An Interview with Roger Thompson, author of No Word for Wilderness

Posted on June 19, 2018 by Ed Battistella
Email, RSS Follow

Roger Thompson is an award-winning nonfiction writer, whose work has appeared in both academic and non-academic journals. He is co-author of Beyond Duty: Life on the Frontline of Iraq, a bestselling Iraq War memoir, and has directed an international environmental research program in Banff, Alberta. He taught at the Virginia Military Academy for fourteen years as a Professor of English and fine arts. Thompson currently serves as Director of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stony Brook University. His most recent book is No Word for Wilderness published by Ashland Creek Press.

Ed Battistella: Congratulations on No Word for Wilderness. Tell us a little about your book and about the Abruzzi bears living not far from Rome.

Roger Thompson: Thanks Ed. The book details the surprising lives and current threats to a group of brown bears only 50 miles from Rome. Few people seem to know about these bears, and when I first learned about them myself, I was captivated by their story. Only 50 of the bears now remain, and they are facing surprising threats to their survival.

EB: As a linguist, I was fascinated by the title observation, that there is No Word for Wilderness in Italian. What does that tell us?

RT: It’s not entirely unusual for a language not to have a word for the idea of “wilderness,” but in Italy, I think it’s especially important because it points to some of the challenges for wildlife in the country. When a country has no meaningful word to describe wild places, it is especially difficult to convince a population to rally for conservation. It’s hard to save what you can’t name.

EB: A lot of the book is devoted to the aptly named Bruno. What is Bruno’s story?

RT: Bruno is bear from northern Italy who, in 2006, became probably the most famous bear the world has ever known. He migrated from Italy to Germany just as Germany began to welcome soccer fans for the World Cup, and the result was massive media coverage of Bruno’s exploits. Bruno had a habit of killing domestic animals, and while there is lingering disagreement over the degree of danger Bruno posed, the German government certainly decided that he would not be tolerated. So, what began as a story about the first wild bear in Germany in over 150 years became the story of how a government responded to a wildlife crisis–a crisis some believe the country itself created.

EB: How are the Abruzzi bears different?

RT: Bruno was born of a Slovenian sow and was among the first cubs born of an ambitious rewilding program in the north of Italy. Slovenian brown bears are not entirely unlike the American grizzly, and while the rewilding program that introduced them into the Italian Alps was by many measures a tremendous success, local Italians began to have conflict with the bears. The question began to be reasonably asked whether an introduced bear is as well suited to a region as a native population. The Abruzzo bears, unlike Bruno and his Slovenian ancestors, are entirely native to Italy. They have lived in the Apennines for a millenia, have adapted to that habitat, and are notoriously peaceful. While in the Alps, there have been a few problematic human-bear interactions, in Abruzzo, the bears have never in written record attacked a human. That’s a thousand years of recorded history without a single attack of a a bear on a human. They are an astonishing species of bear.

EB: What is the state of the national parks system in Italy? I had never given it much thought before reading your book.

RT: National Parks issues in Italy are complicated. On the one hand, the country can boast an rapid expansion of the national park system over the last 50 to 100 years, faster than any other country in such a short period of time. On the other hand, the management of the land is a complex mix of national, regional, and local politics. Park Presidents are appointed as political favors, and it’s not unusual to have president appointees who have very little investment in parkland. A park granted to a president may be something akin to a bauble to brag about for an individual. Certainly, some park presidents are impressive people, and the current park president of Abruzzo National Park, which is home to most of the Abruzzo bears, is generally well regarded. Still, the system is deeply flawed, and as a result, conservation initiatives are hard to carry out over long periods of time.

EB: What does this story tell us about the wilderness—development divide? Or about attitudes toward wildlife and land more generally?

RT: To me, it suggests quite simply that the divide can be bridged. If bears and humans can coexist in Italy, they can in other parts of the world–even highly populated parts. It may require us to rethink the idea of the wild, but it still suggests pretty astonishing possibilities for the wild to not only live, but potentially thrive, alongside thoughtful and intentional development.

EB: How did you come to be a nature writer? And, as a university professor, do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

RT: I don’t have a good answer to the first part of this question. I read a lot of science writing and nonfiction, and my first piece of published nonfiction was nature writing and won an award, so I figured I might have some talent there. Still, I’m a bit hesitant to group myself with the far more accomplished groups of writers who can probably more rightly be called nature writers. As to advice, it’s pretty simple. You have to write. Then, you have to send your writing out for consideration. Then you have to endure repeated rejection with an open mind–meaning, you may need to change things about your writing. And lastly, if someone wants a career in writing–you’ll note I took the easy way out and found a full time job that allows me to write as part of my job description!–but if you want to be a full time writer, I would recommend starting with nonfiction. Fiction is tough to break into. Nonfiction or professional writing–not nearly as hard. Oh, and let me add what one of my mentors once told me: if you write fast and on deadline, work will come to you. I think this is quite true.

EB: As a writer about nature, do you have some favorite authors?

RT: Hard to beat McPhee and Lopez. I’m a sucker for Sigurd Olson. I admit I’m impatient with a lot of the self-reflective wanderings in the wilderness books, but I do find myself drawn to work that is engaged with the world and wants to make a difference. Sometimes I think that a lot of journalists who write books may have a better ear for audiences than people coming out of MFA programs.

EB: How did you happen to choose Ashland Creek Press to publish No Word for Wilderness?

RT: I had some offers on the book that I didn’t feel as confident about. Ashland Creek appealed to me simply because they seem genuinely invested in the project. I’ve published enough to feel a bit selfish. I really do want to find the right press for my work. I don’t mean that in any sort of holier-than-thou artistic way. I don’t feel protective of my words, and I try hard to listen to editors and their advice. I just mean to say that I don’t have to sell a book in order to make a living, so I like the idea of finding a publisher who actually cares about my project. The folks at Ashland Creek very much did, and they were just great editors.

EB: Thanks for talking with us.

RT: It was a real pleasure. Thank you.

Posted in Interviews | Comments Off on An Interview with Roger Thompson, author of No Word for Wilderness

An Interview with Malcolm Terence

Posted on June 3, 2018 by Ed Battistella
Email, RSS Follow

Malcolm Terence left his job as a reporter at the Los Angeles Times in the late 1960s and helped found a large hippie commune in the Klamath Mountains. He followed that with logging and reforestation work, setting up–and opposing–timber sales, and fighting wildfires.

Along the way, he married a local schoolteacher and raised a family. He still writes for regional papers, teaches, and cultivates a large garden.

Beginner’s Luck is his first book.

Malcolm Terence will be reading and signing books at Bloomsbury Books in Ashland, June 18th, 2018 at 7 pm. It’s free and open to the public.

Ed Battistella: How did you find your way to the Black Bear Ranch in the 1960s? Tell us a little about your background and journey.

MT: When I came to Siskiyou County in 1968, it was not a friendly place to hippies. I’d left the Los Angeles Times where I’d been a reporter and then as business manager for a band of gifted musicians. I traveled with them to shows and recording dates on both coasts, but drifted away when I met the Diggers, a radical theatrical gang in San Francisco. I confess I thought them a little crazy, but when a few of them wanted to start a new commune in the mountains, I jumped in. That year, 1968, was like that. It was a full day’s drive from San Francisco and the last many miles were just the sketchiest of roads. I arrived midday and maybe 20 minutes later two carloads of deputies came in and arrested me. It seems like yesterday, but 1968 was a half century ago.

EB: Tell us a bit about your book Beginners’ Luck, where you tell the stories of commune and the nearby towns.

MT: When I moved to the mountains I figured that news was something that came out of the city halls, the courthouses and the police stations that I’d worked in Los Angeles, so I stopped writing. Instead I learned about goats, firewood and the reality of living with sixty hippies in the middle of nowhere. There was no internet then and not even many telephones, certainly none at Black Bear. But over the years it became apparent that the stories unfolding around me were as important and as gripping as those that had been on my beat in Los Angeles.

EB: What’s the significance of the title?

MT: Specifically it’s from a time when a Native American friend took me to play cards with his friends near the ceremonial grounds. But more broadly, I came in clueless but got by. I got by with the help of the few locals who found us hapless hippies kind of interesting. That’s been my luck all along. I’m grateful.

EB: How did the community sustain itself over the years?

MT: The folks at the commune gardened, of course, but that was seasonal. Some people qualified for welfare payments, what they call TANF nowadays, and shared them. A few people came from wealthy families and their parents might send them occasional checks. We called that stay-away-from-home money. Since we were snowed in every winter in those days, we’d send out a big truck in the fall once or twice to get the winter’s provisions. Huge amounts of un-milled wheat and potatoes, barrels of oil, big sacks of beans. The Diggers still in the City helped with that.

EB: You’ve also been involved with reforestation work. How did that come about?

MT: Some of the commune expates moved to the river towns and started doing jobs planting small trees in the clear cuts where logging had just happened. People liked it because it was seasonal, which left them time for their homesteads the rest of the year. After one season they organized it as an employee-owned co-op.

EB: You were one of the people who stuck it out. How did the community evolve over time? What changes did you see?

MT: I lasted four years at the commune and left when I felt I’d had enough. I tried San Francisco again for a while and also Santa Cruz, but then I returned to the river. I’d had enough of commune life but the little towns along the river, the mix of Native Americans, rednecks, agency people and other hippies had figured out how to get along. They might have doubts about each other, they might harbor reservations, but they made it work, especially when everybody was needed for things like firefighting or opposing the Forest Service policy of herbicide use in the forest.

EB: Do you think that some of these environmental collaborations served as the basis for later cooperative efforts with watershed projects?

MT: It lay the foundations for work later by restoration non-profits and for productive collaboration with the neighboring tribes. Even the Forest Service has signed on. I call that a miracle, given where we started, and salute all our brilliant allies. I’ve been especially impressed by the caliber of our children, both the ones who returned to urban settings and the ones who stayed or who went to college and then came back. They are so much smarter and so much more politically astute than their parent’s generation, my generation. They work with the Tribe, with the Forest Service, with environmental groups and with a couple of powerful restoration non-profits. Early on we elders saw the benefits of getting along with the non-hippie neighbors, but our kids are really good at it. I’m proud of them and awed.

EB:Are there similarities between America today and our country 50 years ago when the commune started?

MT: Some things seem different. People smoke pot openly and men have beards and long hair, but those shifts are kind of superficial. On a deeper level, the country is still drastically divided in culture and politics. There is a crazy war that goes on and on without clear benefits. There are still deep divisions over issues of gender, class, race and much more. There is more poverty and more concentration of great wealth. The government talks democracy, but practices secrecy, corruption and authoritarianism. Is Trump worse than Nixon? We may have been utopians, but we didn’t leave a very perfect world for our kids. Still, if we hadn’t done the work we did, culturally and politically, it would be even worse. I remain an optimist.

EB: Thanks for talking with us. Good luck with your book.

MT: I hope you find it interesting.

Posted in Ideas and Opinions, Interviews | Comments Off on An Interview with Malcolm Terence

Snow Speech: The Evolving and Combatting Dialects of Ski and Snowboard Culture, a guest post by Brian Wood

Posted on May 21, 2018 by Ed Battistella
Email, RSS Follow

Brian Wood is an English major and skiing addict studying at SOU. His two great loves are prose and powder.

Anyone who has found themselves on a ski lift listening to their neighbor describe how they[1] “sent it off a gnar cornie, pulled a triple-cork, just missed the death cookies, and stomped the landing with steeze” probably understands that skiers and snowboarders possess a unique lingo largely unintelligible to outsiders. As in many sports, technical terms and esoteric descriptions pepper the speech of snow sports enthusiasts, transforming their casual banter into a language sometimes barely recognizable as English. However, the linguistics of skiing and snowboarding differ from the majority of sports dialects in two key points.

First, while most American sports’ lingos consist primarily of English terms coined to more precisely describe sport-specific actions, skiing/snowboarding speech embodies an amalgamation of English, Norwegian, and German terminology. To master ski/snowboard jargon—and indeed, to comprehend almost any conversation on or about a ski slope—one must understand expressions derived from all three of these languages, as well as some French, Russian, and Finish additions. Second, the language of skiing and snowboarding departs from more uniform sports’ vernaculars in the cultural rift splitting the dialect. The counter-culture, punk- and gangster-influenced lingo of snowboarders—and recently, some young freestyle skiers—exists in overt rebellion to the ordered, establishmentarian speech characteristic of skiing. This ongoing cultural power-struggle, in addition to the dialect’s diverse linguistic roots, gives the lingo of skiing and snowboarding a depth, nuance, and complexity unparalleled by more single-faceted sports.

Just as the sport of skiing traces its earliest roots to stone paintings in Norway, Herbert R. Liedke recognizes in his paper “The Evolution of the Ski-Lingo in America” that, “Norwegian has contributed the fundamental ski terms to the American ski language” (Liedke 116). Likewise, in his essay “The Language of Skiers,” Horst Jarka affirms, “The first [skiing] terms to be found in dictionaries are, like the word ski itself, of Scandinavian origin: Christiania (long since Anglicized to Christie, -y), ski joring, skiöjoring, slalom, and telemark” (Jarka 202). Despite Norway’s responsibility for the existence of skiing lingo, however, American English speakers initially resisted the adaptation of Norwegian terms into their skiing lexicon.

Throughout the 1800s, Americans preferred to clumsily lump skis in with the English ‘snowshoes’ rather than accept the more precise Norwegian term (Liedke 117). Additionally, some American skiers, such as those in California’s Sierras in the 1860s and ‘70s, invented their own terms for the sport. Sierra skiers devised “such picturesque word creations for skis as: flip-flops, or wooden-wings or, simpler, snow-gliders and wooden sticks” (Liedke 117). These coinages, while commendable in their ingenuity, failed to make a lasting impact on ski lingo. Even after skiing’s popularity exploded going into the nineteenth century, spurring a burst of corporate attempts to articulate the sport to potential customers, the search for English ski terminology still yielded unsatisfying results. Exclusively English ski lingo proved clumsy and inefficient at best, misleading at worst: “an awkward and unskilled mode of describing skiing” (Liedke 117).

By the early 1900s, American skiers and ski marketers had begun to recognize the need to blend English ski expressions with the more accurate and elegant alternatives offered by European languages. Motivated by linguistic necessity, the excellence of German skiers and ski technology, and a growing number of ‘jet set’ American families with a taste for extravagant European ski vacations, English ski vocabulary began to give way to an influx of European—particularly German—terminology. Jarka asserts, “the German element in the language of skiers soon outweighed that of any other foreign language…used not only by American theoreticians and instructors but also by ski fans who want to show how much they are ‘in the know’ on the art of skiing.” He lists a variety of German words incorporated into English ski vocabulary, including ‘fallinie,’ ‘vorläufer,’ ‘girlande,’ ‘riesenslalom,’ ‘schneepflug,’ and ‘treppenschritt,’ which evolved into the English adaptations ‘fall line,’ ‘forerunner,’ ‘garland,’ ‘giant slalom,’ ‘snowplow,’ and ‘stair step’ (Jarka 202-203). These terms, Jarka explains, are literal translations of the German, or loan translations, as he refers to them. Other German words, such as ‘mogul’—a term for bumps caused by heavy skiing on a particular slope—interlaced with English ski lingo without any change at all.

With the adoption of extensive German terminology into skiers’ jargon, the skiing lingo began to develop into a unique mode of speech, a language distinct from Norwegian, German, and English. In addition to loan translation and verbatim usage of German, Norwegian, or French words, the sport produced words exclusive to the world of skiing. Jarka references ‘skiable,’ ‘skimanship,’ and ‘skithievery’ as examples of skiing lingo’s departure from any single language, and points out, “skiers have added new meanings to words like bathtub, bunny, doughnut, eggbeater, snowplow, T-bar, and tow, and coined new terms like dope slope and slope fashions” (Jarka 204). Additionally, Liedke demonstrates skiing lingo’s burgeoning unintelligibility to non-skiers of any language or nation, quoting a ski reporter from the New York Times as proclaiming, “Such expressions as ‘geländesprungs, schusses, slalom, tailwagging and langlaufing’ are heard and you realize that, in addition to learning how to ski, you must learn to speak a strange language” (Liedke 120). As both Jarka and Liedke recognized, the language of skiing had outgrown the constraints of a single place or national identity, evolving into an entity tied exclusively to the experience, the mountain, and the exhilaration of hurtling downhill over snow.

Mirroring the journey of ski lingo into linguistic distinction and legitimacy, skiing also developed a unique culture: one stepped in affluence, prestige, and exclusivity. In stark difference from the sport’s Norwegian genesis as a practical and universally-accessible means of transportation, skiing in the 1900s on catered almost entirely to the upper classes, and the language of skiing expressed this elitism. The practical impossibility of skiing on a budget, coupled with the insidious classism prevalent in ‘ski biz’ advertising, cultivated a strong “snob appeal of…skier’s language” (Jarka 203). Skier speech became a privileged dialect, a syntactical assertion of wealth and cultural capital, and skiers utilized the complexity and multi-lingual nature of their lingo as a barrier to outsiders of lower class or economic means.

Even for those accepted into the prestigious inner circle of skiing lingo, slope speech tended toward a strong focus on order, adapting driving and traffic terminology to stifle freedom of expression or recklessness in skiing. While many of these terms inevitably stemmed from necessity as the skyrocketing popularity of skiing led to increasingly crowded slopes, some phrases—such as the epithets utilized to chastise and demonize reckless or aggressive skiers—demonstrated a clear dedication to structure, principle, and restraint on the mountain. Jarka demonstrates the antipathy faced by skiers who resisted the order imposed on their sport, listing various punitive labels imposed on high-speed skiers: ‘schussboomers,’ ‘hot rod skiers,’ and ‘trail hogs’ (Jarka 204). Additionally, he references an article which, in its title, posits the question “Can Schussboomers be stopped?” As do the derogatory terms of most cultures and languages, these labels for reckless skiers demonstrate the values of skiing lingo through the language’s choice of opponent. By vilifying those (usually younger) skiers eager to push the boundaries of the sport, the skiing language of the 1900s embodied a foundation of support for social and linguistic establishment—a support that grew so pervasive as to invite almost inevitable rebellion.

The revolution against skiing’s establishment culture emerged with the introduction of snowboarding: a sport which, while not significantly different from skiing in a technical sense (skiers slide down snow on two planks, snowboarders on one), embodied skiing’s collective cultural Id. While skiing society supported social values of order structured to maintain the status que, snowboarding championed individual expression, unapologetic pursuit of adrenaline, and strong counter-culture ideologies. In her article “What Is So Punk About Snowboarding?,” Rebecca Heino asserts, “snowboarding is aligned closely with surfing culture…Both blend the creativity of movement with the beauty of nature and the thrill of vertigo, a flirting with danger” (Heino 182). Heino continues, “Snowboarding represented a resistance to materialism and separation of mind and body, while embracing a wholistic view of nature that was similar to Zen and Buddhism” (Heino 183). This stark conflict in worldviews gave snowboarding the fuel to instigate a linguistic revolution.

In order to differentiate from mainstream ski culture, snowboarding lingo drew inspiration from other counter-culture movements. Heino explains, “Instead of the snowboarders aligning themselves with the dominant ski culture, they presented their cultural roots in surfing, skateboarding, and the ‘gangsta’” (Heino 178), and this cultural rift led “Snowboarders [to clash] with skiers in style of dress and body presentation, equipment, and language” (Heino 178). Perhaps the most fundamental linguistic divergence of snowboard culture from ski culture arises in the description of the sport itself. As Heino addresses, snowboarders did not ‘ski,’ but rather adopted the surfing term ‘shred’ into a mountain context (Heino 180). Heino elaborates, “Snowboarding appropriated other words from skateboarding and surfing such as goofy footed (riding with your right foot in front) and sick (excellent, as in ‘That was sick air’)” (Heino 181), resulting in a snowboarding lingo far more easily recognizable to the youth counter-culture of surf and skate groups than even the most linguistically well-versed mainstream skier.

In addition to surf and skate vocabulary, snowboarding also derived strong linguistic influence from gangster culture. As Holly Thorpe observes in her article “Embodied Boarders: Snowboarding, Status, and Style,” “The snowboarding media blatantly appropriate this gangster lingo, writing text in colloquial language and terminology that only gangsters and snowboarders understand” (Thorpe 189). Thorpe offers an example in Transworld Snowboarding, a popular snowboarding magazine and website which “writes to ‘all you fresh-ass mofos out there’” (Thorpe 189).

The incorporation of gangster lingo into the snowboarding lexicon differs from that of surf and skate culture, however, in that gangster terminology offers virtually no practical use in describing the act of snowboarding. Instead, snowboarders draw an exclusively stylistic and ideological connection between their sport and gangster culture, appropriating gangster terms to synonymize the snowboarding lifestyle with aggression, rebelliousness, and masculinity, despite the lack of physical or technological similarity. As Kristin L. Anderson affirms in her piece “Snowboarding: The Construction of Gender in an Emerging Sport,” snowboarding’s gangster speech is both a cultural statement and an intimidation tactic. Anderson argues, “Because the physical practice of snowboarding does not require obvious strength, violence, and aggression, snowboarders must use other factors, such as language, fashion, and ‘attitude,’ in creating a masculine identity…Like the African American men who create a ‘cool pose’ masculinity” (Anderson 69). Therefore, what skiing lingo accomplishes covertly through the underlying themes of prestige, exclusivity, and class distinction associated with the sport’s European technical terms, snowboarding language achieves more bluntly, and in the opposite direction, though gangster lingo. Both skiing and snowboarding adopt specific linguistic and dialectic terms to send a cultural message; snowboarding, true to form, simply refuses to apologize for doing so.

Despite a foundation of antipathy, however, skiing and snowboarding dialects have increasingly begun to merge as snowboarding gains cultural acceptance and joins the ‘mainstream’—a phenomenon highlighted by snowboarding’s presence in the Olympics, and one which has inspired some counter-culture devotees to strap into the once-maligned skis. Heino quotes the Transworld Snowboarding’s managing editor as admitting, “Skiing is punk again. The opposite of what convention is” (Heino 185). Consequently, terms once exclusive to one lingo or the other are being shared: skiers can now ‘shred the pow’; snowboarders can race ‘slalom’ and ride ‘moguls.’ The two once-distinct languages are gradually merging into one. Whatever the future of ski and snowboard speech, however, these lingos have achieved remarkable complexity, originality, and cultural relevance for two dialects founded around skidding down snow on planks, and they show no signs of slowing down.

Works Cited

Anderson, Kristin L. “Snowboarding: The Construction of Gender in an Emerging Sport.” Sage Journal of Sport and Social Issues, vol. 23, no. 1, 1999, pp. 55-79. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0193723599231005

Heino, Rebecca. “What is So Punk about Snowboarding?” Sage Journal of Sport and Social Issues, vol. 24, no. 2, 2000, pp. 176-191, doi.org/10.1177/0193723500242005. Accessed 19 Feb. 2018.

Jarka, Horst. “The Language of Skiers.” American Speech, vol. 38, no. 3, 1963, pp. 202–208. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/454100. Accessed 18 Feb. 2018.

Liedke, Herbert R. “The Evolution of the Ski-Lingo in America.” Monatshefte Für Deutschen Unterricht, vol. 35, no. 3/4, 1943, pp. 116–124. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30169965. Accessed 19 Feb. 2018

Thorpe, Holly. “Embodied Boarders: Snowboarding, Status, and Style.” Waikato Journal of Education, vol. 10, 2004, pp. 181-201. http://www.wje.org.nz/index.php/WJE/article/view/339. Accessed 19 Feb. 2018

  1. I use the singular ‘they’ intentionally in this essay in an attempt to avoid gendered speech. ↑

Posted in Ideas and Opinions, Language | Comments Off on Snow Speech: The Evolving and Combatting Dialects of Ski and Snowboard Culture, a guest post by Brian Wood

An Interview with Becky Robinson of Hometown Reads

Posted on May 11, 2018 by Ed Battistella
Email, RSS Follow

Hometown Reads! helping them connect with readers in their hometown through what we call the Read Local movement. Founded in 2016, the organize authors by local community.

Hometown Reads is sponsored by Weaving Influence, a full-service digital marketing agency founded by Becky Robinson.

Ed Battistella: What is Hometown Reads?

Becky Robinson: Hometown Reads is a collaborative community dedicated to serving local authors across the country, by helping them connect with readers in their hometown through what we call the Read Local movement. We provide a free online digital bookshelf, where authors can showcase their books for increased discoverability.

EB: How long has Hometown Reads been doing this?

BR: Hometown Reads launched its first city, Toledo, Ohio in 2016. We celebrated our two year anniversary as a company in March of 2018.

EB: What is the benefit to authors?

BR: Hometown Reads allows authors a free platform to showcase their works amongst others in their hometown for exposure locally (and even globally).

We promote our authors across social media and have created tweets for authors to cross-promote each other and their locations. Each location has a city-specific Facebook group and author-Ambassadors to help grow the Read Local movement in their hometown, as well as share best practices for book marketing.

EB: Are there services for readers who are not authors?

BR: Our site is designed so that readers can search and find both books from their hometown, paired with the hope that they can develop online or in-person connections with their favorite hometown authors. Readers are also able to search by location, genre, and featured books.

EB: How do you pick the towns?

BR: Some of the locations we showcase were suggested by authors, local bookstores, or publishers. Other hometown locations were added when we notice an influx of authors signing up in a particular area. We are always looking for new locations and are open to suggestions.

EB: Are libraries and bookstores involved? How so?

BR: We encourage libraries and bookstores to sign up as Read Local Champions. These community organizations are supporters of the #ReadLocal movement in their hometown. We showcase them on our website and encourage them to implement “Read Local” shelves to support awareness of the local authors in their hometown.

EB: Who sponsors Hometown Reads?

BR: Hometown Reads is sponsored by my core company, Weaving Influence. Weaving Influence, based in Lambertville, Michigan, partners with authors and thought leaders to grow their online influence and market their books. It has grown into a team of more than 30 skilled professionals, offering full-service traditional publicity services and website development, in addition to our social media work and book launch promotion. We currently serve more than 40 clients and have launched more than 100 books since our start in 2012, with more planned for this year. While we primarily serve authors and thought leaders, we also work with corporations, small businesses, and nonprofit organizations.

EB: What are your plans for the future?

BR: We want to continue increasing the number of locations we represent to gain more attention of readers. We plan on launching a new homepage and book page designs in 2018 to make the site more attractive to readers. We want to continue exploring meaningful relationships with Read Local champions, facilitating involvement from our Ambassadors, and finding new, innovative ways to support our local authors.

EB: Thanks for talking with us.

BR: Thanks for your support of Hometown Reads in Ashland!

Posted in Interviews | Comments Off on An Interview with Becky Robinson of Hometown Reads