Tag: BookBlast’s Indie Publisher of the Week

Guest Review | Sharif Gemie | Beirut 2020: The Collapse of a Civilization, a Journal – Charif Majdalani | Mountain Leopard Press

Remember the Great Fear of March 2020? Remember the empty supermarket shelves, stripped bare of pasta, loo-rolls and flour? Many Brits feared that this was the End of Civilization as We Know It, like in a horror film.

Charif Majdalani’s book is a useful corrective to such needless panics. Last year, people living in Beirut really did see the collapse of a civilization, and Beirut 2020 is a gripping, perceptive account of the process. Continue reading Guest Review | Sharif Gemie | Beirut 2020: The Collapse of a Civilization, a Journal – Charif Majdalani | Mountain Leopard Press

Interview | Douglas Suttle, founder, Fum d’Estampa Press | Indie Publisher of the Week

Established in 2019, Fum d’Estampa Press publishes award-winning Catalan language poetry, fiction and essays in English translation. Its founder, Doug Suttle, tells us what inspired him, why the attraction to Catalan language and literature in particular, and what is so special about Barcelona.

Tell us a bit about your childhood and where you grew up.
I grew up in a leafy suburb of south London before heading up to Nottingham for my teenage years.

Were your parents great readers? What were the books that made you fall in love with reading?
My parents read a lot. They always have. I remember my father reading The Lord of the Rings and The Little Grey Men Go Down the Bright Stream to me as bedtime stories when I was a child. I remember going to sleep dreaming of Shadowfax and Ring Wraiths! I was also surrounded by Penguin Ladybird books about history and explorers, etc. I then quickly moved into reading whatever I could get my hands on. I think I was a pretty avid reader growing up. And that’s thanks to my parents.

A journalist, translator and editor . . . how did you end up in Catalonia?
Long story! I was looking for a change and had been travelling around Latin America for a while but was keen to try out something a little closer to the UK. I ended up in Catalonia. It’s got it all – mountains, an amazing coastline, wonderful cities, and a rich, varied culture.

Continue reading Interview | Douglas Suttle, founder, Fum d’Estampa Press | Indie Publisher of the Week

Interview | Kit Caless, Influx Press | Indie Publisher of the Week

Are (were) your parents great readers? Tell us a bit about yourself.
My mum has always read books, there were lots of books around her house when I was growing up. But as a child and teenager I didn’t read all that much – I was too busy playing football, cricket and skateboarding to bother sitting down to read. I started to take reading seriously when I was about eighteen.

Did you want to work in the publishing industry from the start?
Hell no. Have you seen the people that work in publishing? I never thought it was a place for me. I’m joking, but not joking at the same time. I’ve met lots of great people in the industry but from the outside it appears to be a very elitist, English Literature Graduate kind of place. That’s not my background, so it wasn’t something I ever considered. Starting Influx Press with my school friend Gary Budden was kind of a way of (very slowly and ineffectively) knocking down those closed doors. Continue reading Interview | Kit Caless, Influx Press | Indie Publisher of the Week

Interview | Michael Z. Wise, co-founder, New Vessel Press | Indie Publisher of the Week

Are (were) your parents great readers? Tell us a bit about yourself.
I’ve enjoyed reading since I was a child — yes, my parents encouraged me to study and explore books. After studying French in high school and living for a summer with a French family in Clermont Ferrand, I have loved reading in other languages.

Did you want to work in the publishing industry from the start?
I’m relatively new to the business of publishing, although I’ve written a book (Capital Dilemma: Germany’s Search for a New Architecture of Democracy) I only co-founded New Vessel Press with Ross Ufberg in 2012. We’re both passionate about literature and foreign literature in particular — I read French and German and Ross reads Russian and Polish — but neither of us has prior experience in publishing. We’ve been learning as we go along which has made building a new house a challenge but great fun. Nowadays the publishing world is changing so rapidly that I’d venture that we have just as much of a clue as to where things are going as more traditional, established houses. Continue reading Interview | Michael Z. Wise, co-founder, New Vessel Press | Indie Publisher of the Week

Interview | Anne Dolamore, co-publisher, Grub Street | Indie Publisher of the Week

Anne Dolamore started her career in publishing in the mid 1970s in the sales and marketing department at Faber & Faber, after reading English at Lancaster University. She moved to André Deutsch as one of the first women reps in London and in 1982 set up her own special sales consultancy, advising publishers such as Pan Macmillan, Harper Collins, Chatto, Bodley Head and Cape. At the end of the 1980s she wrote her first book, The Essential Olive Oil Companion, which was packaged by Grub Street and published by Macmillan. Her next book A Buyer’s Guide to Olive Oil, was published in 1994. In 1988 she joined forces with John Davies (the publisher of military aviation history books) to run Grub Street, which was voted International Cookbook Publisher of the Year at the World Cookbook Awards in 2000.

Anne was Chair of the Guild of Food Writers for two years; Chair of Sustain – the alliance for better food and farming; and Chair of the London Food Links working group for 10 years and served on the board of London Food, set up by the Mayor of London to deliver a London Food Strategy. She is a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals and Les Dames des Escoffier. She has written for numerous publications, has made a number of radio and TV appearances, and recorded her lifetime food memories as a contribution to the National Sound Archive. She has just completed recording for the Women in Publishing Oral History Project.

Were your parents great readers?
My parents did both read; my mother mostly fiction but my father did love poetry and when I was a child he read to me most nights from A Book of 1000 Poems. At his funeral in 2008 my daughter, Amy, read one of his favourite poems, Alfred Lord Tennyson’s The Brook. They did instill in me a love of reading from the earliest age, and of course I am of that generation (now 63 yrs old) where weekly visits to the local library was a rite of passage. Libraries nurtured my insatiable reading habit and made me love books. Continue reading Interview | Anne Dolamore, co-publisher, Grub Street | Indie Publisher of the Week

%d bloggers like this: