INCOMING: The 2019 Book Launch is One Month Away!
Join us at the writers center in Bethesda for the launch of three new books from ASP.
Interesting story: The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland is where the co-founders of ASP, Rose Solari and James J. Patterson, first met. At the time Rose Solari was leading a poetry workshop there, while James J. Patterson studied the personal essay under former WaPo journalist and current novelist, Joanna Biggar.
Interesting story Pt. 2: The last time ASP launched a book from the writer’s center was in Autumn, 2010. There, introduced by Rose Solari and a rendition of La Vie en Rose by Rachel Carlson, Joanna Biggar read the first words from her then-new novel That Paris Year.
Interesting story Pt. 2 cont.: Also at the book launch was Linda Watanabe McFerrin, close friend and co-worker of Joanna Biggar, who came to the stage as Joanna stepped down. Linda was decked out in black. She entered to the jagged music of psycho. She read from her first horror novel: Dead Love which is excerpted in Navigating the Divide.
This year, one year before our 10th anniversary as a press, we are returning to The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland to launch our 2019 line-up of titles. Linda Watanabe McFerrin will read under the Alan Squire Publishing flag this time around. After an introduction by Poet Laureate Grace Cavalieri, Linda will read selections from her ASP Legacy Book, Navigating the Divide. Reuben Jackson will follow her to stage introduced by Cave Canem alum, Brandon D. Johnson. Reuben will read from his new collection scattered clouds. And finally, former student turned professional author and small press founder, James J. Patterson, will introduce his once-teacher Joanna Biggar who will read from her mystery novel Melanie’s Song.
As with 2010’s oft-referenced rendition of La Vie en Rose and the trailer for Patterson’s Bermuda Shorts, this year’s launch promises, at the very least, a tasteful amount of pageantry--along with refreshment, and, of course, the celebration of (indie) books.
More information HERE
Linda Watanabe McFerrin is a poet, travel writer, novelist and contributor to numerous newspapers, magazines, and anthologies. She is the author of two poetry collections and a winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction. Her novel, Namako: Sea Cucumber, was named Best Book for the Teen-Age by the New York Public Library. In addition to authoring an award-winning short story collection, The Hand of Buddha, she has co-edited twelve anthologies. Her novel, Dead Love, was a Bram Stoker Award Finalist for Superior Achievement in a Novel.
Linda has judged the San Francisco Literary Awards, the Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence and the Kiriyama Prize, served as a visiting mentor for the Loft Mentor Series and been guest faculty at the Oklahoma Arts Institute. A past NEA Panelist and juror for the Marin Literary Arts Council and the founder of Left Coast Writers, she has led workshops in Greece, France, Italy, England, Ireland, Central America, Indonesia, Spain, and the United States and has mentored a long list of accomplished writers and best-selling authors toward publication.
Reuben Jackson served as curator of the Smithsonian’s Duke Ellington Collection in Washington, D.C. for over twenty years. His music reviews have been published in the Washington Post, Washington City Paper, Jazz Times, and on NPR’s “All Things Considered.”
Jackson is also an educator and mentor with The Young Writers Project. He taught poetry for 11 years at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland and taught high school for two years in Burlington, Vermont. He is also a founding member of the New Music-Theatre workshop and currently works for the organization as a librettist.
His poems have been published in over 40 anthologies; his first volume is fingering the keys, which Joseph Brodsky picked for the Columbia Book Award. Reuben Jackson is currently an archivist with the University of the District of Columbia’s Felix E. Grant Jazz Archives. From 2013 until 2018, he was host of Friday Night Jazz on Vermont Public Radio.
Joanna Biggar has traveled solo in the most remote areas of China, chaired a school board in Ghana, worked as a journalist in Washington, D.C., and taught school kids in Oakland, California. She is a member of the Society of Woman Geographers, mother of five, grandmother of eight, all of whom love books!
Joanna’s first novel, That Paris Year, is written in English but captures that French novel feel in a classic style. If you’ve been to Paris, she will welcome you back, if you haven’t, you may just want to pack your bags! That Paris Year is a truly splendid read! In Autumn of 2019, we will follow Melanie, the heroine of That Paris Year, to California in Joanna’s long-awaited sequel, Melanie’s Song.