Publishing Talks: Interview with Roxanne Coady of R.J. Julia Booksellers

Publishing Talks began as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. I’ve spent time talking with people in the book industry about how publishing is evolving in the context of technology, culture, and economics.

Some time ago, this series broadened to include conversations that go beyond the future of publishing. In an effort to document the literary world, I’ve talked with a variety of editors, publishers, booksellers, and others who have been innovators and leaders in independent publishing in the past and in the present.

These conversations have been inspirational to me on many levels. I have gotten to speak with visionaries and entrepreneurs, as well as editors and publishers who have influenced and changed contemporary literature and culture. I’ve also had the opportunity to speak with a number of friends and colleagues I have known over the many years I have been in the book business.

Bookstores have been an essential part of my entire life, even from early childhood, one benefit of growing up with a writer as father. Independent bookselling thrived from the late seventies into the late 1990’s, no doubt reflecting the Baby Boomer generation’s enthusiasm for books and ideas. The last twenty or more years have been very different, and now there are far fewer communities that support bookstores than at anytime in the past fifty years. Bookstores (along with public libraries) are a crucial element of a healthy culture, far more valuable than their size and scope would suggest. Local communities benefit from the presence of bookstores in many ways, and literary culture needs them too, as visible representations of a reading culture. Ideas grow and spread from books, but culture is also built around physically being present with one another.

So it is important for us to find ways as readers and literary citizens, to support bookstores, and it is equally important for booksellers to locate themselves, create and support communities around their stores, to support their workers and to make themselves meaningful enough to be thrive, despite the challenges of being small businesses in a mass-oriented consumer culture.

There are quite a few examples of booksellers who have made just such an impact, and their experiences and ideas are important for all of us to share and understand. It has been a particular pleasure for me to have known and worked with Roxanne Coady, the founder and owner of the exceptional R.J. Julia Booksellers, in Madison, Connecticut. We first met when Roxanne came to Connecticut to establish her new business after pursuing a successful career as a CPA in New York City. Over the years, I have spent many hours browsing their shelves, attending author events, and enjoying the cafe.

R.J. Julia has thrived during the period when local bookselling has faced an array of challenges, first from chain bookstores, then from Amazon and the rise of online retailing, and of course most recently, the pandemic. Throughout this time, Roxanne and her staff have innovated on many levels, including creating a drive-by pickup window for busy parents, putting on over 300 events a year (some of which are with celebrity authors), establishing an active email newsletter, providing online sales with speedy service, podcasting, and building an active book club. Throughout, the emphasis on community, care for staff as individuals, and listening to customers have been paramount characteristics of the enterprise. There is a bit of practical magic at work there, I think.

After more than 30 years of hard work and success, it’s obvious that Roxanne has quite a bit to say about what it takes to be a successful bookseller, to be a locally based business, and to be a crucial part of literary culture. I believe that our conversation should be meaningful for anyone interested in the future success of bookstores and the importance of building a real literary culture within a society that does not put enough value on books, authors, writing.

We need more bookstores! Visit the R.J. Julia Bookseller website and sign up for their newsletter.

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Brook Simons: Nothing to Write Home About

Nothing to Write Home About – Brook Simons – 9781626468702 – Booklocker – paperback – 232 pages – $16.95 – April 15, 2014 – ebook available at lower prices

In her late twenties, in 1977, Brook Simons picked up stakes and moved to Los Angeles from Connecticut, where she grew up on a farm in a small town, which happens to be right next door to where I grew up. While Brook and I did not know each other in Connecticut, she ended up marrying an old friend of mine from Yale, who also moved to LA to start a new life just after Brook did.  So while we have never met, I felt a connection to this book from the outset.

Brook’s memoir is one of the bravest and rawest pieces of personal nonfiction I have ever read. I think the word insouciant fits who Brook was during the time of this story, which coincides with the rise of the drug fueled stand up comedians who gathered in Los Angeles around the Comedy Club and television studios of Hollywood in an anxiety and angst ridden explosion of personal exposure. Not all of the funny stuff was really funny, and the mostly male community of comics was pretty solidly male-centered and frankly not only self loathing and self degrading, but extremely misogynistic.

In some ways, brash young Brook fit in with this crew, as her story shows us so evocatively and painfully. She loved the energy, the drugs, and the comedy, but she also became attached to one of the comedians with whom she developed a highly dysfunctional and brutal relationship that ultimately led her to the brink of disaster on many levels.

There really is a lot to write home about here, and Brook writes it well. I don’t want to give away the story in any form. I think you should listen to our conversation and then read the book to understand the story Brook is telling on herself toward showing how danger and power can seduce us, take us beyond the places that are safe, and sometimes cause damage that goes far beyond what anyone should be able to experience. It’s a story that antedates #MeToo, but which ought to be required reading for every woman and man who cares about changing the power relationships between male and female in a positive way.

I was really stunned by this book and hope you will find this interview of interest, along with the book itself. You can buy it from my friends at RJ Julia Booksellers in Madison, Connecticut. Support independent bookselling and order Nothing to Write Home About here.

 

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Ryan Leigh Dostie: Formation: A Woman’s Memoir of Stepping Out of Line

Formation: A Woman’s Memoir of Stepping Out of Line – Ryan Leigh Dostie – Grand Central Publishing – Hardcover – 978-1538731536 – 368 pages – $28.00 – ebook versions available at lower prices – June 4, 2019

Ryan Leigh Dostie’s story is sometimes a painful one to read, but it is too important to not read, and this is a book I can and must recommend to all readers. Ryan comes from an unusual background. She was raised in a women-run Christian community for most of her early life. Though she wanted to be a writer, she joined the Army after high school, trained to be a linguist, and was on the more or less normal course of a teenaged woman making her way in a male dominated military force, when she was raped by another soldier in her unit.

Her memoir recounts what happened to her, what she experienced subsequently, and how she lived through and was affected by, not only her personal trauma, but the experiences she shared with other soldiers in an active deployment in Iraq, where she was part of the first wave of the American invasion in 2003. It’s a sometimes harrowing story, but also inspiring, raw and powerful, as Ryan does not flinch from showing everything she experienced and felt through a long period during and after her most powerful personal experiences in the Army.

This book does not overtly take a particular political position, despite the pain and suffering the author endured throughout her time during and after her service. But it is impossible to read this book and not be forced to think about so many of the issues around male-female relationships, power and how it is applied, the patriarchal structure that dominates our culture, and the work needed to change the way men and women interact on a daily basis.

This is the story of one woman’s journey, as such, it is thoroughly compelling, but Formation cannot fail to affect anyone who reads it, and forces us to confront our own ingrained conceptual frameworks. Not only is the memoir a story of sexual assault in the narrow sense, Ryan’s story provides a representation of how societal structures affect us all, how the individual is made to be responsible for the failures of our systems, and hopefully will help spur us all to think how we might engage in the struggle to change those structures and systems sooner than later.

I’d also add that Ryan is, has become, a very good writer. It emerges in her story that she was an aspiring novelist when she was young, and after soldiering, she went on to complete a college degree, as well as an MFA. The writing in this book is evidence of how far she has come in learning her craft.

Her “official” bio: Ryan Leigh Dostie is a novelist turned soldier turned novelist. As an Army Persian-Farsi/Dari Linguist in Military Intelligence, she was deployed to Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom I and II (2003-2004). She holds an MFA in fiction writing and a bachelor’s degree in History from Southern Connecticut State University. FORMATION is her first book.

It was my pleasure and honor to interview Ryan Leigh Dostie in New Haven, Connecticut, where she lives today. Her website is well worth a visit – www.ryanleighdostie.com

“Though I knew it would be urgent, compelling, and excellent from the first page, Formation was a much more expansive book than I even could have suspected: a riveting, enraging memoir from an author of remarkable toughness and emotional range. This is an unflinching and honest account of war, of homecoming, and of what happens when a woman reports an assault and the institutions around her try to smother the truth.” – Phil Klay, author of Redeployment

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Patrick Lynch: A Field Guide to Long Island Sound

A Field Guide to Long Island Sound: Coastal Habitats, Plant Life, Fish, Seabirds, Marine Mammals, and Other Wildlife – Patrick Lynch – Yale University Press – paperback (flexibind) – $27.50 – 9780300220353 – 416 pages

I grew up around Long Island Sound, and have lived near it most of my life. I have always loved the shoreline and the water, the birds, marine life and the landscapes of the coast, and I have enjoyed its beauty and diversity, and even spent time as an amateur naturalist studying its ecosystems, but it was not until I read Pat Lynch’s comprehensive guidebook that I felt I fully understood this magnificent environment.

This book is beautifully illustrated, and full of fascinating and readable information about the natural history of Long Island Sound, and its varying New York and Connecticut coastlines. This estuarine body of water is surrounded by millions of people – and threatened not only by over-population and industry, but now by climate change as well. While we have made a great deal of progress in recent decades in improving the ecological health of our waters, we must increase our level of involvement now, as climate change will have tremendous impacts on the all important marshlands of the Sound and other coastal zones.

Long Island Sound comprises a diverse collection of marine, estuarine, and terrestrial ecosystems, and is located in one of the most densely populated regions in the United States. The Sound and its coastlines are home not only to myriad species of plants and animals—from shorebirds and turtles to whales, seals, and fish—but also to more than twenty million people.

Author and illustrator Patrick Lynch has put together a thoroughly engaging guide to this incredibly complex set of environments. The book includes maps, photographs, and drawings, and covers every aspect of the Sound’s various ecosystems and locales.

On reading the book, I felt that I learned more than I have done in a lifetime of living on or near the Sound and for me, it is now an indispensable companion whenever I walk the coastline or am lucky enough to get out on the water near where I live. If you live anywhere near New York or Connecticut, this book will help you fully understand the importance and breadth of the Sound environments. And even if you live in another part of the country, Long Island Sound is well worth learning about, just as any other great natural area would be. I only wish we could have had this conversation at the beach or some other interesting outdoor venue, but the Sound is too windy for making intelligible recordings.

Patrick J. Lynch is a former senior digital officer in Yale University’s Office of Public Affairs and Communications and is an award-winning author, designer, illustrator, and photographer. He lives in North Haven, Connecticut. He was kind enough to spend some time with me in New Haven recently to talk about this book and his sense of the future of Long Island Sound.

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Publishing Talks: David Wilk interviews Maxine Bleiweis

In this series of interviews, called Publishing Talks, I have been talking to book industry professionals and other smart people about the future of publishing, books, and culture.  This is a period of disruption and change for all media businesses.  We must wonder now, how will publishing evolve as our culture is affected by technology, climate change, population density, and the ebb and flow of civilization and  economics?
I hope these Publishing Talks conversations can help us understand the outlines of what is happening in the publishing industry, and how we might ourselves interact with and influence the future of publishing as it unfolds.

These interviews give people in and around the book business a chance to talk openly about ideas and concerns that are often only talked about “around the water cooler,” at industry conventions and events, and in emails between friends and they give people inside and outside the book industry a chance to hear first hand some of the most interesting and challenging thoughts, ideas and concepts being discussed by people in the book business.

Since so many of the people I’ve talked to in the Publishing Talks interviews have been in the areas of publishing and technology, I have wanted to broaden the conversation to include other perspectives.  And following the conversation with Hugh McGuire about the future of libraries (a hot topic it seems, as a recent post by Seth Godin seems to indicate), it made sense to talk to a librarian who is working on the issues of access and technology from the user side of the publishing equation.   I live near Westport, Connecticut, which has a fabulous library, with a myriad of public events, an incredibly active and engaged community, and a deep commitment to using technology to increase access to knowledge and information, as well as a wonderful and engaged staff.

Maxine Bleiweis is the Director of the Westport Public Library.   She is a terrifically innovative manager, known for her ability to predict trends and determine ways to meet the latest “customer” needs as they emerge.  Before she became director in Westport in 1998, she was director in Suffield, CT for six years and Newington, CT for 18 years.

I also noticed that she was recently named Outstanding Librarian for 2011 by the CT Library Association, so she is recognized by her peers as well as her own community.

Maxine has a great deal to say about publishing and technology, and her thoughts and ideas are well worth paying attention to.  And even though the Westport Public Library does represent the beliefs and commitment of a very affluent, educated and progressive town, what this library does to enrich the intellectual and artistic life of its community is not enabled simply by having more resources than others.  The principle at work here will work elsewhere – the idea of paying attention to what the community needs and doing everything possible to meet those needs is universally applicable.  You can see what they are doing here.

Maxine and I had a wide ranging conversation about books, community, the future of publishing in the digital age, how libraries will handle ebooks and digital access, and how some of the controversies that have arisen in these important areas may be resolved.

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