Achievement unlocked

Let minds wander

I had one dream goal for the press in 2021: to be acknowledged by a major national award committee. Last week, we achieved that, when Elizabeth Catte’s Pure America was long listed for the (insanely) prestigious PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith award for nonfiction. I am so thrilled for Elizabeth, who is as wonderful a person as she is a writer, and for the important research and writing in the book, which will find more readers, and for the press, which can now point this achievement out to to industry folks who consider such things necessary to be ‘legit.''

We have certainly published other books that could have been tapped by a national award, but the quality of the book is not the most important initial criterion in the award ladder . First, you need judges to read it. (Not that judges don’t read all the books submitted, but given the number of books they are sent, there is “reading” and there is reading.) And a crucial step in having judges read (and not only “read”) a book is for t…