Nature-focused illustrated books were the status quo at the time, as Chanticleer Press continued to publish other series: Taylor’s Guides to Gardening and Mary McCarthy’s Stones of Florence. The 1960s had the Exhibit Format series, introduced by environmentalist and executive of the Sierra Club David R. Bower. Bower is credited with the idea of the “modern coffee table book,” as he wanted to create books that were similar to photography exhibits. 

If you have encountered the Bosnian writer Aleksandar Hemon, citizen of Chicago since 1992, you know the pleasures and sustenance his work offers. And if this is your first introduction, then welcome. Hemon, who won a MacArthur Grant in 2004, has published four compelling books of fiction. His short stories and novel, inflected by personal experience, loss and memory, probe what it means to be deeply affected by war, and what's inexplicable accompanying it. In Hemon’s case: what it means to exist within the experience of war, yet remain outside.

Throughout NW, Smith demonstrates a deep understanding of the constant ebb and flow of human relationships—between mothers and daughters, between best friends, between a reformed addict determined to stay clean and his flamboyant, drug-using ex-girlfriend.  Even forewarned of an impending tragedy, the reader becomes so absorbed in these characters’ lives that when  calamity does strike, it comes as a breathtaking surprise and with a penetrating sense of loss.

Lorin Stein, the current editor of the Paris Review, has been described by literary agent Ira Silverberg in a New York Times profile piece as “the best thing to happen to The Paris Review since George Plimpton.” That rather bold statement is not the least undeserved. The magazine has undergone some highly lauded renovations since Stein assumed the helm, among which are the redesign of the magazine itself and, more notably, the overhaul of the Review website, which now includes free online access to the celebrated Paris Review interview archives. 

The recent rash of self-publishing success stories capture the spirit of the American Dream, in which anybody can be successful with entrepreneurship and a good idea – rags-to-riches stories in which the little guy, forgotten by corporate publishers succeeds on his own skill and perseverance. The response from other writers and publishers is often disdain toward self-published and vanity press books.

On a warm Friday night in October in Frostburg, Maryland, a small college town in the Allegheny Mountains, some 75 people sit in Main Street Books listening as four editors introduce a writer each from their respective publishing house.  This is the kickoff event of the Frostburg Independent Literature Festival, one of many such events celebrating independent publishers happening every month around the country.  The editors all say the same thing: What they do is about the writers.  It’s about publishing work they believe in.  It’s about getting good books into the hands of readers.