Oregon Publishers in the News

Oregon publishers Beyond Words, Dark Horse, Ink & Paper Group, Ooligan Press, Hawthorne Books, and Multnomah Publishers are featured and praised in the Oregonian.

Read the article at OregonLive.

Congratulations to DeVinand Nicholson

Congratulations to DeVinand Nicholson for his recent publication in Poetry Soup, Street Roots, and Poetry Cemetery!

View more of Dev's work and buy his new chapbook at www.devpoet.com.

New Release Spotlight: Mr. Pusskins

To keep you up to date on book trends, Indigo Editing offers a book review every week. Some reviews are endorsed by other publishing gurus, and some are the voices of our own editors. Read and enjoy!

New Release Spotlight:

Mr. Pusskins: A Love Story

by Sam Lloyd

I first heard this book read out loud on NPR a few weeks ago. The host and a guest were taking turns doing voices for each of the characters and having a great time. I stopped what I was doing to listen, and was immediately hooked.

Mr. Pusskins is a grouchy cat who belongs to Emily, a little girl who thinks the world of him, and doesn't seem to notice how annoyed it makes him when she tries to brush his long coat, play games with him, or read him stories. While this is an engaging premise, the story really gets interesting when Mr. Pusskins decides to run away because he finds his life with Emily so boring. After a few days of "naughty fun" (digging in gardens and garbage cans, mostly), Mr. Pusskins soon realizes he has made a tragic mistake, letting down the only true friend he has.

What makes this story so engaging is not only the combination of vivid illustrations and playful typography, but characters that exist outside the mold of what they'd be in a typical little girl and cat story. When Mr. Pusskins finds a "Missing Cat" flyer with his own picture on it, he calls Emily on the telephone, saying, "Meow" in a pitiful voice. Emily recognizes him immediately and promises to come get him, eventually speeding toward him in a bright pink car. I love that Emily drives the car all by herself, even though she's just a child, and I love that Mr. Pusskins somehow knows how to use a telephone. These are the quirks that make Mr. Pusskins the kind of read that will make both kids and adults engaged, and most of all, teach kids what it means to be a friend.

"Now both Emily and Mr. Pusskins realize how lucky they are to have each other," the last line reads. Because in the end, Mr. Pusskins is a changed kitty, one who likes to be snuggled and read to, and who loves Emily as much as she loves him.

-Andrea Deeken, Indigo Editing, LLC

Reading level: Ages 4-8
Hardcover: 32 pages
Publisher: Atheneum (December 26, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1416925171

Monthly Writing Contest—with a Cash Prize!

The Whidbey Writers Workshop is offering a monthly Short Form Student Choice Award. Each month's winner receives $50 and publication on-line. Remember to follow the submission guidelines—they're at the award's Web site.

The Intersection of Media and Revolution: Yesterday and (Particularly Crucial to Us) Today

Ali McCart and I attended a talk on Sunday entitled, "Soldaderas: Female Mexican Revolutionary Figures, Larger than Life." Stephanie Wood from the University of Oregon's Center for Study of Women in Society spoke on the different ways women from the Mexican Revolution have become icons, looking at examples from photographs, murals, paintings, CD covers, book jackets, etc. (To learn about the annual program, of which this particular talk was a part, see CSWS's Road Scholars—A Community Lecture Program.)

She also mentioned contemporary female Mexican revolutionaries, including those in Oaxaca (the state of Oaxaca borders the state of Chiapas to the north), who have played a major role in the protests that began there last summer. (See BBC's Q&A on the events for a refresher of the events up to October 31, 2006, when the article was posted. The struggle continues, but that piece is a quick way to remember the protests' beginnings.) One tactic the female protesters in Oaxaca used involved media: they took over radio stations. To read a CSWS article on this, check out the Winter 2007 CSWS newsletter (free downloadable pdf). In the article, one of four UO researchers who traveled to Oaxaca last summer said the trip gave her "a fresh understanding of the critical role of the media at the birth of an urban social movement in which women play a key role."

Oaxaca Week is April 16–20 at the UO campus in Eugene. Three Oaxacan women who are creating media projects on gender, sexuality, and feminism and how those intersect with political processes, power structures, and cultural narratives in Mexico will be a part of the events. CSWS will also screen some of the women's documentaries, host a multimedia installation, and host a poetry reading. See the newsletter (above) or CSWS's home page for details.

Blog Against Sexism Day

Today is International Women's Day, Global Women's Strike, and Blog Against Sexism Day. That's a lot for one little day, so here's to the good work and strong spirit encouraged for this holiday continuing year-round and year after year.

In honor of this day, I thought I'd post my first contribution to Indigo Editing's blog. About a month ago, I joined Indigo as Associate Editor, and I've already had the opportunity to work on five editing projects and offer a little bit of marketing assistance. I'm thoroughly enjoying this work, and I look forward to more!

But back to the topic at hand. Writer and editor Ruth Davis Konigsberg tracked the bylines in five well-known national magazines from September 2005–September 2006. Her thoughts and data are at www.womentk.com, but in short, she said she did this because she'd "been noticing a lack of female voices in what are supposed to be general-interest (and therefore gender-neutral) magazines." After the year, Konigsberg found that on average the magazines she tracked published stories "by male writers three times more often than they do stories by female writers," and she said that "these numbers are particularly surprising considering how many women read these magazines."

A quick Google search turned up these related articles, and there are probably more out there:
News Max
New York Times
Womens eNews
and because it is a day for blogging, Blogher.

What is the situation your home city or region's newspapers and magazines? Beyond just the bylines, what kinds of stories are women assigned to write (a question Konigsberg mentions briefly on her site)?

(Semi-related to that last question: see Blogher to learn about The Gender Genie, which guesses the gender of an author based on word choice and frequency of certain words. The research on which this is based might be fodder for another post on another day.)

To conclude, if you blog, consider writing against sexism and/or for gender liberation today. More info on Blog Against Sexism Day is at Taking Place.