Showing posts with label Peggy Northrop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peggy Northrop. Show all posts

Nest. Flight. Sky.: on the physical page in the Shebooks anthology

Saturday, November 29, 2014


Deeply grateful to Laura Fraser and Peggy Northrop and the entire Shebooks team for including Nest. Flight. Sky.: on love and loss, one wing at a time in a first print anthology that also features the work of Mary Jo McConahay (on war reporting in Central America), Faith Adiele (on women's health), Barbara Graham (on abuse), Ethel Rohan (on survival and forgiveness), and Susan Ito (on the search for a birth mother).

The book is here, with me, and and now available for order. I am especially grateful to Beth Hoffman, the incredibly talented and generous author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt and Looking for Me, for lending her voice to the back cover.

Read more...

The Shebooks Kickstarter Campaign: watch the movie

Tuesday, May 27, 2014



You know how proud I am to be a Shebooks author. You know how much I've loved the Shebooks I've read. You know how much it means to be able to support other writers of fiction, memoir, long-form journalism. To support other women, too.

And so here I am with Shebooks again, but this time I'm talking about the Kickstarter campaign. I'm going to let the official press release speak for Shebooks here. But I hope you'll stop to watch the movie. To be inspired by it, even, to help the campaign, to write a Shebooks of your own.

Shebooks Launches Kickstarter for its 2014 Equal Writes Campaign

New digital publisher kicks off campaign to raise awareness of gender bias in publishing.


San Francisco, CA (May 27, 2014) – Shebooks, a new digital publisher of short e-books by women,
today launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise awareness of the gender bias in publishing—and to
build a fund to pay women writers. “Our goal is to publish as many short e-books by women as we
can this year.” says Laura Fraser, Shebooks Cofounder and Editorial Director. “As an author, I’ve seen the space for quality women's writing shrink and shrink. That’s why we started Shebooks, to give more women a platform to publish their work.”

The 30-day Kickstarter campaign has a goal to raise $50K, all of which will go to pay women writers in 2014. At every pledge level, Shebooks offers fun, creative campaign rewards, including a Shebooks subscription, a chance to get your own original work published in an upcoming Girl Power anthology, an “EQUAL WRITES” T-shirt, a night out with Shebooks authors, author visits to your book club, the opportunity to have a protagonist named after you in an upcoming book, and much more.

To date, Shebooks has published over 40 original books by top authors and journalists. Shebooks
authors include international bestselling author Hope Edelman, New York Times-bestselling author
Caroline Leavitt, former Deputy Editor of Essence Teresa Wiltz, founder of Ms. Magazine Suzanne
Braun Levine, and National Book Award finalist Beth Kephart. This week’s Shebook, I’ll Give You
Something to Cry About, is an original novella by New York Times-bestselling novelist Jennifer Finney Boylan, who was recently named the Anna Quindlen writer-in-residence at Barnard.

“We are thrilled by the quality of the e-books that we’ve published so far and are excited to discover
new voices and publish many more,” says Peggy Northrop, Cofounder and President of Shebooks.
“Kickstarter is the perfect vehicle for getting the word out to a wide audience about this exciting new media form.”

About Shebooks
Shebooks is a new publisher of short e-books by and for women, cofounded in 2013 by magazine
editor Peggy Northrop, bestselling author Laura Fraser, and media executive Rachel Greenfield.
Shebooks.net offers a curated collection of original and hard-to-find memoir, fiction, and journalis tailored to women and designed to be read in under two hours. Shebooks can be purchased individually for $2.99 or by subscription.

Read more...

The Shebooks Interview, and It's Official, It's On, It's a Whole World Out There

Saturday, May 24, 2014

You know that Shebooks publishing venture I've been speaking of? That ever-growing cache of stories and memoirs—written by women to be read in one sitting? That brain child of Peggy Northrop and Laura Fraser that has been releasing truly fantastic e-books for a mere $2.99 each, week by week, by writers like Hope Edelman, Jane Ciabattari, Ariel Gore, and Suzanne Braun Levine?

Yes, that one.

Well, a fully enhanced Shebooks site is now live. It features author interviews, videos, extras. It offers a subscription service (currently discounted), that allows readers to buy the books they want at a low monthly price.

(Shebooks is also launching a Kickstarter "Equal Writes" campaign this coming Tuesday.)

My own Shebook, Nest. Flight. Sky. On love and loss, one wing at a time, is the first memoir I have written in many years and many books. It matters to me. Launched early this year, it now sits on the enhanced Shebooks site with extras such as an excerpt, a reading guide, and an interview which begins like this, below:

What prompted you to write Nest. Flight. Sky.?

I teach memoir at Penn, I’ve written about its glories, challenges, and consequences in Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, I blog daily about life (Beth Kephart Books), and once, a lifetime ago, I wrote five memoirs. But it has been many years and many books since I’d dared to write the extended truth. By the time Shebooks emerged, I was desperate to speak. My mother had passed away. I had become obsessed with birds and nests, but I did not understand why. I believe that it’s only in writing toward questions that we find at least some of the answers. I wrote Nest. Flight. Sky. to find some answers.

Birds and nests have been a recurrent theme in your work. What is the origin of this?
Nest. Flight. Sky: On love and loss, one wing at a time is, indeed, about recurrent images. It’s about those birds, those wings, those nests that have entered into all the fiction I have written—one book after another, ever since my mother died. It all began with winter finches tapping on my windowpane in the months after her passing. It became a quest for hawks, for hummingbirds, for flight.
When did you first decide you were a writer? 

Do we ever decide that we are writers? Or do we just decide that we must write, that we will not be able to breathe if we do not? I’m not sure, even all these books in, that I am a writer. I think readers are in charge of that decision. I only know that, since I was nine, words and their melodies gave me a sense of being nearly whole.

To read the whole thing, go here.

And local readers, please join me and other writers today at Main Point Books to help celebrate the first year in the life of an Indie. I'll be signing Going Over and Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir. For more on that, go here.

Read more...

Celebrating the Launch of Shebooks

Friday, January 3, 2014

Looking for something bright in this new year? A new literary idea that really works?

I have one word for you: Shebooks.

Readers of this blog might remember my post about a certain Shebooks writing contest a few months back.

Today I'm talking about the suite of Shebooks singles already available for downloading. These exquisite "mini" books of some 7,500 words each fit in your hands, can be read in a sitting, and can be downloaded for a mere $2.99 each. That's one thing. The other thing? They're written by writers you already know and love. Marion Winik. Laura Fraser. Hope Edelman. Micah Perkins. Ann Pearlman. Jessica Anya Blau. Faith Adiele. Suzanne Antonetta Paola. Zoe Rosenfeld. And many more to come.

I find the entire concept—the brainchild of Peggy Northrop and Laura Fraser—exhilarating. I've found the Shebooks themselves to be knock out reads—quieting, intriguing, considered, intimate, and intimately addressed to the reader (Want to eat the food of Italy without actually getting on a plane? Read Laura. Want a companion as you consider the lost and found of memory? Marion is your guide. Want to be carried backward in time, to a black and white engagement? Read Ann. Etc.). I feel incredibly lucky to be included in this community, with my own mini-memoir—Nests. Flight. Sky.—due out soon. And I feel especially happy to invite my women writing friends to consider submitting their own work to Shebooks.

For more on Shebooks, read Caroline Leavitt's interview with Laura Fraser, Editorial Director and Cofounder. Look, too, for upcoming essays and interviews on Jennifer Haupt's wonderful Psychology Today blog, One True Thing. And download a book, or two on this snowy day. It'll be the best bit of change you'll ever spend.

Read more...

Shebooks: calling all women writer friends to a remarkable contest/opportunity

Friday, October 18, 2013

I had the privilege, not long ago, of working on an 8,000-word memoir for Shebooks, an emerging e-book publisher. It was an intense, completing experience—my first return to long-form memoir in years, my chance to work again with an editor I love, my opportunity to try to understand the things I lost and the things I found in the wake of the passing of my mother.

Shebooks is the brainchild of Peggy Northrop and Laura Fraser. It is also the realm of Dawn Raffel and Rachel Greenfield and so many other established writers, teachers, and editors. Shebooks won a New Media Women's Entrepreneurial Fund. It has a lot of people talking.

Shebooks, as it describes itself: "Shebooks is the new e-book publisher of great short stories by women, for women. We publish long-form journalism, short memoir, and short fiction by some of the best writers in the United States and beyond, both well known and yet to be discovered."

Yesterday, Shebooks announced an incredible opportunity for writers—a contest in collaboration with Good Housekeeping. Shebooks is looking for women to write on the topic "Every Mother Has a Story." Particularly:
We're looking for submissions of 3,500-7,500 words. The contest is open to anyone 21+ who is a legal resident of the U.S., D.C., or Canada. There is a $15 submission fee and all entries must be received no later than midnight on December 15. The winner will receive $2,000 and possible publication in Shebooks and Good Housekeeping. What's more, all entrants will get a free two-month subscription to Shebooks. You can read more at www.goodhousekeeping.com/memoir-contest <http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/memoir-contest> .
 I can't think of a better organization to trust your best work to.

Read more...

  © Blogger templates Newspaper II by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008

Back to TOP