Upper Hand Press will publish its first poetry, Ann Cefola's remarkable dual-narrative work, <i><a href="https://upperhandpress.com/publications/free-ferry">Free Ferry</a>, </i>a book fine poetry connected both to ancient myth and to the science of the atom bomb. I am very proud that Cefola's book is the inaugural volume of my press's <i>Booktree Poetry Series,</i> named in Julianne Buchsbaum's honor. <i>Free Ferry </i>is particularly suitable: Julie, having studied classics, philosophy, and the history of science—all in depth—would have delighted in breadth of interest and in the fine language.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">I depended on her living to receive a copy and to rejoice with her and Ann together. I am heartbroken. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">If you read Buchbaum's poetry, think of what I strive for at Upper Hand Press; for what is fine and penetrating in thought, perception, language, and insight.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Ann Starr</span></div>
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STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-13952764202207598982017-02-03T08:39:00.000-08:002017-09-10T06:45:32.441-07:002016 to 2017: Janus? or Castor and Pollux?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">February 4, 2017</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">I WANT OUR READERS, NEW AND FAMILIAR, TO KNOW WHAT WONDERFUL THINGS ARE COMING IN 2017! (Or in the remainder of 2016?)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">2016 was a mighty year for a little press, but even as I write this post to tell your about our publishing plans for 2017, I have to admit that in publishing, imprints are a very simplistic way to tell time. </span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Books gestate in many dimensions. Publication is merely the delivery date and marks the end of the hard and complex labor.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdvUH4K3FLAdSjJggXHNwdqlKOqjYQvjC6wEy_YG1tZNUrmYP7GlLRS0g-4K1vzOYsW8LE5mkA3E9DQZTjsme17rwYFv45Bg_xQjnNjXkWXS_sZi4dAW8Ov2BX_PT3upDLbiNjTZRDLEk9/s1600/Louise+at+Norman+edited.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdvUH4K3FLAdSjJggXHNwdqlKOqjYQvjC6wEy_YG1tZNUrmYP7GlLRS0g-4K1vzOYsW8LE5mkA3E9DQZTjsme17rwYFv45Bg_xQjnNjXkWXS_sZi4dAW8Ov2BX_PT3upDLbiNjTZRDLEk9/s200/Louise+at+Norman+edited.jpg" width="187" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Louise Farmer Smith</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">In calendar 2016, Upper Hand Press published Zach Snyder's <i>Clyde Doesn't Go Outside, </i>the second edition of Louise Farmer Smith's <i>One Hundred Years of Marriage </i><b>and </b>her short story collection, <i>Cadillac, Oklahoma. </i>We published first novels from Rhonda G. Williams (<i>The Naming of Girl) </i>and Herta Feely (<i>Saving Phoebe Murrow). </i>That's five fine books from a one-woman, scrappy micro-press. I will allow myself a little swagger here. Not only did we manage to work through all the details of design, typesetting, printing, and promoting on each, but these wonderful writers agreed to work with <i>me!</i> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoX4ZFryExZZZRwbv5doKlXanYScEZFbTsaPqVKONfQ0TFg4P_HaM1-XJM8liJt_rKdHD3-1FsDxYGpVuNdV347boueY6lcj3hTFHa6udxaL0BpsShV9NfE674bWZNuQhsOI7z3lC2-Lgn/s1600/Rhonda+Williams+at+bookshop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoX4ZFryExZZZRwbv5doKlXanYScEZFbTsaPqVKONfQ0TFg4P_HaM1-XJM8liJt_rKdHD3-1FsDxYGpVuNdV347boueY6lcj3hTFHa6udxaL0BpsShV9NfE674bWZNuQhsOI7z3lC2-Lgn/s200/Rhonda+Williams+at+bookshop.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhonda G. Williams</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">So 2016 is far from over, and 2017 began months ago. Janus looking backwards and forwards at once? Or the Dioscuri answering our prayers for favorable winds? <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Herta Feely</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">2017 began back when poets Ann Cefola and </span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Jonathan Bracker submitted manuscripts to me (</span><i style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Free Ferry </i><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">and </span><i style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Concerning Poetry)</i><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">, and when Nicholas Bradley persisted with ever-more polished and poignant revisions of </span><i style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Rickie Trujillo, </i><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">which we will bring out this fall. </span><i style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">She Can Find Her Way: Women Travelers at Their Best, </i><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">a twenty-six-essay anthology of writing by solo women travelers, has been in the works for many months: from an initial call for submissions almost a year ago through cover design and typesetting the first of five volumes, which are in the works at the moment. These four 2017 books began in 2016 or 2015—though the authors will surely laugh or groan, knowing how their works were germs in their imaginations for years before I ever heard of them!</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Jonathan Bracker</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Ann Cefola<br /></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">In larger companies, books are published in seasons, to be on the market in time for holiday sales, etc. While appreciating the importance of seasonal timing, Upper Hand Press hopes its readers will join us in appreciating a <i>seasonless</i> approach to good books too. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><b>"I do think that rereading is the test of literature: A book or poem or story that can be fully appreciated on one reading is entertainment," says a friend of mine. We celebrate every new book we publish and hope you anticipate each of our new titles in 2017.But you'll find that we never stop reminding you about the books we've published before. <i>Every book we publish should stand the test of time, call your back and be well worth discovering again and again.</i></b></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><b><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWlGnLgDZw6WSEK3pY8UO_f3PueJSWcUijhP8-hmhu-zpwOYeJY-2ZV_d5YdI8lwiS4VvwTNT3DnbzoosRgsZTzXB1gUSjzCGx4EazspHOFNdu16NPi_azmoMnq-Hy5BIvh8AUrvD6uTta/s200/Zach+Snyder+author+photo+jpg.jpg" width="140" /></b></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><b>Zach Snyder</b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><b>So here's to a great new year at Upper Hand Press for all readers; and here, too, is to the continuum, where new and old look forward and back at once, and blow favorable breezes to keep us moving ahead!</b></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><b>--Ann Starr, Publisher and Editor</b></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><b>PS: Until Valentine's Day, 2017, our entire stock</b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><b>is 50% off! </b></span></div>
STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-73142059092447315012016-05-17T04:14:00.001-07:002016-05-17T04:14:49.400-07:00BIG BOOX, Discovery and Sales<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3sY0KqA2iwldlXWpx68dDkHsj8faKiaVKgLesI4EiGq-2vCqlroF3YUzO05LnKJ3IyKUVo6Ls1RPuXW7fQjS-fJuhAebdpTTD2CmTeWPUGbYSKHZq-AAEBYQgM6eT3ALtv3Cr1vQVDNTg/s1600/IMG_1901.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3sY0KqA2iwldlXWpx68dDkHsj8faKiaVKgLesI4EiGq-2vCqlroF3YUzO05LnKJ3IyKUVo6Ls1RPuXW7fQjS-fJuhAebdpTTD2CmTeWPUGbYSKHZq-AAEBYQgM6eT3ALtv3Cr1vQVDNTg/s200/IMG_1901.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Book Expo America is the annual trade fair for the publishing industry, where everyone involved in the production (authors to book binders) and marketing of books comes together to mingle, show off, share, buy, sell, and tout the big products (aka <i>books)</i> they are pitching for the fall and winter. BEA was held at McCormick Place in Chicago, the vast, spotlessly modern convention center. This was my first trip to the fair. As a young publisher, I went full of curiosity and excitement; eager to learn. The amazement and absurdity were bonuses.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">I attended helpful workshops hosted by industry leaders on topics like making better use of the data that we publishers provide about our new titles when we complete industry questionnaires. I learned how to use these data forms to push sales. I learned how to put Advanced Reader Copies (galleys) on line to make them available to more people. All this is about <i>discovery: </i>ways to lead </span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">librarians, book buyers, and reviewers to my authors' books, somewhat easing the pressure of active marketing. Hooray and thank you, Book Expo!</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUcV8ajSgMXb5PK3n-3NVGPRLZmyKjUkYWiNidyHfEnN7TrUN-x3RcHyiojz_O2QvrQd21bnhEpmAo4oOeooZnECKsB3d-X3Bq4RwGGENyFenHlSfuEEAyz3_JbDnfNKreGxSdt-iU2w8c/s1600/IMG_1917.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUcV8ajSgMXb5PK3n-3NVGPRLZmyKjUkYWiNidyHfEnN7TrUN-x3RcHyiojz_O2QvrQd21bnhEpmAo4oOeooZnECKsB3d-X3Bq4RwGGENyFenHlSfuEEAyz3_JbDnfNKreGxSdt-iU2w8c/s200/IMG_1917.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">All of us present for these workshops were deeply engaged. We were wide-eyed and alert as Power Point slides flashed by. iPhone cameras snapped at screens that revealed savvier sales strategies. All of us need to sell more books, so while we listened, each was undoubtedly projecting how to improve book discovery a.s.a.p. back home. I sure was.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Still, oddly, the whole experience of Book Expo made me ask an illogical question: <i>Are more books sales always an unquestioned good?</i></span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgem011jS6M13jO6RLYatAnOYchqJcImvcNeFk9xYf2CnbtMtbP9Hpcy45V2v7qFtmq0F2mUWIvAkk9u7OOf0phpXbmrXWdjgE9VIsYpdA_Dx3WNzTUbba-egzqlc0nuGWyPyl7As0XvsTB/s1600/IMG_1907.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgem011jS6M13jO6RLYatAnOYchqJcImvcNeFk9xYf2CnbtMtbP9Hpcy45V2v7qFtmq0F2mUWIvAkk9u7OOf0phpXbmrXWdjgE9VIsYpdA_Dx3WNzTUbba-egzqlc0nuGWyPyl7As0XvsTB/s200/IMG_1907.JPG" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">I sure want more book sales for Upper Hand Press! Sales earn money for the Press to be self-sustaining. Increased sales will allow me to compensate my authors as they deserve to be. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Beyond the simple and obvious need for a business to have income, big sales are the deep heart of <i>why </i>I am publishing. I represent <i>authors whom I have chosen because I value them for the importance of their writing.</i> They should have as many readers as possible. My company is here to serve my authors and to serve readers by introducing them to the literary pleasures and valuable human content these authors offer. Their years of</span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> hard work——the cultivation of their art——and what I do to promote them <i>should</i> make a living for all of us. </span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Publishing is intense, hopeful work, not all of it creative in the sense of inspired.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHGz8cxNVlwpf2ASxGX5VvBd83MXs7A7NUKtzda1atLoRouH-HvYa7rnhVjTNUyyFOVNFqDkY3Bbfw_swIHj0kdTi0yvDwsDdxwtXhG0GH8iOveoGPOIJVqg5gESWzSXH7GH_HLzT1Hp2N/s1600/IMG_1894.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHGz8cxNVlwpf2ASxGX5VvBd83MXs7A7NUKtzda1atLoRouH-HvYa7rnhVjTNUyyFOVNFqDkY3Bbfw_swIHj0kdTi0yvDwsDdxwtXhG0GH8iOveoGPOIJVqg5gESWzSXH7GH_HLzT1Hp2N/s200/IMG_1894.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The greater our sales, the more readers we are reaching. When we sell books, the more money I have to bring them to ever-wider audiences. It's a hopeful cycle, and one I expect to grow over the months and years. The reputation of each book and each author should keep growing to acquire a devoted following and an expanding one. </span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLt5YSY3AaCPAYNwke6Cb4aQdXO6flXXbhBn28u_oESk_QNBVxIkHsUas0kaAMa7Y4wyke5c0M1xo0hhkMNJL_upomFB_6wCSD-goMJd2JDZ6zsUQxCZqbIkO9EPXLoOmxcyXVZYwq4wYK/s1600/IMG_1903.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLt5YSY3AaCPAYNwke6Cb4aQdXO6flXXbhBn28u_oESk_QNBVxIkHsUas0kaAMa7Y4wyke5c0M1xo0hhkMNJL_upomFB_6wCSD-goMJd2JDZ6zsUQxCZqbIkO9EPXLoOmxcyXVZYwq4wYK/s200/IMG_1903.JPG" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">The exhibition hall </span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">upstairs at BEA </span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">is where the expected and usual image of book-selling success was on display: banners, best-sellers, authors' head-shot pictured against back-grounds of snappy copy; people lined up for hours to have their free ARCs of new titles signed by sleekly-dressed authors.</span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> In short: It's Hollywood, it's Entertainment, where books are the byproduct of brand marketing. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">This is where you find the branding and sales of a few stars whom we have ceased to think of as authors and understand to be entertainers. These writers are often as good as those who don't get large contracts. Still, I find myself wondering what the writers' talents and years of work have brought to the banners and what well-funded marketing, publicity, and graphics departments have. Perhaps there's an imbalance?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Consciously or not, this is what most note-taking workshop aspirants are aiming toward. It's become the image of what success as a writer is "supposed to be." On a smaller scale it's front table displays at Barnes and Noble: the anointed</span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> selection of a few BIG BOOX. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPy-l_Vy7AUDQ1vZRQmelXOpLla9ulmtNchOuKLWbzw_IcoqOqa4rLpSTJzKWWQGFx0pG6UEs1EYVu7CKz9RAZLoLq_756yQ2xTaXY1nQ63IJBsrjVBO16CHaocOpMe5gs88atdrXBR8t4/s1600/IMG_1948.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="289" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPy-l_Vy7AUDQ1vZRQmelXOpLla9ulmtNchOuKLWbzw_IcoqOqa4rLpSTJzKWWQGFx0pG6UEs1EYVu7CKz9RAZLoLq_756yQ2xTaXY1nQ63IJBsrjVBO16CHaocOpMe5gs88atdrXBR8t4/s320/IMG_1948.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Are <i>more</i> book sales an unquestioned good? What do we mean by <i>more? </i>The question is <i>which</i> books are publishers out to sell?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Most publishers have front and back lists, the front list being the newly released books for the current season. These are launched with the fabulously expensive and extravagant marketing campaigns that make Book Expo such a showcase for graphic- and set- designers, and a Candyland of give-away ARCS, catalogues, branded tote bags, and little chocolate candies. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Each publisher ("vendor") had a booth, many big enough to be arranged like stores with two or three sides of well-lit shelves of their books, decorated with posters and mountains of give-away </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">ARCs. There were easy chairs for reading, carpeting deep enough to sink you weary toes into; tables for signings, and plenty of amiable staff to lure you into the books. While many of the company's books are displayed, the new books are conspicuously featured and are distributed to all comers freely and, one supposes, at significant expense to the publisher. Make no mistake: these featured books are the ones you will read about in prominent reviews and popular magazines; whose authors will appear and on television and radio interviews. The marketing and publicity machines behind them are phenomenal.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">I have nothing at all against these much-touted books and certainly not against their fortunate and hard-working authors. But it certainly does worry me that so much expense, fanfare, and public notice is focused on so very few titles when so many worthy authors and manuscripts go begging. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">It distressed me—it concerned me—to see such unflinching confidence in a publishing industry that show little regard to promote variety, depth, or books as a consistent matter of literary culture as opposed to commerce and entertainment. Here, books were almost a byproduct of the industry that has grown around them; they are the by-products of publicity, marketing, and the services that provide then. Don't authors get the ball rolling?</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIpVEnLlXd43AAhLst1KqueR1_KDBgx5QZoM6kMBQjBgdVSDN-O0awNnvKMxEjUJHV0JGlOx3J3clcAg3TF0lPjkDy9legSCpscM9G4u5_hv5QVdKgm_jTPOfN9z-vM3lnaL8qtrUOsWkx/s1600/IMG_1950.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIpVEnLlXd43AAhLst1KqueR1_KDBgx5QZoM6kMBQjBgdVSDN-O0awNnvKMxEjUJHV0JGlOx3J3clcAg3TF0lPjkDy9legSCpscM9G4u5_hv5QVdKgm_jTPOfN9z-vM3lnaL8qtrUOsWkx/s320/IMG_1950.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">At Upper Hand Press, may we make our sales by bringing out good books and attracting readers to the minds and deeds of our fine writers. Some of our authors have submitted to and been rejected by the presses that are filling McCormick place with banners for one or two books, giving away thousands of galleys for those couple of titles, and planning Hollywood media campaigns for what once was called literature. Some of our authors have been accepted by those presses and chose us instead. You might begin to see why.</span><br />
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STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-29970598257585678012016-04-22T10:53:00.001-07:002016-04-22T10:53:38.016-07:00Independent Bookstore Day April 30<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><a href="http://www.indiebookstoreday.com/">Independent Bookstore Day</a> is Saturday, April 30. Show up. Buy books! You know you've been keeping a list. It's in your head; it's on all those scraps you've torn out from the <i>New York Time Book Review</i> or <i>Entertainment Weekly</i>; it's your mental list of titles rejected by your book club. And—oh yes!—it's those Upper Hand books you keep planning to order and pre-order. Do it on April 30 at your local independent bookstore.</span><div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">It's the treat your children love, to pick out books of their own to keep and to read aloud to you. Do they have birthday parties coming up? Help them pick the "gifts that keep on giving." </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">You'll find the recommendations of your well-read book sellers posted in the stacks to give you stimulating ideas for good books to read. Those people are there to share their informed enthusiasm. They sincerely want to get to know you and your tastes. They want you to keep coming back to buy books, but they also seek you out to be an active member of a community engaged by ideas and discussion.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHKwAGUL6MHJ9uYwE2fJ-bCx5tgVsKcQpeOZvrHxZS1WL2FDsFB9TGCcbLy2opzDO5xAZRcizgOAs18CIMa44f0q661XN7Mc43tdD6NgRFftAEyhW2ZAk5yAyWUrDBUBhriR6tKl1RPX3h/s1600/Logo%252C+full+page+for+screen+viewing+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHKwAGUL6MHJ9uYwE2fJ-bCx5tgVsKcQpeOZvrHxZS1WL2FDsFB9TGCcbLy2opzDO5xAZRcizgOAs18CIMa44f0q661XN7Mc43tdD6NgRFftAEyhW2ZAk5yAyWUrDBUBhriR6tKl1RPX3h/s200/Logo%252C+full+page+for+screen+viewing+copy.jpg" width="160" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">The people who own and operate independent bookstores have bucked the tide. It wasn't long ago that small, local, independently-owned stores were closing apace, being replaced by enormous chain stores. That trend meant—and means—much less variety for readers as mega-stores choose to deal with mega-publishers offering a simplified selection of books and more of fewer authors. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">The resurgence of independents run by inspiring people determined to make the difference in their communities is a boon for readers and for writers. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><b>If independent bookstores were only to offer you the books available in Barnes and Noble, though, wouldn't we think something were missing?</b> The link between chain bookstores and the conglomerate book publishers is established. Small publishers aren't welcome. We look to the support of the independent stores to help introduce the voices of our authors—the authors we publish <i>because</i> they have distinctive, unusual, and <i>independent</i> outlooks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">When you visit and celebrate your excellent independent bookstore, look for our books on the shelves. If you don't find them, ask for them: Order them for yourself, and help create demand for Upper Hand titles with the individually-run stores that need your business too.</span></div>
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STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-52662305275971038232016-04-15T08:21:00.003-07:002016-04-15T08:21:45.334-07:00Love Triangle: You, Your Library, and Upper Hand Press<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJAq_6TxVS0yl9S1Ahtl5_eKnOmBMum__Q0dtHGkkBdG88hRv_ToqyogyNMlsfmL4StCyuUp1rNo85V21cDF35j2T3GF5z0RjNcEiLjLfJrQQQuVr6-WXatOK11SRzOjFDOQkFfo1lpd92/s1600/Logo%252C+full+page+for+screen+viewing+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJAq_6TxVS0yl9S1Ahtl5_eKnOmBMum__Q0dtHGkkBdG88hRv_ToqyogyNMlsfmL4StCyuUp1rNo85V21cDF35j2T3GF5z0RjNcEiLjLfJrQQQuVr6-WXatOK11SRzOjFDOQkFfo1lpd92/s320/Logo%252C+full+page+for+screen+viewing+copy.jpg" width="256" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">If you are reading this, I hope you count yourself among the lovers of the indie movement, supporters of this independent press and, we hope, the taste-making independent book stores that serve you.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">"Independent" usually means "small." In the publishing world, there are degrees of small. My one-person press is called "micro-"…for a reason!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">An adjective that is too often unthinkingly attached to "small," though, is "struggling," as in "a small, struggling, independent press." It sounds so sad and ill-fated. Sorry, folks: This press is anything but.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">I hope that any going concern continues to struggle. There needs to be a continual urgency to the effort to make publishing work for the authors I've signed and for the whom readers I want to meet those writers. It's not a matter only of making splashy debuts, but of keeping the shoulder to the grindstone for the long run—keeping Upper Hand books in print and promoting them continually.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Still, we have to sell books on a steady, regular basis if we will be able to stick to our mission. <b>One of the greatest buyers of books is libraries. And the best ways to get books into libraries is to have library patrons request them.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw5zl49djNbYVSKSj4P2DvTA4WA3ImnaMUDUeD91IkuIQDOBR7wDXr-UhKaQU05e5k59gpWO1Y0EVKv42xM-s2G-ozagy8DO2vLC3JFsLe0s99-XHS3HspFzz80zskbCc0DpOxPqsOPlIO/s1600/100+2d+ed+cover+Foreword.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw5zl49djNbYVSKSj4P2DvTA4WA3ImnaMUDUeD91IkuIQDOBR7wDXr-UhKaQU05e5k59gpWO1Y0EVKv42xM-s2G-ozagy8DO2vLC3JFsLe0s99-XHS3HspFzz80zskbCc0DpOxPqsOPlIO/s200/100+2d+ed+cover+Foreword.tiff" width="135" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw5zl49djNbYVSKSj4P2DvTA4WA3ImnaMUDUeD91IkuIQDOBR7wDXr-UhKaQU05e5k59gpWO1Y0EVKv42xM-s2G-ozagy8DO2vLC3JFsLe0s99-XHS3HspFzz80zskbCc0DpOxPqsOPlIO/s1600/100+2d+ed+cover+Foreword.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><i style="text-align: left;"><br /></i></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw5zl49djNbYVSKSj4P2DvTA4WA3ImnaMUDUeD91IkuIQDOBR7wDXr-UhKaQU05e5k59gpWO1Y0EVKv42xM-s2G-ozagy8DO2vLC3JFsLe0s99-XHS3HspFzz80zskbCc0DpOxPqsOPlIO/s1600/100+2d+ed+cover+Foreword.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><i style="text-align: left;">Please support Upper Hand Press at your library. </i><span style="text-align: left;">The next time you go, fill out a reader request form asking them to add one of our books to the collection. Ask for another on the trip after that!</span></a></b></span></div>
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<i style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="https://upperhandpress.com/publications/clyde-doesnt-go-outside-by-zachary-snyder">Clyde Doesn't Go Outside</a> </i><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">has already been collected by many children's departments. It's a great story-time book. Our novels—</span><i style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="https://upperhandpress.com/publications/one-hundred-years-of-marriage-by-louise-farmer-smith">One Hundred Years of Marriage</a>, <a href="https://upperhandpress.com/publications/the-naming-of-girl-by-rhonda-g-williams">The Naming of Girl</a>, <a href="https://upperhandpress.com/publications/saving-phoebe-murrow-by-herta-b-feely">Saving Phoebe Murrow</a>, </i><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">and </span><i style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><a href="https://upperhandpress.com/publications/cadillac-oklahoma-by-louise-farmer-smith">Cadillac, Oklahoma</a>—</i><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">are fascinating reads for both individuals and book clubs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Libraries can pre-order books that have not yet been published (as you can too). Library orders can be made through the Upper Hand Press website or through the library's favorite distributor. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJzG4micQOWS2T9FWgS70KaK6el0H8j4CuDkUmP1qKiFOWX7jADVnrYVKJh3_qXix9Yj9OJAsFxFuCyHQeSPHlOxIGxKhMsiH0RUASaQkFHI6C2KXV-szZc0R6vdQJQC5c3DqURE9Os-HF/s1600/Clyde+cover.jpg+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJzG4micQOWS2T9FWgS70KaK6el0H8j4CuDkUmP1qKiFOWX7jADVnrYVKJh3_qXix9Yj9OJAsFxFuCyHQeSPHlOxIGxKhMsiH0RUASaQkFHI6C2KXV-szZc0R6vdQJQC5c3DqURE9Os-HF/s200/Clyde+cover.jpg+.jpg" width="193" /></a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4YssdFe6mT0Rz1F-c8hqKEEeYx7jcN_d3kSiqGTomXhpqC6tR2Rn-NH_7WW7SkVhWSo0IjOu-9AhfY0PexCA2wAe57nfknjSI5th1TG33vp61hylPGhyER8IT1Pj8rYiXgWlc22UjjJQc/s1600/Naming+of+Girl+Cover+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4YssdFe6mT0Rz1F-c8hqKEEeYx7jcN_d3kSiqGTomXhpqC6tR2Rn-NH_7WW7SkVhWSo0IjOu-9AhfY0PexCA2wAe57nfknjSI5th1TG33vp61hylPGhyER8IT1Pj8rYiXgWlc22UjjJQc/s200/Naming+of+Girl+Cover+copy.jpg" width="125" /></a><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">If you get in the habit of requesting Upper Hand Press books at your library, you can keep the "struggling" away from our name and give us the Upper Hand more quickly.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Thanks for making the effort!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">—Ann Starr</span><br />
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STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-53772374251728300262016-04-11T07:01:00.000-07:002016-04-11T07:01:16.296-07:00Consumer Education: BUY OUR BOOKS—But please, DON'T BUY THEM ON AMAZON<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Dg-2Gyzr2BJc8I25WAcAONcOOfGCqA7-fI-xzrDx2ILEReuv2bVryAyFDUbPwOik4p8Jmn9FLpav8n-YimZ4Ev1YWgoO1eXLtNvgPoNpfEGTx1EA2GNGPHCgVxdV7MtYZl6rOtxl4BZA/s1600/Clyde+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Dg-2Gyzr2BJc8I25WAcAONcOOfGCqA7-fI-xzrDx2ILEReuv2bVryAyFDUbPwOik4p8Jmn9FLpav8n-YimZ4Ev1YWgoO1eXLtNvgPoNpfEGTx1EA2GNGPHCgVxdV7MtYZl6rOtxl4BZA/s200/Clyde+cover.jpg" width="193" /></a><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Upper Hand Press's 2016 is a big year for a small press: We have already published Zach Snyder's unique, quirky, and spectacularly beautiful picture book, <i>Clyde Doesn't Go Outside. </i></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii2kXnGBxUZb97Fts5r-frMOMqZ-HJeQrocfaEzgCAdW3Bm7l3wt2_Viqz0bpvOYSSuVIeTvV2fWemHcS63eKU2Dd6cSn3DwY6sb6Fu1jaK8uJqFz5Md5Iad2qEitKqegQiZ_LPEWCSLkg/s1600/Naming+of+Girl+Cover+200+px+wide.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii2kXnGBxUZb97Fts5r-frMOMqZ-HJeQrocfaEzgCAdW3Bm7l3wt2_Viqz0bpvOYSSuVIeTvV2fWemHcS63eKU2Dd6cSn3DwY6sb6Fu1jaK8uJqFz5Md5Iad2qEitKqegQiZ_LPEWCSLkg/s200/Naming+of+Girl+Cover+200+px+wide.jpg" width="125" /></a><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">We expect Rhonda J. Williams' debut novel, <i>The Naming of Girl,</i> to make a splash with adults and young adults both. We may have just lost Harper Lee, but the themes of <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i> reappear in Williams' book, where a young, rural southern girl learns through tough experience about racial conflict and human nature. Girl Brown presents charged issues to us in a way that is challenging, often funny, and recognizably contemporary. The books is conversation-starter for our moment in America.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigZzZfSDd612cHWTb0gvgHEZ3x80ynqilfwHd9OCJii2Zzgku8n1UUfTA_NGNpXtoHDRdj3HYr8GmNmnR8z2pJ4lIiENEMxER_vMI9a4zzdCFB_PV_iAMbCqlPgPwGMac6H4FeBV5l9HLM/s1600/Cadillac%252C+Oklahoma+COVER+jpg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigZzZfSDd612cHWTb0gvgHEZ3x80ynqilfwHd9OCJii2Zzgku8n1UUfTA_NGNpXtoHDRdj3HYr8GmNmnR8z2pJ4lIiENEMxER_vMI9a4zzdCFB_PV_iAMbCqlPgPwGMac6H4FeBV5l9HLM/s200/Cadillac%252C+Oklahoma+COVER+jpg.jpg" width="158" /></a><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">During the summer and fall we will release three books, including a second edition of Louise Farmer Smith's classic <i>One Hundred Years of Marriage, </i>which will be expanded by book club notes and an interview with the author. Smith's new novel, <i>Cadillac, Oklahoma</i>, will come out in November, introducing readers to the kind, colorful, shocking, risible, and always whole-hearted folks of this Great Plains town—one that might remind you a little bit of Winesburg, Ohio.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiV_uJKiTa4Slk2_HuIa4F0LeN82njj02sO7SrwOiQf-EYm4z44UqdkgMhLvLx3qkjK4p9fWsfv7gXAUsSIaHVVvidKhk2dG_bH3r2XIKFiTL9roVWfdaRwMt4LNjmi1faTsjoxpcHtbkp/s1600/Saving+Phoebe+Murrow+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiV_uJKiTa4Slk2_HuIa4F0LeN82njj02sO7SrwOiQf-EYm4z44UqdkgMhLvLx3qkjK4p9fWsfv7gXAUsSIaHVVvidKhk2dG_bH3r2XIKFiTL9roVWfdaRwMt4LNjmi1faTsjoxpcHtbkp/s200/Saving+Phoebe+Murrow+cover.jpg" width="130" /></a><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">We are proud to debut another novelist, Herta B. Feely, with <i>Saving Phoebe Murrow. </i>Feely's fiction, set in Washington D.C., mixes a sympathetic study of stresses within a socially well-placed family with the suspense of a </span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">crime</span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"> story. We follow a case of teen cyber-bullying that has extreme consequences for parents, children, and community structure.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Now that you know what lies ahead, BUY OUR BOOKS! Be the first to own them by ordering them right now. They will be shipped directly to you upon publication (see <a href="http://www.upperhandpress.com/">Upper Hand Press</a> and be directed to ordering information.)</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil0P9wgjhQg4MAaXaeX2upwTp8j2lCRKiP2d2pDKp20C5eSKBov8xlUfntiSf8d_222aX8Omntxm9XacepDF5IAAffE6hWvwqbrW-HKDkgrtVrHZXDFYx1q32ubijXRmUV8mNzDeR-BRoc/s1600/100+2d+ed+cover.jpg++copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil0P9wgjhQg4MAaXaeX2upwTp8j2lCRKiP2d2pDKp20C5eSKBov8xlUfntiSf8d_222aX8Omntxm9XacepDF5IAAffE6hWvwqbrW-HKDkgrtVrHZXDFYx1q32ubijXRmUV8mNzDeR-BRoc/s200/100+2d+ed+cover.jpg++copy.jpg" width="135" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Many readers order and pre-order books from Amazon as a matter of course. <b><i>Please, order ours from us or from an independent bookstore!</i> This matters.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Let me explain. When you order a book directly from a small press (which will fulfill your order immediately, just like Amazon) the press receives</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><i>one hundred per cent </i>of the cover price. We sell <i>One Hundred Years of Marriage </i>for $18.00; we collect $18.00 to plow back into the Press. The author gets a twenty-percent royalty on the sale.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">When you order the book through an independent book store, the bookstore keeps forty percent of the cover price to pay their rent, to pay their employees in their rewarding jobs, to contribute to their communities with their book clubs, story times, author visits and programming related to their communities. Those stores are citizens of their localities, and enrich them. When Upper Hand Press and our authors receive sixty percent of the cover price, we participate in communities of book lovers. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieedck4XT1PGm6_2cpSf-q33dLoeuz1pVhtKQmOM12JscDXIbRo1MK_UdJTY4ZMx281EUNB46vzG7W7UxiaTzxz5H8cZOTR_tJwcvV36vGTLUqScXrKjm0s_j2gUbf115qXJKq69U4TR_q/s1600/Logo%252C+full+page+for+screen+viewing+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieedck4XT1PGm6_2cpSf-q33dLoeuz1pVhtKQmOM12JscDXIbRo1MK_UdJTY4ZMx281EUNB46vzG7W7UxiaTzxz5H8cZOTR_tJwcvV36vGTLUqScXrKjm0s_j2gUbf115qXJKq69U4TR_q/s200/Logo%252C+full+page+for+screen+viewing+copy.jpg" width="160" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Amazon, on the other hand, keeps a whopping <i style="font-weight: bold;">fifty-five percent</i><b> of the cover price</b><i style="font-weight: bold;"> </i>of any book they sell. If they sell our $18.00 book, Upper Hand Press receives less than half, only $8.10. It's a rule of thumb in any business that in order to make a profit, you must at least double the cost of a product. <b>The only one to profit from Amazon is Amazon.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: courier new, courier, monospace;">Amazon is a bad habit you may not know you have, but it's one that cheats all the authors and publishers whose books you buy. The "great deals" you get don't come from the massive corporation's pockets: They come from the pockets of writers and publishers like Upper Hand. This press is trying to make enough money to keep going, to grow and to bring you more great authors who don't fit the Big Box mold. Please, be sure to buy them outside the Box too.</span><br />
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STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-57565331570634770812015-12-18T13:34:00.002-08:002015-12-18T13:35:35.331-08:00Album Notes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><span style="color: #221f1f;">Morgan Powell's </span><i style="color: #221f1f; font-size: 16px;">On and Off the Score</i><span style="color: #221f1f;"> is now for sale on </span><span style="color: lime;"><a href="http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/morganpowell1" style="font-size: 16px;">CD Baby</a>.</span><span style="color: #221f1f;"> It's worth looking at that site because it gives a lot of space for new information. There's a new bio, and there's also an excellent essay by the artist, who is well aware of the challenges his music poses for many listeners. I've copied his essay here, since it's an eloquent discussion of why it's worth it to find the patience for new experiences in art.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cc0000;"><b><span style="font-family: "arial";">Powell on Powell</span></b><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12px;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="color: #cc0000;">CDs
are classified by musical genre to simplify shopping. My work has never fit
into a genre, though, because I’ve never composed with attention to traditional
formula or system. This is handmade music, written out of my head with pencil,
paper, and occasional recourse to a piano. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="color: #cc0000;">I
have never used preexisting structures; I don’t use computers; I’m not
affiliated with any school of composition. I borrow no licks or lines. If you
sample each of the works on “On and Off the Score,” the diversity of work will
be clear, for no piece sounds like any other. You won’t find a “style.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="color: #cc0000;">The
roster of musicians on this CD in itself hints at the indefinable quality of my
music. These are all world-class performers, yet they are at the top of
disparate genres: avant-garde, jazz, experimental and improvisational music;
orchestral, chamber, and solo performance. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="color: #cc0000;">I
composed the works on this CD for these, my wide-ranging world of friends,
collaborators, and colleagues. They came from all over the literal map to
record this music: Jim Staley, New York City; John Fonville, San Diego; Ray
Sasaki, Austin; Steve Butters and Tomeka Reid, Chicago; Eric Mandat and Ron
Coulter, Carbondale, Illinois; Edwin London and Howie Smith, Cleveland; Ariane
Alexander, Philadelphia. Several of us are rooted in Champaign/Urbana, with
ties to the University of Illinois: Dorothy Martirano, Michael Cameron, Armand
Beaudoin and I. The Cleveland Chamber Symphony has its home city; the Tone Road
Ramblers do just that. In all, over fifty musicians participated in recording
the music on this CD.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="color: #cc0000;">The
oldest recording, “Zelanski Medley,” for the ineluctable Modality and
Contemporary Chamber Players was in 1972 and the most recent, “Miscreant
Angels” for Ariane Alexander, in 2015.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="color: #cc0000;">I
am grateful to all of these performers and to Ann Starr, the publisher of Upper
Hand Press, who had the faith and courage to publish this CD of what many will
consider unorthodox, strange, and difficult music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="color: #cc0000;">And
all of those adjectives can be legitimately applied—if you forget that we are
deeply programmed to hear only consonant music. The question is: whether it is
worth it to you to experience dissonance and new sound; to discover the
satisfactions that lie beyond your expectations? That depends on where you want
to go with your sensibility. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="color: #cc0000;">This
is not music you will relax to on the first or second hearing. Rather, it is
music to listen to one piece at a time. With repeated listening, your mind
adjusts to its sound and workings, and it discovers a new world on the other
side of your patience. Science has established that Western minds are
programmed to hear consonant music; but, with exposure, the mind will not only
adjust to dissonance but will come to like it and be excited by where it takes
you.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="color: #cc0000;">Again,
is the experience worth it? I decided a long time ago that it is. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="color: #cc0000;">MP</span></span></div>
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STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-8495891826936479332015-11-10T12:44:00.000-08:002015-11-11T08:32:11.542-08:00Business, art, and opportunity for a small press<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4__3xIgOFhHpRi1yonyf01SRChEWl7UaHFbwhRGbm05FFXUVOzshmJ80ewvlklZfCkk-2z2SFChMkRgvy0nYC8TY7dLsjCyflCN5lotu5Mo_Nb-2IfB2rc2QOsPhmLxLh7rYFTPO-dyO7/s1600/INSERT+MP+CD+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4__3xIgOFhHpRi1yonyf01SRChEWl7UaHFbwhRGbm05FFXUVOzshmJ80ewvlklZfCkk-2z2SFChMkRgvy0nYC8TY7dLsjCyflCN5lotu5Mo_Nb-2IfB2rc2QOsPhmLxLh7rYFTPO-dyO7/s200/INSERT+MP+CD+cover.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">You would think that a publisher's first goal has to be selling enough to cover costs and </span><span style="font-size: 17px;">remain</span><span style="font-size: 13pt;"> in business. And in truth, as the owner of a fledgling press, my fingernails don't grow as fast as I can bite them down when I let a sensible anxiety over finances seize me.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><span style="font-size: 17px;">But the fact is that I founded my press to celebrate and to promote artists I admire and believe in because they are excellent practitioners of their crafts and because they are substantial thinkers with rich ideas and experience to offer. Their work and thought enhance our own lives.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: 17px;">Composer Morgan Powell is a brilliant, genuinely unprecedented artist who has quietly created a tremendous body of scored and improvised compositions(the latter as a member of the Tone Road Ramblers sextet). Powell has never sought reputation, his musical process being so much a part of thoughtful living that to step away into promotion is to depart into an alien world inimical to the twin improvisatory processes of life and music.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">In a world awash with
recorded music, composers we haven't heard of tend to merge
into a pounding headache of background noise. We feel annoyed and imposed upon even by free handouts of new
CDs by unfamiliar artists, and especially when we’re asked to buy something cold. Why should we?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: 13pt;">Music composition is a
profession; for many, it’s a competition. For composer and improviser Powell, it’s art, launched by observation toward the end of new
understanding—and new beginnings. There’s no looking back: Life is improvised
from minute to minute moving forward, and this is how Powell composes. His
third eye music creates sounds and form not from rules or traditions of music,
but from the freedom of art.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: 13pt;">So if listening to Powell's extraordinary, unfamiliar music sounds like a recommendation to eat your vegetables—it's good for you!—freedom has to have the same lack of appeal. Who knows what will happen when there are no rules that both bind but protect you? When there is nothing to tap your foot to, telling you that you are hearing "correctly?" What if the music is written so that you can listen with your own ears and mind open, taking what comes and interpreting it as you will, without needing an expert to tell you what you hear? With Powell's music, every listener is an expert because for every listener it is unprecedented—completely new. Sit back and let it </span><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><span style="font-size: 17px;">float or drown you; lean in and delight in the brilliance and sweetness of the sound world Powell composes, offers to you, or ambushes you with.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjWl0kMI-Z5GavBITzYQnQvCWGtPooZe0HRiVPpN9i8Q9NQnljdC-UukwbzLJ0A5YOILARlRzhKK0LkzGZRbaQHHwHoVwRsTVR4XPjQuwUbe7dyLpQJLXI0SZ2ep8YshT5loXbLw97o9Py/s1600/Morgan%252C+hot.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjWl0kMI-Z5GavBITzYQnQvCWGtPooZe0HRiVPpN9i8Q9NQnljdC-UukwbzLJ0A5YOILARlRzhKK0LkzGZRbaQHHwHoVwRsTVR4XPjQuwUbe7dyLpQJLXI0SZ2ep8YshT5loXbLw97o9Py/s200/Morgan%252C+hot.JPG" width="181" /></a><span style="font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">Powell’s music is
powerful, beautiful, efficient, and unprecedented in the challenges for the many virtuosos who commission it and play it. In Morgan Powell you will discover a composer you wish you’d
discovered years ago because his music reminds you why humans make art in the first place.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">Learn more about Powell;
purchase the new CD, Morgan Powell On and Off the Score, and the
monograph "Sounding Our Depths: The Music of Morgan Powell" at </span><a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.upperhandpress.com&d=BQMDaQ&c=8hUWFZcy2Z-Za5rBPlktOQ&r=p7h-35Aq_AyYs0z5Ro696LUV_8_a25krMD7Vb-2QFEM&m=yq3Qjw1Q-DriiIoshyzPVydDFRvzOhELxyTXiiQ2ak4&s=RjiffeUFgbcluHv0GXDQ8hbcvnByuoU-J4_r0pdKIq8&e="><span style="color: #17459b; font-size: 13pt;">Upper Hand Press</span></a><span style="font-size: 13pt;">. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;"><span style="font-size: 13pt;">This music is thought and image at least as much as sound—and such sounds you'll hear in your dreams, where you can't analyze them. It's art, here to make us explore and to go deeper.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: small;">It is a great privilege for Upper Hand Press to be the corner of the world where people can come to find or to discover this extraordinary artist. In deciding to support the work of a great composer who is off the charts, we are doing important work that would be neglected to the real detriment of our musical and intellectual culture. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: small;">Is this the way for a small press to do business? And how! If we aren't for the rarities, who will be? What an opportunity for my press to promote Morgan Powell——and that is the bottom line.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: small;">Ann Starr, Publisher</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: small;">November 9, 2015</span></div>
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STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-15433818760877303102015-09-09T09:10:00.002-07:002015-09-09T09:10:56.295-07:00Rejection Letters and Submission Fees: Doing Our Job<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Few people in the position to select manuscripts for publication expect to earn the goodwill of the many more whose writings they decline. Rejection may become routine for writers, but it never <i>feels</i> routine. It never should. If it always stings, though, shouldn't there be some balm that's equally common? Apparently there is not.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">What is a writer to do with a rejection letter? This problem is embedded in the standard process of submission. If one still submits on paper, s/he can always recycle returned pages in a fresh envelope, affix new stamps in the correct amount and send it off anew. If it's on an electronic submissions site, upload and get out the debit card.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">If the writer wants to improve her chances at publication, it's hard to know what to do. Who knows why the manuscript was declined? Writers are rarely told a thing. Like a child whose parents are free to tell them only that, "No means No!" the author is infantilized by the publisher whose authority is equally absolute and baffling. Shall s/he revise? Is the work deficient? Or did an intern nix it before an editor laid eyes on it? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Few writers learn much as the result of rejection. "Good luck with your career." "We receive more submissions than we can possibly publish." Did they read it, one aches to know.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">For writers to be denied useful or revealing comment on their submissions speaks to irresponsible practices of publishers, whether we are asking for fees or not. Upper Hand Press asks for a $10 reading fee, and there are people who complain that this is not nice. <i>Poets & Writers </i>takes a position against this, but they do not have a position that suggests that publishers owe writers anything for the chance to read their work. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Surely one reason editors can't comment to writers is the common practice of allowing multiple submissions: They are swamped. Writers too often submit indiscriminately despite publishers' requests that they do their homework before launching a barrage of manuscripts. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Upper Hand requires exclusive submissions, and this undoubtedly limits our numbers for the good. From time to time we receive submissions that are very evidently shotgun efforts. I return these. If I am mistaken, the writer can always correct me, but so far no one has. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">It was with the deepest gratitude, then, and a sense that we are doing our job well that we received an email from a poet this week, directing us to a new, two-part post on her blog. In <a href="http://sherylloeffler.com/2015/09/04/gifted/" style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Gifted</span></a>, Sheryl tells about meeting with me for drinks and discussion after Upper Hand Press had rejected her manuscript. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">While Sheryl writes about the things she learned through her contact with me, she can't write about the great value our meeting had for <i>me.</i> How often do publishers get to speak with the writers who approach them, to sound out their motives, why they wrote as they did, to discover the nature of their minds, where they see themselves coming from and going as artists, how writing fits into their lives as whole people. Such a discussion gives me more knowledge, more experience, and more empathy. It makes me a better, more sensitive editor and publisher. And it gives me a friend and writer to follow.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Sheryl's two posts, <i><a href="http://sherylloeffler.com/2015/09/04/gifted/"><span style="color: #38761d;">Gifted</span></a> </i>and <a href="http://sherylloeffler.com/2015/09/04/gifted-continued/" style="font-style: italic;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Gifted (Continued)</span></a> are gifts to me and to Upper Hand Press: We're doing what we set out to do. Thank you Sheryl!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Ann Starr</span></div>
STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-41429456425676813592015-09-05T06:59:00.000-07:002015-09-05T06:59:08.325-07:00From the Publisher<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">It sometimes takes others to point out obvious things about oneself. So it was this week, when a friend wondered why I keep three enterprises discrete. "The same mind is behind them all." He urged me not to compartmentalize so absolutely.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">I have to thank Rick for bringing this to my attention. He's right. I have assumed that my careers as a visual artist, as a lecturer and teacher in medical humanities (<a href="http://www.ann-starr.com/"><span style="color: #38761d;">Ann Starr</span></a>), as an arts writer (<i><a href="http://www.starr-review.blogspot.com/"><span style="color: #38761d;">Starr Review</span></a>), </i>and as the owner and senior editor of Upper Hand Press might signal fecklessness rather than fecundity!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdI1roTke9XDOPpOJsHYs8jE1xkfL01pHETqGY20TsKxH5FjZmCyUwgzqjsrJaFC73LMTGTmg1aASWf-NjvLhB_Hz3CkrlYv3qLRbIMp2SwYrasJy64HCHDTvrVmhNZjZusqpLYKVdDaUK/s1600/CA88CA%257E1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="169" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdI1roTke9XDOPpOJsHYs8jE1xkfL01pHETqGY20TsKxH5FjZmCyUwgzqjsrJaFC73LMTGTmg1aASWf-NjvLhB_Hz3CkrlYv3qLRbIMp2SwYrasJy64HCHDTvrVmhNZjZusqpLYKVdDaUK/s320/CA88CA%257E1.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Art-maker; art-thinker; authority-questioner; writer. To anyone wondering where Upper Hand Press came from; to the author wondering if this is a likely company to submit to, </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">of course </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">this is all relevant information.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Upper Hand Press will not publish books (or music) unless I personally love it. I publish books that excite me and music that stops my heart. I publish </span><i style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">individuals</i><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> who are deep and whole-hearted about their work, eager to collaborate in establishing their audiences and promoting their works. It is my happiness to midwife for exceptional artists and their creations. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Publishing has the reputation for being a cruel industry, but I don't want to be that. I come to this as an artist who is learning to run a business. I hope that this makes me searching and respectful. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZHUoojb-_uXMGCQA0PxiJZR7H9Gc-V5hkWD8tYAsEwMYmlDWshKAuUGCrXNWLmQrfuWeMi29MNZb8ofOQPVYW1XG801CkFqjseKd0ZlwtHqMhKtLIXSjrkMeov1emyC9bFH7rV61x5lFg/s1600/Heart%2527sDesireCover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZHUoojb-_uXMGCQA0PxiJZR7H9Gc-V5hkWD8tYAsEwMYmlDWshKAuUGCrXNWLmQrfuWeMi29MNZb8ofOQPVYW1XG801CkFqjseKd0ZlwtHqMhKtLIXSjrkMeov1emyC9bFH7rV61x5lFg/s320/Heart%2527sDesireCover.jpg" width="168" /></a><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">The Press <span style="color: #38761d;"><a href="http://www.upperhandpress.com/about/"><span style="color: #38761d;">editorial board</span></a> </span>is composed of seasoned writers and teachers who take their time with the manuscripts I send them, always returning extensive and thoughtful comments. </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Few writers turned down by Upper Hand Press go away without feedback delivered in a personal letter from the publisher. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">How can any of us grow without thoughtful criticism from the people we ask to consider our work? How can publishers feel they are behaving responsibly without doing this? I believe deeply in the importance of art criticism in its most generous construction: Thus, the "rejection letter" must provide content that, at the very least, assures the author that the publisher is paying the attention s/he deserves.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">So, in case there could be any mistake, Upper Hand Press has a mission, is a labor of love, and feels to me personally like the project that brings together my hopes to realize some good for the world of art and artists. It is a grand, creative enterprise. It is a work of art, always in process.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">It's an expensive one. I have had many blessings of people to help me along the way, but the core investment is mine. In my mid-sixties I invested my IRA and more in the company. I keep my fingers crossed, my drive and idea-generator in high gear. Upper Hand Press is a force for the good, feeding imagination in the world.</span><br />
<br /></div>
STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-70730193005363726332015-08-25T10:03:00.001-07:002015-08-25T10:03:43.014-07:00On the Road and In the Works, Summer 2015<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMwaq-pQJIiPCvlYONGLqka9DnuQ44-y6FQPssKG0U8QhK-8xvBM9Qotj0HUjaTym0QhJ02b39nW2Hb5g4HP7J8PFwG_7vDEP2yaprgfdA4CImPKlZusfPo3SKI9pWzu-WRbyu-eq7wkvE/s1600/IMG_6033.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMwaq-pQJIiPCvlYONGLqka9DnuQ44-y6FQPssKG0U8QhK-8xvBM9Qotj0HUjaTym0QhJ02b39nW2Hb5g4HP7J8PFwG_7vDEP2yaprgfdA4CImPKlZusfPo3SKI9pWzu-WRbyu-eq7wkvE/s320/IMG_6033.JPG" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">August has
seen me on the road in several guises of the publisher. The work
is endlessly fascinating in its variety, that's for sure. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Yesterday I
was in Ashland, Ohio to visit our printer, Bookmasters, where I took a
look at page proofs for the galleys of Zach Snyder's <i>Clyde Doesn't Go Outside. </i>The
illustrations for Zach's forty-one page picture book are subtle and
deeply layered, so the printing has to be perfect. Bookmasters is a
company that can do it just right, but it takes my eyes or Zach's to
tell them what "just right" is. Today I'll make the three-hour round
trip again, to see the results of the adjustments I asked for yesterday.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDiLTGdyOWd67ad7QvExlwkDohu1amuBzR9ZtBIHHZrEvejfwfzPDvqX2OROD5ZRvQ-NsvyXQoQ-94N0GroX3KigLinw4wFJt6TdIYOY8_lQsHkgLePF4sMr_1FCg8HcdWaEnbH6tbxUK_/s1600/IMG_6038.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDiLTGdyOWd67ad7QvExlwkDohu1amuBzR9ZtBIHHZrEvejfwfzPDvqX2OROD5ZRvQ-NsvyXQoQ-94N0GroX3KigLinw4wFJt6TdIYOY8_lQsHkgLePF4sMr_1FCg8HcdWaEnbH6tbxUK_/s320/IMG_6038.JPG" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">This round of proofs is to get us one hundred beautifully printed galley proofs——paper covered sample books that I'll send to reviewers and potential buyers (independent bookstores)in advance of publication. During the months before formal release and sale of the hardback edition, we hope that the book will garner reviews and that bookstores will order it to have on the shelves when it comes out. Nudge your favorite bookstore now: They can go to www.upperhandpress.com to contact me and to read more about <i>Clyde.</i></span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIiq6Mq8NEhxlftZqICGL5LBTiZDnruye_HVhlAwl6D4KfP2eDlReB60eHXLVdxDDdj2p3BUKCQsN2IydqC2DqfOy_fWCPc5gxDabgK_uTEKQWPubGXaIyw9ROA69wt26qLcXVIjffJLM8/s1600/Clyde-In+between_napping+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIiq6Mq8NEhxlftZqICGL5LBTiZDnruye_HVhlAwl6D4KfP2eDlReB60eHXLVdxDDdj2p3BUKCQsN2IydqC2DqfOy_fWCPc5gxDabgK_uTEKQWPubGXaIyw9ROA69wt26qLcXVIjffJLM8/s400/Clyde-In+between_napping+.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">copyright 2015, Zach Snyder. Spread from <i>Clyde Doesn't Go Outside</i></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXEbYIvQKWYOwYBD1xgeAZc5O4i9KqoXNEiIp4xYhyt-FuLUqIGoGJhOXiNnWYOEN3V8xxfy_yaoyAAIvQ1JhOs5EZRaQTKe5TtkcMCa1svEFpqH8F97hyphenhyphenLxIPlituziogeWPPm3JzLpsl/s1600/INSERT+MP+CD+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXEbYIvQKWYOwYBD1xgeAZc5O4i9KqoXNEiIp4xYhyt-FuLUqIGoGJhOXiNnWYOEN3V8xxfy_yaoyAAIvQ1JhOs5EZRaQTKe5TtkcMCa1svEFpqH8F97hyphenhyphenLxIPlituziogeWPPm3JzLpsl/s200/INSERT+MP+CD+cover.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">My Ashland jaunts come immediately on the heels of travel to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois for the launch of Morgan Powell's CD, <i>Morgan Powell On and Off the Score.</i> I was happy to be at his annual gig with the remarkable Jazz Sextet, a group of instrumentalists who are among the best players—and <i>ears</i>—in jazz. With the consummate fluency of musicians who have been together for over thirty years, Powell, Ray Sasaki, and Howie Smith were joined by phenoms Chip Stephens, Dan Anderson and drummer Steve Houghton, to improvise on jazz standards. </span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrStf8hWW_LiiCy3dE5xn_v7hv0LBf9wxcgScPfUQozcEV7Zfeiw1DJaBJtzg-YFVaYO-Dn1naTR0O6pmR-9DgUCSqjTyF-GYyKTUQB-hM9mdQq6IcrPu2DDcwaqhkY-yM8H0chr5lABjP/s1600/IMG_5994.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrStf8hWW_LiiCy3dE5xn_v7hv0LBf9wxcgScPfUQozcEV7Zfeiw1DJaBJtzg-YFVaYO-Dn1naTR0O6pmR-9DgUCSqjTyF-GYyKTUQB-hM9mdQq6IcrPu2DDcwaqhkY-yM8H0chr5lABjP/s320/IMG_5994.jpg" width="227" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Morgan Powell</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><i> </i></span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><i></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Powell's CD features his commissions since 2000, each solo work a tour de force for the featured instrumentalist. Powell is a composer who stretches the limits of musicians, of music, of ideas and the heart. We are marketing it not only to individuals, but to college and public libraries: This music American cultural legacy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><i>Clyde Doesn't Go Outside</i> will be published just at the New Year, but three other 2016 books are in the works as well. The cover for Rhonda G. Williams' <i>The Naming of Girl</i> will be revealed in the next couple of weeks. Though I haven't been to visit Rhonda in Arkansas yet, in early August I spent a long weekend in Washington D.C. with Upper Hand authors Louise Farmer Smith and Herta Feely. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRUZdOaVp2eFZNGHvEO8rcM6JAci85LVFiTTUKziZrAPdeAlYxjS282HNdMEf2qoC3HEYhFPj_5cXPCxcYh1UOGDZQv-Wwd93ezVzFr2D1UwPzjZ0wV8TyBUHqfXFnysJKF78X0gxFR9hv/s1600/100+YEARS+FINAL+COVER+copy+small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRUZdOaVp2eFZNGHvEO8rcM6JAci85LVFiTTUKziZrAPdeAlYxjS282HNdMEf2qoC3HEYhFPj_5cXPCxcYh1UOGDZQv-Wwd93ezVzFr2D1UwPzjZ0wV8TyBUHqfXFnysJKF78X0gxFR9hv/s320/100+YEARS+FINAL+COVER+copy+small.jpg" width="214" /></a><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Both Smith and Feely have books coming out with Upper Hand in 2016. Smith, author of <i>One Hundred Years of Marriage, </i>will publish the short story collection, <i>Cadillac, Oklahoma </i>with us in April. Feely's novel, <i>The Strange Shapes of Love, </i>comes out in September. It was my privilege to work with these women while they are revising their manuscripts. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">It is bracing, humbling, and inspiring to be with writers at work. It's impossible to have enough respect for the sheer sweaty labor involved in the process of creativity directed through discipline. It clearly costs in terms of effort and ego both to receive direct suggestions about one's work. For me, it's a privilege to find that my reading and thinking sometimes help shape or improve a work; it's a privilege as well to be persuaded that I'm wrong when I am, and to experience the insight that no one but the writer herself can have.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzKpfe0G3aWwi-r8I5ENQdGAcKBGt4Z5qr1MUwqdm0YOYLsOtTgheW6-KNjn1aOpkjP8TVtYbyjPO6mS-wlheySveYJ2paHqGNtOlUVXGeE9bE14Wl0yH4bjrCeyTthBfwlyM0JaqjNOfb/s1600/IMG_6034.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzKpfe0G3aWwi-r8I5ENQdGAcKBGt4Z5qr1MUwqdm0YOYLsOtTgheW6-KNjn1aOpkjP8TVtYbyjPO6mS-wlheySveYJ2paHqGNtOlUVXGeE9bE14Wl0yH4bjrCeyTthBfwlyM0JaqjNOfb/s320/IMG_6034.jpg" width="213" /></a><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Now, Ashland aside, I'm at the desk for a while. What is there to do? One of our editors, Jacki Bell, has come on board as an assistant too, and even so we could use more hands. We have publicity documents to mail and new ones to write. We have an OCR document to get in order for the ebook release of <i>One Hundred Years of Marriage. The Naming of Girl</i> will soon be ready to go to press for galleys. We will put out our first catalog this winter. It's time to choose book fairs, and to get our authors' books nominated for prizes. These are only some of the tasks that keep me busy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Like us on your Facebook page. Tell your friends about our books. Submissions open again on October 1st. I'm rewriting the submissions page for clarity, so take a new look in a few weeks.</span><br />
<br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Ann Starr, Publisher</span><br />
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STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-18158464585823385292015-06-12T08:44:00.000-07:002015-06-12T08:44:31.662-07:00"Advice for Writers Trying to Get Published:" or, Who Wants to be an Artist?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">by Ann Starr, Publisher</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Upper Hand Press is now a year old. This month we will publish Morgan Powell's magnificent CD, <i>Morgan Powell On and Off the Score. </i>Every day I'm in contact with our three authors who are revising novels for publication in 2016, and on Monday I'll meet with Zach Snyder to see the finishing touches on what will be our first children's book, his <i>Clyde is Not Allowed Outside. </i>We are crackling with energy and hatching new books as fast as we can! I'm always reading new manuscripts and discussing them with our team of editors, not to mention attending to all the work that supports the writers—publicity, funding, distribution and more.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />Running a small press is consuming and whole-hearted work, but the heart is reading manuscripts, responding to writers, and choosing whose work we want to follow. My goals are to support and advance good writers and to delight the reading public. I want to make money as I do this. But I know that without cultivating excellent writing, I can forget the rest.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am too often stopped cold when I'm reminded that my enthusiasm about authors, their writing, and the satisfaction I derive from publishing necessarily runs up against a world in which thousands of writers are stunned by anxiety about making it into print. Alas, this anxiety seems too often to shift psychic energies away from the activity of writing to a prospect (or experience) of rejection by publishers. There is no way for me to correct the injustices of a wretched world where talent is overlooked and makes cynics of the least willing. But each of us must do what we can to focus on our own plot in this environment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Today I came across an article from Buzzfeed: "9 Pieces of Advice for Writers Trying to Get Published." Hey, I'm a publisher, so I took<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSswqAEggW8oslU5yvPCiuvLZe-1687cQE-lfqffOzSExOukxNyJeCnYiuDcGb-9mGAda0KMT2frSwzAdni0uJTS0HliPhcQDWSOKH1gIX5P7WxSSR6w0EHbTnQukNWNn2jieuHDxd3Vm8/s1600/Sinead%2527s+pic+of+Ann+at+Buffalo+SPBF.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSswqAEggW8oslU5yvPCiuvLZe-1687cQE-lfqffOzSExOukxNyJeCnYiuDcGb-9mGAda0KMT2frSwzAdni0uJTS0HliPhcQDWSOKH1gIX5P7WxSSR6w0EHbTnQukNWNn2jieuHDxd3Vm8/s320/Sinead%2527s+pic+of+Ann+at+Buffalo+SPBF.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Ann Starr represents Upper Hand Press at the<br />Buffalo Small Press Book Fair in April</span></td></tr>
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a look. Shouldn't I know what it takes to get published? I can use all the help I can get! (The URL is </span><a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/jarrylee/advice-for-writers-trying-to-get-published#.eman2v0oK">http://www.buzzfeed.com/jarrylee/advice-for-writers-trying-to-get-published#.eman2v0oK</a>.)<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The tips come each from a different unidentified but presumably published writer, posed with in their publisher's booth at a big book fair. Most are nuts and bolts: Write! they say:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">*Write every day!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">*Give it time. Don't rush the publishers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">*All of life is research. Use your own experiences.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">*</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Be patient. Keep writing.</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">*</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Read a lot. Find your voice. Be nice. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While I don't know about the necessity of niceness, these strike me as the essentials. If you want to get published, you have to write. At length, deeply.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">*</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You probably need an agent and you should be willing to promot</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">e yourself,</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">was, however, one unsettling suggestion. Hold your horses. Write first, then think about publishing. It's a different enterprise, requiring a different set of skills.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'll confess to being one of those thick-headed persons who has never much cared for advice. Tip lists make me a little nuts since they never appear as the result of an appeal for advice. </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Who's asking? </i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Such anonymous, well-intended tips stimulate the barely-suppressed anxiety in many writers, instigating a self-inventory of professional and moral defects. "Maybe I should...!" </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I recall a conversation I had </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with a composer</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> o</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ne time when I was at an artists' colony. He</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">confessed to me his astonishment that writers so easily handed their work around for advice. He would never dream of doing the same, he said, and would be disconcerted if a colleague asked for advice. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A composition was <i>his job</i>, from his head alone, both creatively and technically.</span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Central to the composer's comment was the question of authority: Would these artists write—struggle, fail, struggle, overcome— their ways through their doubts and live with their work before turning it over to others? Would they endure; would they have the patience? As I see it, his core question is something like this: Does creative process have a character-formed direction and goal (near or far away), or is it open to incursions from all sides, its end defined by negotiation?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How can you know whether comments and criticisms are valid until you stand firmly on ground you've prepared yourself by sweaty trial-and-error? The ground that you've struggled to clear and level is uniquely yours. You will show <i>your</i> work—not a composite of advice, much irrelevant—when some future day you are talking with agents, publishers, and editors. They will have seen nothing like it. But that day is<i> future:</i> you don't have to invent those conversations as you write. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When I read a submission, all I want is to read a well-made and distinctly personal book, the result of closeted time spent wrestling with words and ideas. I'm not interested in a composite of advice from tips and rules—peer or professional—offered before the writer's ideas have had time to take characteristic shape. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My advice to writers trying to get published? Use your dictionary, not spell check. Be aware of your sentence structure and make it propel your pages. Attend carefully to your vocabulary; use it like an orchestra. Be excited by what you wrote or have at it again and again until you are. Read your writing out loud. Look carefully at any "flaws" in your writing: They may be the gems that distinguish your work. Be cautious about dismissing anything you've been told can't work: Maybe it will; maybe it won't. Writing is a long process and anything can happen if you let it. Your "errors" may be discoveries.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is indeed is no rush to the publisher's door. Much of what I turn down has clearly arrived too soon. Take a long time, take years, all by yourself, finding and writing and rewriting your own words. Let the manuscript cure; return and rethink it. When you discover that you </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">finally</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">know <i>what you really want to do</i>, share it with someone else, confident that you can evaluate what they may say without anxiety about being pulled off course. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Advice at the right point can make the heavens open. Or it can dash your hopes in a way that is too often unfairly attributed to publishers. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Advice for writers trying to get published? Send work that you wrote and that you stand <i>in</i> because it fits you perfectly. If a publisher wants it and edits begin, you'll come to the process with authority and clarity. What <i>are</i> you selling and what <i>are</i> you trading for the price offered? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Did you try to write a work of art, or something to get published? Can you think of yourself as an artist and still believe that some of us love, respect, and want to publish it?</span></div>
STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-13719336913715439672015-01-18T14:11:00.001-08:002015-01-22T04:32:26.636-08:00In Other Words: Committed, Activist, Non-Profit, Feminist<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">At 14 NE Killingsworth Street in Portland, Oregon, I visited a rare bookstore called In Other Words. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">In point of fact, <a href="http://inotherwords.org/about">In Other Words</a> is not exclusively a bookstore, for the books on their central stacks are a lending library. Doesn't this undermine the business model? Not exactly, because In Other Words is a non-profit organization, a Feminist Community Center.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">In Other Words is near my daughter's house. When I was visiting, Upper Hand Press had just published Louise Farmer Smith's <i>One Hundred Years of Marriage,</i> a novel deep in its observations about the history of women in domestic unions, so I thought I'd pay them a call.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">I have watched the television show <i>Portlandia </i>only twice, and In Other Words turned out to be the setting for the feminist bookstore in which Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen have made many a broad and silly jest about feminists and feminist culture. </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">It was </span><i style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">that</i><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> bookstore.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">But it turned out to be "that" bookstore not at all. Not. At. All. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><i>Portlandia's </i>comedy is made by grotesquely exaggerating their targets—making feminism seem like a disease of the deranged, feeble-minded, and un-beautiful. Their send-up bears no relation to the broad-mindedness that I found displayed on the store's shelves and in discussion with Allison Specter, the woman minding the store. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Among the books they carry one can find something for women of every sort in every life situation. There are philosophical writings about the bases for feminist thought; there are books on political theory and action. There are books about maternity and childcare, aging, and women's health from many perspectives. In Other Words carries books aimed at straight, lesbian, and trans women, and for the people who care about them. There are books for girls of every age, to encourage them to be happy and strong in their bodies and attitudes. This is a broad-minded specialist bookstore, not a bastion of exclusive doctrine.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">In Other Words needs to sell more books than it does to keep its doors open for its community activities. They tell us on their website:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"<span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">When we opened in 1993 there were over 200 feminist bookstores in the United States and today there are fewer than 30. In Other Words is the only feminist bookstore in the United States that also functions as a nonprofit organization, which has allowed us to serve a unique role in our communities."</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">That's gutsy, and optimistic, and it's also frightening. They drive with the needle on empty most of the time, doing business with the prospect of having to close ever present. There's some extra income from the television show, but it's balanced by the upsurge in male curiosity-seekers to be jettisoned and of t.v. tourists with no interest in buying.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 24px;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Contributions are warmly welcome by this unique, determined, important feminist bookstore. When you watch <i>Portlandia, </i>think of the real women serving and served at Portland's In Other Words.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Upper Hand Press is sending an in-kind contribution of our books for them to sell and profit from, hoping the money will go farther than our admiration.</span></span></div>
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STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-18454904812619570452015-01-12T14:09:00.000-08:002015-01-19T08:07:38.690-08:00"One Hundred Years Of Marriage" Launched at Upshur Street Books<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Cover by Natalee Michelle Brown</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The District of Columbia's new Upshur Street Books hosted the launch of Louise Farmer Smith's novel, <i>One Hundred Years of Marriage, </i>on January 8th. Enough listeners braved the arctic cold to occupy every seat with which Anna Thorn had filled her store. Smith drew her audience at full speed directly into knowledge of the Brady family secret that protagonist Patricia would die rather than reveal. Patricia's </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">narration in the </span>first chapter is a catapult into the novel's poignant stream of secrets kept and revealed throughout the passage of four generations.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Louise Farmer Smith is a long-time resident of Capitol Hill. Both she and Upper Hand Press wanted her first reading to be at a District book store. We could not have found one more suitable and congenial than Upshur Street in the northwest neighborhood of Petworth.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">If you find <a href="https://www.facebook.com/UpshurStBooks">Upshur Street's Facebook page</a>, you can follow their progress all the way back to their beginnings, not so long ago, in June 2014, when they arose from a $17,000 Kickstarter campaign.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">From a June, 2014 Facebook post for Upshur Street Books</span></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Barely six months old, they have already become Washington tastemakers. Earlier this month, Anna Thorn was the go-to person for books when the <i>Washington Post </i>needed <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/express/wp/2015/01/05/2015predictions/">expert predictions about 2015 trends. </a></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Louise Farmer Smith reads from <i>One Hundred Years of Marriage </i></span></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Upper Hand Press was delighted to partner with Upshur Street Books for the launch of <i>One Hundred Years of Marriage</i> because of the affinity we feel with a hard-working, positive young business. It takes a lot of vision and commitment to open an independent bookstore in the days of bookselling behemoths. It takes some nerve to open an independent publishing house. 2014 was the founding year for Upper Hand and Upshur Street both.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">2014 was also the publication year for <i>One Hundred Years of Marriage,</i> and this was another big "first," for this is Louise Farmer Smith's first novel. Though she has published many short stories and earned two Pushcart nominations, Smith went through the legendary years of struggle and rejection by countless agents and publishing houses until Upper Hand Press leapt at the chance to bring this book out. We will celebrate her 75th birthday with a royalty check!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">A new bookstore; a new press; a first novel. January 8th's reading was a celebration not only of Smith's remarkable novel, but of a dedicated author, a bookstore built on heart, and of this new press, which is happy to be joining hands with people persisting in doing what they dream of.</span><br />
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STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-31403753589737331462015-01-04T10:52:00.000-08:002015-01-04T10:58:02.111-08:00First Loves: Independent Bookstores Close to the Upper Hand Heart. PART 2.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Ann Starr's first reading tour for <i>Sounding Our Depths: The Music of Morgan Powell</i> during the fall of 2014 introduced her to several more outstanding independent bookstores, lengthening the list begun in our first post by Mac's Backs, Jane Addams, and Buffalo Street Books. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Krista Long and Ann Starr at MindFair Books</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">A bookstore that smiles is in Oberlin, one of Ohio's great college towns. <a href="http://www.benfranklinoberlin.com/mindfair">MINDFAIR</a> ("The Book Lovers' Book Store") nestles inside the local Ben Franklin store. I thought that's where one goes to get tube socks and pet turtles. Krista Long's version lacks ephemeral pets, but it offers lots of old-fashioned, hand- or wind-powered toys, fabrics and notions, and day-to-day essentials like those snuggy socks and stacks and stacks of books——all with very nice young staff to help you out. Ann's reading turned into something more personal and fun——chats with Krista's customers who may have been shopping for specific items, but were happily led astray. Long has made of the whole store a neighborly zone where people express their curiosity, socialize, chat, and philosophize. What better place to talk about books than at the Oberlin five and dime?</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Room at Loganberry set up for Starr's reading</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Nothing of the pickle-barrel, warm familiarity at <a href="http://www.loganberrybooks.com/">LOGANBERRY BOOKS</a> in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Here it's more the coziness of Edwardian garden chairs, oriental rugs, and high tea in the library. And what a library! This exquisitely decorated store boasts floor-to-ceiling shelves in every one of its long line of rooms. The solicitous staff makes an author feel like she has a home in a bookstore——in every imaginable sense. Loganberry celebrated its twentieth anniversary in December. So many years have to testify to the strength of Loganberry's bonds with its neighbors. But an itinerant author could sense that without knowing the history.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Starr is introduced at New England<br />Mobile Book Fair, Newton, MA</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Starr lived many years in Wellesley, Massachusetts. When she did, she took her children book shopping at the legendary <a href="http://www.nebookfair.com/">NEW ENGLAND MOBILE BOOK FAIR</a> in Newton, the next town east. No, it's not as big as Powell's or Strand or Seminary Bookstore: But it's big enough to occupy an industrial warehouse space and to make even an adult feel like she's gone to another country when she's gone to purchase a title (NEMBF motto: "I Only Came for One Book!"). The courtesy of a prepared introduction only added to the pleasure of presenting in the most magical of all spaces——where the author had enjoyed at one small remove the primal freedom and joy of childhood book-buying.</span></div>
STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3563769379540469111.post-1576850630235359422014-12-30T06:09:00.000-08:002014-12-30T06:09:29.282-08:00First Loves: Independent Bookstores Close to the Upper Hand Heart. PART 1. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">In August 2014, Upper Hand Press published its first title, <i>Sounding Our Depths: The Music of Morgan Powell</i> by Ann Starr. Starr, the press founder, didn't want to plunge into publishing cold with someone else's book at risk to her optimism that she could pull it off.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Cover by Natalee Michelle Brown</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">As it worked out, she could and did. Now, by the end of 2014, our second</span> <span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">book——the novel<i> One Hundred Years of Marriage</i> by Louise Farmer Smith——is just off the press; we have a beautiful children's book coming out in the spring; and there's a pile of submissions we're excited to be reading.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">An independent publisher doesn't succeed on the strength of its own work and smarts. It's entirely beholden to the mighty efforts of the owners and staff of independent book stores. These are the people who read <i>everything; </i>who know their patrons and their communities——the clubs, the distinguishing geography and history, the museums of their areas; their colleges and schools; the famous band or bar or ballet that attracts the world's attention. These are the best readers and the ones who not only understand books, but writers——what they do and what they accomplish.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT4Zv7bBkmV912_co-0K078Ayu_ruz3A865WQB5zUFFyU1dx7Amf-JiK_PMjJ_j4NoJ-xTEN8MLxih04v8DN0J51lRz63ce7myR3lqAW0gig9zHAyq_l1wGGi-Li3C-L1wuv4ToqQ4JiYo/s1600/images-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT4Zv7bBkmV912_co-0K078Ayu_ruz3A865WQB5zUFFyU1dx7Amf-JiK_PMjJ_j4NoJ-xTEN8MLxih04v8DN0J51lRz63ce7myR3lqAW0gig9zHAyq_l1wGGi-Li3C-L1wuv4ToqQ4JiYo/s1600/images-1.jpg" height="200" width="149" /></a><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">As local independent bookstores are beloved in their communities, there are several dear to the heart of Upper Hand Press for having given us our first chances when Ann asked for opportunities to present <i>Sounding Our Depths </i>to their readers. <b>Suzanne DeGaetano and Peggy Latkovich<i> </i></b>in Cleveland Heights, Ohio instantly opened the door to <b><a href="http://www.macsbacks.com/">MAC'S BACKS ON COVENTRY</a></b>. It's<b><i> </i></b>a vast store with both new and used books. Suzanne, the owner, has an encyclopedic knowledge of her three floors of inventory. As she does of her neighbors and the lively flow of Coventry Avenue. Peggy is a core member of Cleveland's New Music community——she plays the accordion in the Trepanning Trio. <b>Mac's Backs </b>is a store locals can treat like home.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><b>Don Elmore's <a href="http://www.janeaddamsbooks.com/">JANE ADDAMS BOOKSHOP </a></b>in Champaign, Illinois is where <i>Sounding Our Depths </i>was launched. The subject, Morgan Powell, lives in Champaign, retired from teaching at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. <b>Elmore<i> </i></b>stocks used and rare books and he is a major supporter of all the local authors——including Patty Hruby Powell, Morgan's wife and author of the current children's hit, <i>Josephine</i>. Our audience was rather smaller than we'd hoped for. Check the calendar! How could we compete with the Fighting Illini season opener?</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibG0A9nHgg0hyphenhyphenMgrOEYvUIs06At5nh8A-9YBv7qRtpAzAEPt6hi9YiljWqQ6ojq845HGo-3kDPv_gJjOfxXs6c27NZirhx0XEH_2pxJ1v6rwDQRqF3H0_F59n1oh3trtAMpHTD_t37e0bW/s1600/IMG_0050.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibG0A9nHgg0hyphenhyphenMgrOEYvUIs06At5nh8A-9YBv7qRtpAzAEPt6hi9YiljWqQ6ojq845HGo-3kDPv_gJjOfxXs6c27NZirhx0XEH_2pxJ1v6rwDQRqF3H0_F59n1oh3trtAMpHTD_t37e0bW/s1600/IMG_0050.jpg" height="200" width="150" /></a><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">The fabulous, eager, and hard-working <b>Woody Chicester<i> </i></b>welcomed Ann to <b><a href="http://www.buffalostreetbooks.com/">BUFFALO STREET BOOKS</a> </b>in Ithaca, New York with a winning display of <i>Sounding Our Depths </i>and a collegial introduction to the </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">operations of
their store that was both </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">impressive and </span>enlightening. Buffalo
Street is cooperatively run: The stakes are high and the investment of
energy is too. The young, smiling staff has specialized jobs, but
everyone knows about every aspect of the store. Woody was all about fresh experiments: Where
would a display of staff favorites best be placed? How could the covers,
rather than the spines, of books in a section be positioned to catch the eye?
Everything was up for improvement, to meet the customers' needs, to
keep the store dynamic and in the black.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">But wait! There are more! Several more good independents helped Upper Hand get its feet in the water. Keep an eye out for the continuation, coming soon on our blog.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">Next up: New independent bookstore, <b><a href="http://upshurstreetbooks.com/">UPSHUR STREET BOOKS</a></b> in Washington D.C. hosts the first reading and launch party for Louise Farmer Smith's <i><b>One Hundred Years of Marriage</b> </i>at <b>7:00 on January 8th!</b> </span><br />
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STARR REVIEW, New Editionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12398613324246318696noreply@blogger.com1