An Interview with Kirsten Johanna Allen of Torrey House Press

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Ed Battistella
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Kirsten Johanna Allen is the publisher and editorial director of Torrey House Press, based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Torrey House Press is an independent nonprofit publisher dedicated to publishing diverse voices with transformative stories of the American West and developing literary resources for the conservation movement.

Ed Battistella: How did Torrey House Press get started?

Kirsten Johanna Allen: Mark Bailey and I have long loved writers like Wallace Stegner, Terry Tempest Williams, Rachel Carson, Ed Abbey, and as we got more familiar with the degradation of the West’s mountains and deserts due to public land management problems, we realized one of the best ways we could help is by publishing the works of the next Stegner and Carson. We founded the press as co-publishers in October 2010 and published our first title the following summer. Mark has stepped back from day-to-day operations and I am now publisher.

EB: Torrey House is unique in that it has not just a regional mission but is organized as a non-profit. How did you decide on that model?

KJA: Creative work always has to be subsidized because it doesn’t pay for itself. Big publishers subsidize their economically risky fiction and creative nonfiction with blockbusters, and many terrific hybrid publishers share the financial risk with their authors. We’ve admired the work of independent literary presses such as Milkweed Editions and Coffee House Press, and, as it typical for them, Torrey House Press book sales revenues cover only about 50% of expenses so contributions are critical to publishing the books that fulfill our mission to promote conservation through literature. We became a nonprofit so donations could be tax-deductible for our contributors and so we could apply for grants.

EB: Tell us a little about your background?

KJA: I first fell in love with the outdoors as a child visiting my grandparents’ ranch in eastern Nevada, and I think I’ve always loved books. I combined the two in college, writing a thesis on Wallace Stegner’s use of landscape. My education and professional background includes a master’s in public health from the University of Utah School of Medicine and a bachelor’s in English from Westminster College; 25 years of private piano instruction, 25 years of freelance editing experience, and five years teaching college English composition; board membership with nonprofits; and a lifetime passion for the West’s fantastic landscapes.

EB: Torrey House publishes both fiction and non-fiction. What do you look for in a book?

KJA: In both fiction and nonfiction, I want a book that draws me in transparently. I want to not realize I’m reading, to be engrossed in the story without distractions. I find that often it’s common errors that trip up the writing, especially repetition, multiple verb phrases, and thinker attributives like realized/thought/remembered.

EB: What do you look for in an author?

KJA: Because Torrey House Press is small—we’re two unpaid staff and two part-time paid staff—deciding to work with an author is adding a new family member so we want to be sure we’re a good fit. We care deeply about every title—each one feels like a new baby we’ve midwifed—so writers get our whole hearts as well as our expertise. Authors who sign with Torey House Press need to believe in our mission to promote conservation through literature as much as we do, and need to demonstrate their commitment to working as partners with us in the all-important work of developing a readership for their book.

EB: You been involved in the campaign to save the Bear Ears and have a books out called EDGE OF MORNING: Native Voices Speak for the Bears Ears and RED ROCK STORIES: Three Generations of Writers Speak on Behalf of Utah’s Public Lands. Can you tell us a bit about those books and some of the events surrounding them?

KJA: RED ROCK STORIES was first printed as a limited edition, art-as-advocacy chapbook, Red Rock Testimony, and editor Stephen Trimble and I went to Washington, D.C. took copies to Obama Administration officials in June 2016. Chapbooks were also sent to every member of Congress as decision-makers deliberated between a destructive public lands bill and a national monument proposed by the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition. On December 28, 2016, President Obama established Bears Ears National Monument, and in June 2017, this historic collection was expanded and published as a trade book, RED ROCK STORIES, in celebration of protecting exquisite and sacred landscapes. I first started looking for an editor for EDGE OF MORNING in August 2015, contracting with Navajo/Yankton Dakota journalist Jacqueline Keeler in January 2016. Jackie contacted Native writers, activists, leaders, and poets, and the collection she developed speaks to the power of sacred landscape and the importance of Native sovereignty for Native and non-Native Americans alike. The book has anchored events and conferences including the White Privilege Conference where Jackie was a keynote speaker. She is now working on a book exploring sovereignty and sacred lands through the the 2016 standoffs at Standing Rock and the Malheur Refuge.

EB: Let me ask about independent publishing more generally. What’s the role of independent publishers like Torrey House in American book culture?

KJA: Independent publishing brings a variety of thought, stories, and authors that keep our culture lively, rich, and diverse. Just as a healthy meadow or riparian area requires both dominant plants and animals and a host of less dominant flora and fauna to function successfully, the world of books and ideas needs both big and small publishers to expand human thought and experience.

EB: What have you learned since beginning your press?

KJA: That it’s difficult and expensive to sell books. And that the best thing about publishing is the people—from authors and readers to librarians and booksellers and other publishers, the community is comprised of the most interesting and generous folks on the planet.

EB: What advice have you got for potential authors?

KJA: Workshop your book with other authors or editors many, many times before considering submitting it to a publisher or agent. When querying an agent or publisher, remember that your pitch needs to be about them not you. Understand what that particular agent or publisher is looking for and show how you and your book fit with their needs and culture.

EB: Thanks for talking with us.

KJA: Thank you for all you do for books and ideas!

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An Interview with Laura Stanfill, publisher of Forest Avenue Press

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Ed Battistella
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Portland’s Forest Avenue Press has a unique community mission aimed at empowering authors and publishing page-turning literary fiction. Publisher Laura Stanfill serves on the PubWest Board of Directors and on the advisory board of Atelier26.

EB: How did Forest Avenue Press get started? And what have you learned in the last few years?

LS: I founded the press in 2012 to publish and promote Oregon writers, then opened to national submissions in 2014.

In the past five years, I’ve learned a lot about the industry and have dedicated myself to teaching and mentoring other publishers and writers through volunteer work, speaking gigs, and PubWest, where I serve on the board.

One of my biggest passion topics is distribution. How a press gets its books into the marketplace matters because of visibility and sales. Some distribution models are more effective and far-reaching than others. If authors go into a publishing contract truly understanding how their books will be sent into the world, they’ll be more effective advocates for their art.

I spent two years selling books out of the back of my car—and toting boxes to bookstores for consignment—before signing with Legato Publishers Group, an affiliate of distributor-heavyweight PGW, now owned by Ingram. We have sales conferences and reps that sell our books in across the U.S., which makes our marketing and publicity efforts even more crucial, because the risk is higher. But the potential reward is higher, too.

EB: Is Portland especially hospitable to independent publishers and writers?

LS: I don’t think I would have decided to start a press in another city. Portland’s literary community inspired me to build one more home for novelists, and its publishers made me believe that I could actually do it through their examples, advice, and encouragement. We celebrate each other, honor others’ accomplishments, connect and turn out in huge numbers for book events.

We also have incredibly dedicated booksellers who write excellent shelf talkers and hand-sell local titles to browsers. When I showed up as a new publisher, I found friends and allies in the indie bookstore world because I had been buying books and attending events for a decade. My mission with Forest Avenue was to urge in-person conversations about literature, so I created an events-based marketing plan that I still use today. My whole business model is centered on independent bookstores. I support bookstores; bookstores support our authors. It sounds obvious, but it’s important. Essential.

I should add that I just found out I’m a Publishers Weekly Star Watch Top 45 honoree; Rosanne Parry, a local author and Annie Bloom’s bookseller, nominated me for the award, which recognizes up-and-coming publishers. She took the time away from her own writing, bookselling, and family life to ask the panel to consider me. I’m so grateful. Moments like this continue to motivate me to do my part to uplift and amplify others in the literary community.

EB: Tell us a little about your background?

LS: My background is in community journalism; before transitioning to publishing, I was managing editor of a weekly on the Oregon coast, covering education and business beats and managing a five-person newsroom. I’ve won numerous journalism awards, including the Consumer Issues Reporting Award from the Oregon Department of Justice. I also worked in public relations and manuscript editing.

EB: Forest Avenue Press is also the home of the Main Street Writers Movement. What that?

LS: It’s a movement geared to encouraging writers to build community at the local level by supporting each other, their indie bookstores, and local presses and magazines. If we can create these invested hubs of community goodness, then the whole national literary ecosystem will become stronger. And touring writers will be able to activate Main Street communities in the places they travel.

It’s easy to join. Take the pledge—http://www.forestavenuepress.com/take-the-pledge—and then look around and see what you can do to genuinely support the authors in your community. We use #mainstreetwriters as our hashtag to help members find each other.

Being genuine is an important piece of this movement; if a friend’s book isn’t to your taste, don’t write a chirpy false review. You can still support your friend in genuine ways: show up at an event, share a link to an interview, or take a few photos to share on social media. I run a not-quite-monthly newsletter with links and information about community building, and signing the pledge will add you to that list.

EB: Many of your book seem to have a Portland connection, like City of Weird and A Simplified Map of the Real World by Stevan Allred. What do you look for in a book?

LS: When we signed with Legato and went national with submissions, I knew I wanted to continue promoting Northwest writers, so our catalog is a blend of regional writers and national ones; we have books set in Portland, Seattle, and Alaska, but also the Philippines, New Orleans, and Delaware.

I have a committee help me choose titles when we’re open for submissions; we love literary language, page-turning plots, and diversity, and we’re also partial to magical realism. There’s often a joyous, ebullient quality to our titles, whether due to the playfulness of the language or the wild ride of the story itself. Our tagline is “Literary fiction on a joyride.”

EB: What do you look for in an author?

LS: I look for someone who has been actively building community, because it’s really hard to sell books by authors who are only invested in promoting their own work. Debut authors are a favorite, because so many of them have spent years honing their craft, and it’s a huge honor to launch an author’s first title.

I love working with authors who have a strong sense of their own craft and want to work together with our team to get the book to reach its full potential. That kind of collaborative spirit is essential.

EB: Let me ask about independent publishing more generally. How do you see the role of independent publishers like Forest Avenue in American book culture? What does the future hold?

LS: There are many amazing presses doing great work, putting out worthy titles that deserve a place on the shelf. I visited the giant Ingram warehouse in Tennessee last fall, and instead of panicking at the number of books, I left feeling ever-so-satisfied and a bit giddy. Publishers are making books, and readers are choosing them, and that allows us to make more books.

As far as the future of the industry, margins are tight in this business, and that’s a concern. So many people tell me, “I don’t have time to read,” because of busy lives and/or choosing other forms of entertainment. There’s a gap between the number of people out there hoping to find a publisher and the number of readers actually buying books. Writers have to be readers too for this system to succeed, for existing presses to flourish and for new ones to get a strong start. That’s really why I’m so invested in community building.

EB: What advice have you got for potential authors?

LS: Read widely. Show up on the local literary scene by attending events and buying books from indies. Checking titles out from the library—or requesting a title that isn’t in the system yet—are wonderful ways to support the publishers you hope may publish you. Build a brand and a social media presence, but not at the expense of the work. The work—the words—must come first. And when you have a book deal, and are making that leap from potential to actual product, find other writers with similar projects or pub dates, and befriend them. You’ll celebrate together and commiserate together, as needed. My authors Renee Macalino Rutledge and Michael Shou-Yung Shum are both in the ’17 Scribes, an international debut author collective that’s been doing impressive work promoting 2017 debut novels.

EB: Where can readers get your books?

LS: At independent bookstores across the country. If a backlist title isn’t in stock any more, you can ask a bookseller to order it. You can find them online as well, but we’re strongly commmitted to having our readers support their local indies.

EB: Thanks for talking with us.

LS: Thank you for the opportunity.

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An Interview with John McWhorter, author of Talking Back, Talking Black

Posted on July 18, 2017 by Ed Battistella
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photo by Eileen Barroso

John McWhorter teaches linguistics, Western civilization, music history, and American studies at Columbia University. A New York Times best-selling author and TED speaker, he is a columnist for Time and regular contributor to the Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post and the host of Slate’s Lexicon Valley. His books on language include The Power of Babel, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, What Language Is, The Language Hoax, and Words on the Move.

John McWhorter earned his B.A. from Rutgers University, his M.A. from New York University, and his Ph.D. in Linguistics from Stanford University.

We talk about his latest book, Talking Back, Talking Black: Truths About America’s Lingua Franca.

EB: Thanks for writing this book. You’ve managed to show both the complexity of African American Vernacular and the complexity of the issues surrounding public attitudes about vernacular language and correctness. As writer, how did you choose the material to discuss—which goes far beyond the usual textbook treatment?

JM: What moved me was two things – 1) that I don’t think we linguists have made a dent in the public’s reception of the dialect in pointing out that it is systematic in its grammar (and I really mean “we,” as I wrote a book on Black English in the 90s and have written on it fairly often since), and 2) that I don’t think racism is the only thing keeping people from understanding.

So, I decided to approach Black English from the perspective I have seen laymen to have, rather than trying to give them a kind of “Linguistics 101,” which is the foundation of the “systematicity” argument – you’ve taken some phonology and syntax and you want to talk about GRAMMAR, but the public hasn’t had those courses and can’t hear what you’re saying in any real way. I gathered the kinds of questions the public usually has and frankly, the misimpressions they often so earnestly insist upon (that Black is “minstrel,” that there’s no such thing as a black “sound” except that black men have deep voices, and so on) and address them head on. That meant showing how the dialect is COMPLICATED, not just “systematic,” addressing what minstrel speech actually was and how there was a delicate, but real, intersection between that and how black people in the nineteenth century actually spoke, and also getting at something that we linguists can forget that the general public in America does not readily understand: diglossia. Most laymen think you speak one way, and that how you talk in your kitchen signifies how you talk when giving a speech. I’m not sure there is a pop source that teaches the public what diglossia is and how common – even universal – it is in how people speak. I tried to help out with that.

EB: I was particularly fascinated by the intimacy marker up, as in your example “We was sittin’ up at Tony’,” which I had heard used but never understood before. When did you first figure out the nuance to that?

JM: I’m not sure when that occurred to me, actually – sometime in the 90s, I think – probably in 1999 when the person I mentioned said “There was buck naked people up in my house.” That person was, as it happens, a white guy doing a fond kind of imitation of black speech (in the vein today often called appropriation although, as I have written, I find that analysis strained when it comes to speech). I was struck that his mimicking was good enough that he used that “up” – it struck me as especially authentic and then the “linguist hat” goes on and I thought “He is using that UP spontaneously but really, what is the function of it?”

I always have my ear cocked to vernacular constructions and am always trying to figure them out – I think it’s part of my being first, hardwired to be a linguist sort and second, black, such that I grew up hearing a certain variety of speech styles. An example would be that, as I describe in the book, when I was a kid and heard my cousins using the narrative HAD, my natural impulse was to quietly try to figure out how that usage made SENSE, rather than just dismissing it as “slang” that “they” use.

EB: What the significance of the title? I have to admit, when I mention the book to people I have to stop and think about the order of the words BACK and BLACK.

JM: Honestly the publisher thought that one up and I have rarely given it much thought! I had a different title – “How Do You Sound Black and Why?” That probably wasn’t good enough – book titles don’t come easily to me.

EB: You also describe Black English as America’s Lingua Franca. What do you mean by that?

JM: That since the nineties especially, ASPECTS of Black English have become a part of the speech repertoire of people beyond black America. First, Latinos, but now even many Asians and finally whites, especially young men. Pragmatic markers (yo, naw for no, etc.), aspects of inflection, and associated gestures are now so embraced by such a wide variety of people that to many young people the idea of Black English as specifically “black” sounds off. Now, as a linguist I specify that it isn’t that people beyond blacks (and Latinos) are actually using the full blown phonology and syntax of Black English. However, a lot of white kids, using a certain amount of the slang and intonation, consider themselves to be using “Black English,” which was all but unheard of until the 90s. It’s been part of the browning of the culture, as some have called it.

EB: Why do you think Black English is so difficult for Americans—Black and White—to wrap their heads around? Because of the complexity of race or the obscurity of linguistics, or both?

JM: Obviously both, but I honestly believe that the linguistic aspect dominates. It rankles some for me to say that – our moment encourages academics to stress racism over all, and at times that’s necessary. But the general public finds rural white Southern speech quite absurd, often, as well, and if there had ever been a push to use it as a teaching tool Fox News would have had a grand old time with that as well. Americans, because English is RELATIVELY homogenous here compared to England where it has had longer to differentiate, have a hard time processing that English can come in assorted flavors and still be legitimate. There is also an Anglophone First World bourgeois obsession with grammatical “correctness” in general – people are quite vicious about supposed grammatical errors. Does the viciousness step up some when black speech is involved? Perhaps, the race part is, in itself, just one part.

EB: Are there some common misconceptions about Black English shared by Black and White speakers?

JM: Certainly. Most people think Black English means slang, which makes any discussion of its “legitimacy” seem absurd. Linguists talk about the grammar of the dialect, but to laymen, “grammar” is a matter of things people do WRONG, not all of the complex ways that we put words together otherwise. So Black English seems to be slang and mistakes to most.

EB: You mention the Blaccent, as your call it, and that there are several different levels of the African American accent. Can you tell our readers a little about that?

JM: Most black Americans have vowel colorings that are subtly different than other Americans’, which is much of what we hear as the “black sound.” Then, some black people do not have those colorings, but still produce their speech with a slightly different “timbre,” in the sense we usually use re singers, than others. That signals another aspect of the black “sound.” These differences are internalized quite subconsciously from infancy on, and have nothing to do with right or wrong, anymore than the different vocal “placement” of British English is. I was struck by how absent from public writings this interesting aspect of black speech is beyond a certain point, and one of the things I most wanted to get across in this book was that there IS a such thing as sounding black and that there’s nothing wrong with it in any way. If the book leaves any shred of difference in public perception I hope it is that.

EB: Thanks for talking with us. Congratulations on a fine book.

JM: Thank you!

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My Dinner with Harlan

Posted on July 15, 2017 by Ed Battistella
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When I was in high school two of my favorite books were Harlan Ellison’s The Glass Teat: Essays of Opinion on Television and The Other Glass Teat. They were feisty books of cultural criticism based on Ellison’s weekly column for the Los Angeles Free Press in the late 1960s. The title vision of TV viewers fit my high school mindset (along with Herman Hesse and Franz Kafka, you know the type), and the books sent me to the dictionary every other page so I was convinced they were a serious read.

I read more Harlan Ellison, graduating to the Dangerous Visions collection and Again Dangerous Visions, with their equally abrasive introductions. I was cheering from the sidelines when Ellison wrote “City on the Edge of Forever.”

College and grad school intervened, with linguistics taking the place of speculative fiction. But I still kept an eye on Harlan’s career, enjoying a wonderful Comics Journal interview where he confesses to sliding down a conference table to deck Irwin Allen, the producer of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Because why not.

Year later—maybe a dozen—I was surprised to learn that Harlan Ellison would be speaking at the university where I was teaching—the University of Alabama in Birmingham His visit was cosponsored by the Honors Program and Ada Long, the chain smoking honors director, was looking for an English professor to chaperone (as it were) the honors students who would go to dinner with Harlan after his talk. As it turned out, of the 25 or so English professors in the department, I was the only would who would admit to knowing who Harlan Ellison was, so it was on me.

The dinner, which included Harlan, my wife and me, and a half dozen students went pretty much as you might expect. Harlan argued with the students about just about everything. I sat at the far end, sipping a beer and keeping my head down. I remembered the story about Irwin Allen.

After dinner as we walked back to the cars, we heard a shout and saw a man running with a purse. The students took off after the purse snatcher, and I took off after the students. It turned out that the runner with the purse was trying to return it to a woman who’d left it behind in a restaurant.

We got back to Harlan, who was waiting with my wife, and shaking his head ever so slightly. I never asked why, but I always imagined that we had all expected something dramatic to happen at a dinner with Harlan Ellison—a crime, a brawl, the apocalypse, whatever. Harlan, it seemed, knew better.

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