Eludia Award Long List and Winner Announced

We’re excited to name the winner of the most recent round of our Eludia Award: Elisabeth Bell Carroll of Framingham, Massachusetts, for her fascinating dual-time novel, Agnès & Oscara.

The Eludia Award is a first-book award, offered to a woman writer, age forty and above, for a work of fiction, either a novel or collection of stories. We are also pleased to announce the semi-finalists and finalists below and wish to congratulate everyone. As ever, we are in awe of the enormity of talent we receive; and we are grateful to every writer who has submitted to this award.

The next round of submissions for the Eludia Award will deadline April 1, 2024. More details about The Eludia Award, and its guidelines can be read here on our blog, and here, on the Submittable page.

The semi-finalists and finalists are as follows:

Semi finalists

Adams, Kate, Mountain View, California, Scattered Pieces

Alderton, Ellen, Washington, D.C., Changing of the Guard

Alpha, Karen, Corning, New York, ZULU And Other Stories

Bryan, Cristina, Durham, North Carolina, Henricus

Carter, Thatcher, Riverside, California, Razed

Carroll, Elisabeth Bell, Framingham, Massachusetts, Agnès & Oscara

Chilton, Lora, Memphis, Tennessee, Massacre in 1666

Clayton, Julia, Southport, Merseyside, England, Tinted Venus

Colvin, Rebecca, Gastonia, North Carolina, A Beautiful Symmetry

Crawley, Kathryn, Greensboro, North Carolina, The Fetch of the Wind

Debling, Heather, Stratford, Ontario, Canada, Count Your Blessings: Stories

De Gregorio, Karen, Sherman Oaks, California, The Carnaval Kara Never Danced

Dhavan, Lucinda, Concord, Massachusetts, A Part of It All

Feighan, Philomena, Westborough, Massachusetts, Long Sleeps the Summer in the Seeds

Gorelova, Linda, Columbus, Ohio, The Romanovs Wish You Health in the New Year

Gray, Katrine, El Sobrante, California, Crescent Lane

Gurman, Diana, Los Angeles, My Ghost and Other Stories

James, Frannie, Seattle, Washington, The Sylvan Hotel, a Seattle Story

Johnson, Lulu, Dillard, Georgia, Pandora’s Portrait

Juchniewicz, Melissa, Chester, New Hampshire, Like Dust

Kirkham, Phebe, Woodside, New York, The Last of the Winters

Lawhorn, Barbara, Macomb, Illinois, Born Again

Lownds, Joan, Naugatuck, Connecticut, What’s Wrong with Your Voice?

Marin, Robin Luce, Brooklyn, New York, Old Scores

Martinez, Suzanne, Brooklyn, New York, Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass

May, Amber, Sherwood, Arizona, Destiny Keeper

Moriarty, Marilyn, Roanoke, Virginia, Flight Is the Name of a Goddess

Neville, Sophie, Lymington, Hampshire, UK, Love Is For The Brave

O’Brien, Colleen, East Glacier, Montana, Baited

Oxnard, K.W., Savannah, Georgia, The Leg in Question

Palmer, Wendy, Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts, Sphere of Her Own

Payne, Martha, Atlanta, Georgia, Apple Doll

Ruby, Michele, Louisville, Kentucky, Stage Presence

Smith, Jessica, Lewiston, Maine, That Kind of Trouble Isn’t This Kind of Trouble

Spasser, Connie Corzilius, Augusta, Georgia, Shimmer and Give: Stories

Taugher, Mary, San Francisco, California, What Mercy

Troisi, Gina, Eliot, Maine, After the Rush

Webb, Susan, Citrus Heights, California, Figments

Whouley, Kate, Centerville, Massachusetts, The Maestro and Her Protégé

Wood, Mary, Eugene, Oregon, The Blue Edge

Yackzan, Dawn, Davis, California, Leap Frog

Finalists

Adams, Kate, Mountain View, California, Scattered Pieces

Alderton, Ellen, Washington, D.C., Changing of the Guard

Bryan, Cristina, Durham, North Carolina, Henricus

Carroll, Elisabeth Bell, Framingham, Massachusetts, Agnès & Oscara

Chilton, Lora, Memphis, Tennessee, Massacre in 1666

Clayton, Julia, Southport, Merseyside, England, Tinted Venus

Crawley, Kathryn, Greensboro, North Carolina, The Fetch of the Wind

Debling, Heather, Stratford, Ontario, Canada, Count Your Blessings: Stories

Gorelova, Linda, Columbus, Ohio, The Romanovs Wish You Health in the New Year

Gray, Katrine, El Sobrante, California, Crescent Lane

Gurman, Diana, Los Angeles, My Ghost and Other Stories

Johnson, Lulu, Dillard, Georgia, Pandora’s Portrait

May, Amber, Sherwood, Arizona, Destiny Keeper

Moriarty, Marilyn, Roanoke, Virginia, Flight Is the Name of a Goddess

O’Brien, Colleen, East Glacier, Montana, Baited

Oxnard, K.W., Savannah, Georgia, The Leg in Question

Payne, Martha, Atlanta, Georgia, Apple Doll

Spasser, Connie Corzilius, Augusta, Georgia, Shimmer and Give: Stories

Whouley, Kate, Centerville, Massachusetts, The Maestro and Her Protégé

Winner

Carroll, Elisabeth Bell, Framingham, Massachusetts, Agnès & Oscara

Again, we would like to express our undying appreciation and respect for all who submitted to The Eludia Award. Thank you for your patience, and for entrusting your work to us. We love and honor each and every one of you!

The WGA and SAG/AFTRA strikes

The WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike
Photo by Mario Tama

We’re into the second half of July. The striking arts workers who are members of the Writers’ Guild of America (WGA) continue their strike, and have been joined by members of The Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG/AFTRA).   

I thought I’d take a little time to gather some information to share with others who haven’t had the chance to inform themselves of what is going on.

The issues include fair pay and compensation, ending labor exploitation and labor theft, the threats presented by AI, and the tremendous wealth created by digital streaming that is not shared by those who “own” the delivery platforms with those who wrote and performed and created the work feeding that bonanza. Here is a good breakdown of the issues.

Attitude among “regular” people (is there really such a thing?), who daily partake of the art created by these individuals, sometimes leans towards resentment: What are they complaining about? They get to work in a great industry, don’t they? They get to rub shoulders with celebrities and famous artists, right? They want glamour AND fair pay?  They probably already make 100x what I earn as a (fill in the blank). The truth is that so few of us in this country earn a living wage that it is mind-boggling. Arts workers suffer low wages in a far-reaching way that is often concealed by the perceived glamour of the industry.

The way striking workers find themselves maligned in the media hasn’t changed in generations.  The narrative usually shapes around things like this:  The workers are already spoiled, already over-demanding, already getting more than their fair share and are being unreasonable.  They should be grateful for the opportunities provided to them.  Others would happily take their place and keep their mouths shut except to express that gratitude.

Well, the realities are not to be found in the illusions created by the executives of the corporations and production companies and streaming services.

Marissa Messiano informs us who the Writers Guild of America is:

“The Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) was first founded in 1933, and almost all television and film writers (along with writers of some scripted podcasts and other digital media) are members of the WGA. It’s the WGA’s Basic Agreement contract that writers work under.”

She also explains who the writers are striking against: “On the other side of the negotiation table is The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), a group that represents over 350 production companies in the country, including Warner Bros. Entertainment, Universal Studios, Paramount, Netflix, Walt Disney Studios, Amazon, Sony, and many others.”

What is the Writers Guild of America demanding? Read the document here. 

Messiano says, “There are a few themes within the writer’s requests that led to the WGA strike: asking for better pay and stability for writers, restricting the use of artificial intelligence in writing, and improving pay and residuals for streaming content – something that has significantly fallen behind since the introduction of streaming.”

You can read Messiano’s whole article, which details the reasons for the requests that WGA is making here.

You can read more about this strike and its issues here, in an article by Jess Weatherbed.

Some of what she writes, “The companies’ behavior has created a gig economy inside a union workforce, and their immovable stance in this negotiation has betrayed a commitment to further devaluing the profession of writing,” said the WGA West on Monday. “From their refusal to guarantee any level of weekly employment in episodic television, to the creation of a ‘day rate’ in comedy variety, to their stonewalling on free work for screenwriters and on AI for all writers, they have closed the door on their labor force and opened the door to writing as an entirely freelance profession. No such deal could ever be contemplated by this membership.”

What about the SAG/AFTRA strike?  First, it is the first time in over 60 years that this combined union has struck their industries. James Poniewozik, TV Critic for the NYT, writes about it here

He identifies that big problem about narrative I spoke about above: “SAG-AFTRA, the union representing TV and film actors, joined the writers in a walkout over how Hollywood divvies up the cash in the streaming era and how humans can thrive in the artificial-intelligence era. With that star power comes an easy cheap shot: Why should anybody care about a bunch of privileged elites whining about a dream job?”

Poniewozik points out what most of us who have faced labor exploitation already know: that the “star system” of high pay for a few holds the majority of workers in all occupations at poverty levels of income. In the SAG/AFTRA story, those poverty workers are the background actors. “The lower-paid actors who make up the vast bulk of the profession are facing simple dollars-and-cents threats to their livelihoods. They’re trying to maintain their income amid the vanishing of residual payments, as streaming has shortened TV seasons and decimated the syndication model. They’re seeking guardrails against A.I. encroaching on their jobs.There’s also a particular, chilling question on the table: Who owns a performer’s face? Background actors are seeking protections and better compensation in the practice of scanning their images for digital reuse.”  And, by “reuse” the issue is how, or if, an actor’s image can be scanned and used into perpetuity for a single day’s pay.  And what do background actors make for a day’s work? As of July 2023, the average hourly pay for a background actor’s work is $12.63/hour.  

Bottom line, these jobs have been turned into gig jobs in unsustainable ways for human beings, and now there is the threat of AI digitizing and, essentially, stealing the writing, the images, the being-ness of all of these artists and their work.

Fran Drescher, the current president of SAG/AFTRA made a speech that has gone viral. In explanation of the strike, she makes the point that all workers, across all disciplines and occupations are facing the same exact kinds of “unpay” and exploitation, unsustainable compensation, lack of living wages. Here is the text of what Dresher said.

Here is a video of her speech.

Lest any of us think that the more high-profile actors face little hardship, the internet offers plenty of other stories from actors about their financial realities. In an interview with Bethy Squires, Kimiko Glenn talks about how many of the actors on “Orange is the New Black” continued to have “day jobs” and “side gigs” even at the height of the show’s success.

According to Glenn, most of the actors on the show, even at a point when they were internationally famous, still couldn’t afford to take a cab to set, still held down jobs like bartending.  Can we all admit that this is absolutely insane?

The decision to strike is never made easily.  It actually creates more hardship while the works are fighting for better circumstances. This is especially true when part of the strategy of the opposite side is to drag out negotiations and starve out the already-underpaid strikers. What does the strike mean for actors? What is required, and what is prohibited? Andrew Dalton explains in his article.

The strike rules go far beyond “acting”.  “They are not allowed to make personal appearances or promote their work on podcasts or at premieres. They are barred from doing any production work including auditions, readings, rehearsals, voiceovers or wardrobe fittings. Newly minted Emmy nominees can’t publicly make their case for votes, nor appear at the ceremony, which is planned for September but is likely to be seriously scaled back or delayed.

They are instead expected to spend their days on picket lines, outside the corporate headquarters and production hubs of studios. This is no vacation. 

How does this combined strike impact the industry?  And how will the viewers experience the strike’s impact? Dalton says, “Actors joining writers on strike will force nearly every U.S.-based show or film that hasn’t already been shut down into hiatus.  Upcoming shows are likely to be delayed indefinitely, and some movie releases will pushed back.”  Where the writers’ strike had something more like an immediate effect on late-night and comedy programs, it may take a while longer to see the impact on scripted television series. Production has been shut down on some shows, like “Stranger Things,” “Hacks,” or “Yellow Jackets.” Release dates have been pushed back or placed on hold for series and movies and shows.

So, given the way the writers and actors and other industry professionals are being treated, how do WE, the people who pay for streaming content, buy movie tickets, watch TV and movies and series support the people without whom there would BE no TV, movies and series?  Should we be boycotting movie theatres, cancelling our streaming? Not yet, we’re told.  This is not yet seen as “crossing a picket line”

Narrowing that question a bit, how do we artists, working in publishing, teaching creative writing or screenwriting or filmmaking respond? How do artists in ALL disciplines respond? We certainly can identify with the struggles created by the ever-increasing power inequalities between the artists and the owners of the delivery platforms/spaces — whether that is a music streaming platform, a gallery system, publishing inequalities, academic gig-i-fication — Are any of us receiving living wages? How do we support our fellow artists? I suggest that it is time for us to amp up the ways and places where we share information about these strikes. We can use our own social media sites to “speak” in support and to share the truth about the struggles. We can even use our professional membership organizations to speak in support of these strikes.

I would suggest that we ALL be prepared to join the strike, because there may be a time when our efforts have to be gathered and added to this fight. We may reach a point when our solidarity with these artists has to be brought to bear.  We can exert enormous pressure on the powerful studios with our own consolidated actions in order to make our own voices heard, in order to join a fight that, as Fran Dresher said, is a fight that connects all workers, all those who have suffered exploitation. None of us can afford to see this strike action fail.

Irresponsible, Unresponsive, Extortionate: The 3-Headed Dragon Destroying the Small Press Community.

“Despair” by Bertha Wegmann

The independent small press community is filled with passionate people who love great writing, dedicated people who love helping talented writers bring their work out into the world. We often work on shoestring budgets, are almost always over-extended and running behind on everything. It has never been an easy occupation. It certainly doesn’t make anyone rich. In fact, it is not at all surprising to find a balance sheet completely in the red – cash negative, in other words. But the wealth of this life is to be found in the beauty of language, the excitement of new, well-written and well-edited manuscripts, the thrill of designing a beautiful book cover, of creating a physical artifact, proof of that which remains glorious in our crumbling society, our dying empire.

As the Founding Executive Director of Hidden River Arts, and Founding Editor-in-Chief of Hidden River Publishing, I am proud to be part of this community of determined dreamers and ferocious protectors of literature. Hidden River’s publishing endeavor passed our tenth anniversary during the pandemic. COVID nearly killed us. We’re struggling on many fronts to reframe our work in this post-pandemic world. It is to be expected that when a world-wide crisis causes a global meltdown, a lot of problems will remain even after the threat of disease has, largely, passed.

What was not be expected, and what should never be accepted, are the ways in which our supposed business partners are making it even harder to restore ourselves and get back to creating and launching high quality books by talented writers, books that readers fall in love with.

Let me be more explicit, and start naming names.

For the last month, I’ve had struggles with the online booksellers – and these are the sellers who command the lion’s share of all booksales in the U.S. (if not around the world). As an independent small publisher, Hidden River uses Lightning Source/Ingram for printing and distribution. When we first launched our publishing venture, it was a pleasure to work with them.

So, first, let’s talk about a troublesome situation that now exists with Lightning Source itself. We’ve been with them since 2010. It used to be that, if a problem arose, or if there was a question of any kind, I could simply pick up the telephone and call, speak to a knowledgeable and lovely employee (often with a charming Tennessee accent) and the issue would be resolved in a matter of minutes. Unfortunately, as Lightning Source/Ingram has grown, publishers are no longer offered what I see as a right to high quality, personal customer service. Now, there is no active by-phone customer service. Now, if there is a problem, you have to fill out an email or a “ticket” describing the issue, and then…..wait. Often, you wait for little more than a canned response that does little to address the actual issue, offers nothing beyond the canned language, and if the problem persists, you are plum out of luck since your only option, it seems, is to do it all over again. I’m sure that there is some “best practices” industry manual that claims this new procedural change is “stream-lined” and “cost-reductive”. But here’s a news flash: It does not address your customers’ needs sufficiently….or, in many cases, at all. It is not, in fact, “customer service” in any traditional or satisfactory sense. This change in Lightning Source’s business practices means that a small press often has to wrestle with the same problem in a kind of limbo, often for weeks or months. Sometimes the issue is never resolved. With impossible-to-solve problems externalized onto already overworked small press owners and staff, it means that the issue becomes yet one more largely unresolvable problem in a long line of what my attorney daughter would call “unbillable hours” of miserable frustration. This new practice of Lightning Source/Ingram is uncaring to the point of being hostile to its customers and business partners. Give us back our well-trained human representatives. Show us the respect we deserve. Go back to your older, more accountable and more honorable business model. Stop treating your partners with so little regard.

Now, let’s explore the nightmare that is Amazon. By far the most dominant platform for book sales, Amazon can make life and business absolutely miserable for authors and publishers.

Let me describe to you what we and our authors have been dealing with now for a month. During the first week in April, we uploaded three new paperback titles to Lightning Source. All three were picked up by the Amazon site without their cover images – and with a message that said there WAS no cover image. Since that same image appeared on the vendor pages of Barnes and Noble and Bookshop, it is unlikely that the problem is with the files at Lightning Source. (Although it sure would be nice to have a human at Lightning Source confirm that.) The problem that exists with Amazon is doubled by the problem that IS Amazon. Are there knowledgeable, well-trained, available humans ready to deal with such problems at Amazon? Of course not. A month has gone by, and several attempts to reach out to the organization, using its “help” links and “chat” options have accomplished nothing by way of corrected sales pages. Often, if you get a response at all, it’s from someone who, most likely, is using a false name who writes to tell you that the problem must be with your account at Lightning Source. In other words, their response is “Sorry. Not our problem.”

In addition to none of the three new titles having their covers showing on Amazon, one of the titles has a message that says the book has not yet been released, and that anyone interested should “pre-order” the book. The book has been available since April 5. Again – is there a way to deal with this, human to human? Of course not.

What does this do to our credibility? To our professional profile? To our sanity and the emotional stability of our writers and poets? To our sales? Take a wild guess.

As I write this, it is May 9, 2023; the problems have existed since the first week of April and remain unresolved. These three books all sit on their Amazon site like some digital version of a remaindered book with a ripped-off cover. Our only solution, at this point, is to drive as many readers and possible book buyers away from Amazon as we can.

Now to Barnes and Noble. Their site had our books up quickly with a functioning purchase button – within about 24 hours – with the cover art, but without the necessary book information – there was no book description, no bio for the author, no reviews. So….great. Here’s a picture of a beautiful book cover and the name of a book, but we’re not going to tell you anything that would inform or interest you in actually buying and reading the book. Would you buy a book, no matter how exquisite the cover, if you have no idea what it was about? Is it a cookbook?….a travel advice book?…..a Victorian murder mystery?…..a book about Mesopotamian clothing styles?

To their credit: Barnes and Noble does have a more transparent customer service structure, with specified emails for specified needs. They appear to be more publisher-friendly and more oriented to bookselling in a way respectful of books, of publishing, of writers, of the small press community. And, with them, there is something of a happy ending – although it took nearly THREE weeks, all three of our books, as of today, now have not only the buy button, the beautiful cover art displayed but the book info, the writer’s bio….but still none of the reviews or endorsements. So, for purposes of this writing we’ll be displaying ONLY the links to the Barnes and Noble site for these three titles, despite the fact that they don’t include the endorsements. But we’ll be leaning on our relationship with Barnes and Noble now, going forward; the goal is to partner more dramatically with the online seller that offers our authors and their work the most respect.

Now, to the final issue we’ve faced over these past few weeks: Bookshop’s issues. First, they were by far the slowest to upload our titles. Second, once they uploaded them, they also posted a sale price that was significantly higher than the price we posted with Lightning Source. Our price point was $21.99. Bookshop saw fit to post $25.29 as the price. If Bookshop exists in order to help independent bookstores compete with the behemoth online sellers, isn’t overpricing our books a sure-fire way to NOT be competitive? Here is their explanation:
https://support.bookshop.org/en/support/solutions/articles/65000183623-why-is-my-book-s-price-different-on-your-site-

They say: “Bookshop.org pays our booksellers 30% of the cover price of all books sold through them. That means that we lose money on any book with less than a 30% wholesale discount. If your discount is under 20%, we will increase the sale price of the book to make up for this loss. If you do not want your book’s price increased, please offer a wholesale discount greater than 20%. …If you are an IngramSpark author, you must offer a 40% wholesale discount; Ingram’s 20% distribution fee is non-negotiable, so to give Bookshop.org a 20% wholesale discount, you need a 40% discount overall.”

Since we are working with Lightning Source/Ingram, that means that our 30% discount isn’t sufficient for Bookshop, so they are going to jack up our price and take their chunk from the customer…..A customer who will not exist, obviously, since their prices are too high. However, if Hidden River (or any small press) feels hereby coerced into raising their discount to 40% in order to help out our potential readers and the independent bookstores, then WE are earning less money for each book sale. That means that what is left over after Lightning Source, Bookshop and the indy bookstore take their chunks is about $7 to be divided between publisher and author. Even at 30%, the publisher and author are earning less than everybody else along the publishing food chain. Obviously, this is not sustainable. It’s no wonder so many small presses are throwing in the towel.

Oh…one last thing. IF we were to give in to Bookshop’s passive-aggressive extortion, that means that a 40% discount would be taken by ALL the sellers, because, with Lightning Source, you can set only one price in each market (one for the US, one for the UK, one for Europe, etc). So, then, Amazon, B&N, and all other sellers would get that extra 10% from the sales, and we would get 10% less from all those sales, across all platforms. So, think about it: with those higher discounts, Amazon and B&N and the others may well decide they can drop the price of the book, thereby remaining cheaper than Bookshop anyway. And who loses? The author and the publisher.

I’m going to end my rant here for now. I’m going to ask those among you who are struggling with similar issues to reach out to us here and leave messages and comments. We want to start a conversation. We want to start a fire. If we come together, make demands in a chorus of voices, maybe even bring in the CLMP (who are also ignoring my emails requesting assistance) and other organizations in support of the authors and publishers, do you think there is hope of addressing and fixing this mess? Otherwise, what are our options?

By the way, here are those three wonderful new books, linked to their Barnes and Noble pages WITH their beautiful book covers. I encourage you to use these Barnes and Noble links should you wish to make a purchase.

Mediterranean by João Luis Barreto Giumarães.

Travels With Ferdinand (A Centennial Journey Through Austria-Hungary) by Mark Eliot Nuckols

Remembering Water: A Memoir of Departure and Return by Tuan Phan

You can also see our entire catalogue of books on Barnes and Noble here. Check them all out. They are spectacular. Our family of writers and poets are spectacular. They are worth fighting for.

Three Years since March 2020: A Post-Pandemic Update

Creator: janiecbros Credit: Getty Images

Many of us are shell-shocked, and are likely to remain so for quite some time.  Lockdowns.  Illness, death, occupational and financial meltdowns. 

A sense of dread was pervasive.  It has been three years.  Are any of us completely free of that feeling of dread?

A new term, “essential workers” came into use; a new respect for those who provide the rest of us with care, service, and support was expressed.  But it didn’t last long.  It certainly didn’t last long enough for our society at large to support living wages for those in such occupations. Our legislators haven’t passed laws sufficient to create the kind of changes that would right labor exploitation and wage theft. Instead, there is a zeal to put the “working poor” right back in their place and keep them there.

Another sort of “essential worker” appeared – those who provided us with the moments of pleasure that were so sorely needed.  The artists stepped up, didn’t they?  Live events were shut down; but it didn’t take long for those in our creative communities to figure out how to move all sorts of events, all kinds of entertainment, into online presentations.  Theatre professionals performed online.  Singers created Zoom cabaret performances.  Musicians, in general, provided thousands of hours of performance.  Artists built virtual galleries online.  Writers and publishers shifted book readings and interviews into the virtual spaces they worked to create.

Artists, by giving of themselves despite their own struggles and difficulties, helped to support the general well-being during very dark times. 

As life emerges into a post-pandemic stage, it is clear that many things have changed permanently. Security and trust in many of our institutions have been shattered. Communities are suffering even greater ruptures than before. 

But we have to remember: We still need all our essential workers; and we still owe them for what they sacrificed for the good of the rest of us. THEY could be depended upon.

We still need our artists.  It’s become obvious that, in times of difficulty, art is an essential part of healing, of community building.  Art provides uplifting moments of human experience and human interaction. Artists could be depended upon.

But post-pandemic, our arts communities are still struggling.  Financial difficulties, staffing shortages, operations in chaos, practices and programs in need of restructure….none of us have escaped without facing at least some of these challenges.  And for many, the challenges have expanded to become threats to existence.  Theatres and musical venues have failed to re-open, others opened their doors only to have to close them again.  Galleries remain empty. In person events, in general, are still struggling to re-grow pre-pandemic numbers of attendees.  They may never succeed. Arts organizations across all disciplines report these issues. 

We are all deeply exhausted; it’s hard not to feel demoralized.

At Hidden River, when lock-downs began, we had to shut down any and all live events.  In the past, we had maintained a gallery space with visual art on the walls, music and theatrical performance, poetry and literary readings.  We offered workshops and in-person classes. We took our programs into schools. 

All that is gone.  It’s unclear how, or even if, these programs can be restored.  Should we, like so many of our colleagues, construct virtual spaces in order to provide these events to a wider audience, in order for our offerings to be more far-reaching? There are benefits to that.  But there are also benefits to actual human interaction. Without these activities, Hidden River isn’t offering space for musicians or performing artists or visual artists.  We want to bring them back.

We haven’t really begun to address the questions about restoring the live arts programs, because we are currently wrestling with other difficulties that the COVID era caused.  Hidden River is an all-volunteer organization; maintaining a long-term committed staff in arts organizations like ours has always been a struggle.  But with the pandemic, we lost staff in higher numbers and have yet to rebuild sufficiently.  We have faced illnesses, we have faced a death.

Most arts organizations, especially smaller organizations, are facing extensive challenges. Here in Philadelphia, programs have closed, many of the small theatres have cut their seasons from four to one or two plays a year, musical venues are shutting their doors permanently. Galleries are closing. Even the Philly POPS orchestra – certainly not a small institution – came very close to bankruptcy and closing down.  Its future is still not certain. 

Across the country, similar reports are everywhere. Literary magazines and small presses are closing down. Small arts organizations are pulling the plug. Hidden River, which launched over 30 years ago, is still struggling with the aftermath of our pandemic shortfalls.  Without sufficient staff, our publishing pipeline has slowed, our award decisions have slowed. Our blog sits too long without being updated. Our newsletters are not being published. There is simply too much waiting for too long for the appropriate attention. It’s not fair to anyone.

At first, it appeared that we could catch up quickly once life “returned to normal”.  But there is no normal until a new “normal” is created.  Meanwhile, our questions here have been “How do we catch up on the mountains of backlogged work? How do we best serve our authors, and those who submitted their work to us and continue to wait for award decisions?”  How do we handle all this? 

The first decision:  We will not explore re-opening any of what had once been our live arts programs. They have to stay closed for now.  The second decision: We will suspend our calls for submissions and our literary awards, at least for the remainder of 2023.  This is in order to allow us to address the backlog of submissions too long awaiting proper attention. It will allow us to finalize awards. To course-correct the chaos of the last several years.  It will allow us to provide more attention to our authors waiting in the publishing pipeline – to attend to the editing, the cover and interior design, the community-building and promotion needed for successful book launches.  It will allow us to stay “on task” with our authors post-publication, to help them continue to grow their readership and reputation. 

We remain committed to those who have placed their faith in us.  We remain committed to our internship program, which is the one program that continued to run and to flourish even during the darkest times of the recent plague.

Some of the decisions we’ve made may become permanent.  It’s simply too soon to say.  For the time being, we want to focus on getting our house in order, and on serving those who have trusted us, and who are relying on us.

You’ll be hearing from us – announcements of the award decisions, introductions and profiles offered about our authors and their books.  There is still a LOT of work to be done here, and a lot to report as we move through that work.  

It’s been hard to share this news, and to write of our difficulties.  But our Hidden River family has always been filled with loving people.  This report, and these decisions, are the best way we can love you back.

Announcing Our Latest Title, CRAZY MOUNTAIN, by Elise Atchison

Crazy Mountain by Elise Atchison

Winner of The Eludia Award, Elise Atchison’s Crazy Mountain chronicles a rapidly changing place and community through the diverse and conflicting stories of the people who live in a fictional mountain valley in Montana over nearly half a century (1970-2015). As newly built roads carve through the primal wild, and the rural landscape transforms into subdivisions, McMansions and resorts, conflicts escalate between locals and newcomers, developers and environmentalists, the wealthy and the homeless. Through multiple perspectives we hear the voices of ranchers, real estate agents, carpenters, artists, New Agers, Native American activists, landscapers, movie stars, musicians, pizza delivery drivers, gun-toting fundamentalists, and others including Kate, a troubled young woman who becomes homeless over the course of the book and whose own story in many ways mirrors the destruction and resurrection of the land. These varied threads weave together into a rich tapestry of place, exploring timely themes of housing booms and homelessness, loss of open land to development, cultural clashes, and the correlation between how we treat the natural world and how we treat each other, especially the most vulnerable among us. What does it mean to lose a place we love, and what does it mean to gain from it? Perhaps it depends on perspective.

Praise for Crazy Mountain:

“Crazy Mountain is a powerful story about possession and dispossession. Gritty and tough and gut wrenching, Atchison shows us how the West continues to be an explosive and embittered battleground, both sh*t show and love story. Crazy Mountain ignites a firestorm.”

• Debra Magpie Earling, author of Perma Red and The Lost Journals of Sacajewea

“Crazy Mountain is a grand tale of the power of wilderness to heal wounds-scars on the land and the troubled humans who live in it … This is a crazy and wonderful book.”

• Doug Peacock, author of Grizzly Years and Was It Worth It, filmmaker, “Disabled Veteran”

“I absolutely love this kind of storytelling. Reminiscent of Winesburg, Ohio and Olive Kitteridge, this collection blooms from the diverse points of view held within Crazy Mountain’s boundaries. And the stories are the real thing-complex, sophisticated stories of the American West, not the tired mythologies that sadly continue to prevail. From subdivisions to resorts to the homeless, from wilderness to ski slopes to private land, we find an accurate, sensitive, and nuanced view of rural Montana.”

• Laura Pritchett, winner of PEN USA and author of The Blue Hour and Stars Go Blue

“In the Mountain West, the landscape is a constant. It’s the people who change. Ranchers, realtors, carpenters, painters, archeologists, bad-ass baristas … in this artful, lyrical, deeply moving novel, Elise Atchison follows a piece of landscape through several lifetimes, capturing the dramatic complexity of the disrupted West through a full cast of characters, one lens after another. It’s a full-time job, trying to make sense of the West these days. I find that this extraordinary book helps make that job a little easier.”

• Allen Morris Jones, author of A Bloom of Bones and Sweeney on the Rocks

“In Crazy Mountain the lives of those who people landscapes of beauty and despair are multilayered, evocative, and rich with unforeseen mystery. Elise Atchison’s prose is a vessel of precision and depth, unafraid to draw the reader into the more shadowed crucibles of life and help us emerge with light in our hands. In stories that cover nearly five decades in the life of a mountain and its residents, there is the wildness of the human heart shaped by the wildness that surrounds us. May you take this book home, cherish it as I did, and find in it the treasure it gives without measure … that of ‘the wildland that has been lost, and all that remains.'”

• Shann Ray, author of American Copper and Sweetclover

“With great insight, intelligence, and intimacy, Elise Atchison explores a singular dilemma: How do we live in paradise without destroying the very thing we love? Set in a place changing so rapidly that its inhabitants no longer recognize the landscape, one another, or even themselves, these individual narratives of love and loss, celebration and lament, interweave as the dreams of one generation give way to the disillusionment of the next. A story of human intrusion and intervention, in which moments of brutality give way to gestures of charity, Crazy Mountain serves as a reminder that what we think we own may not be ours after all.”

• Kim Barnes, author of In the Kingdom of Men and In the Wilderness

Crazy Mountain can be purchased at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Bookshop and other online sellers. It can also be ordered from your neighborhood brick and mortar store.

Introducing Charles Wyatt and His Collection, HOUSES

Houses by Charles Wyatt

“Houses is a fabulous book of stories that keep wandering into locked rooms, to find worlds hidden behind worlds. Its nosy, resourceful characters can’t resist stumbling into the magical-sinister or rhapsodic, demonic or glorious. What witty, astute stories these are-haunting in the best possible way. A masterful collection.”

Joan Silber, author of Improvement, Secrets of Happiness, and Household Words

~ ~ ~

Charles Wyatt was the inaugural winner of our Hawk Mountain Award for a story collection. It is an astonishing collection, the style of which is hard to put into a single category or genre — and of course, that is the kind of work that we at Hidden River Arts are happy to support.

The stories in Houses invite us to enter the spaces and structures, the light and the shadow of our lives. Charles Wyatt invites us to think about the spaces and places we’ve inhabited in the past. His stories guide us into those places, the homes we remember from earlier times, the ones we have only dreamed of in our imaginations, those looming in our peripheral vision, whether they are real or imagined. His characters explore the darkened hallways, the locked rooms, the barren and uninhabited, the furnished and dust-covered, the inexplicable energies, sounds, sights and emotions discovered both in those surroundings and within themselves. The spaces we all inhabit, whether in built environments or those environments within our own heads are found, through Wyatt’s explorations, to be interchangeable. The interiors that surround us are the interiors within. To enter this collection of stories is to discover that mystery within yourself. There are elements of mystery, of surrealism, of the fantastic. Events seem to move into and out of dreamscape. It really is a collection created masterfully and not to be missed.

A musician, Charles earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music and a Masters of Music Degree from the Philadelphia Musical Academy. After a long career as the principal flutist of the Nashville Symphony and the Peninsula Music Festival, Charles earned his MFA from Warren Wilson College. He served as visiting fiction writer at Binghamton University, Denison University, the University of Central Oklahoma, Purdue University, and Oberlin College. His fiction includes Listening to Mozart, Swan of Tuonela, and Falling Stones. Houses is the inaugural winner of The Hawk Mountain Award for a collection of short fiction.

Charles, sadly, passed away in 2021. We continued to work with his widow to finalize the manuscript and design, and to bring this, his last book, out into the world. We have been honored to be part of this project, and our proud to include Houses in our catalogue of extremely powerful books.

The Secret Music at Tordesillas Wins the 2020 INDIES Award for Historical Fiction

We are thrilled to announce that THE SECRET MUSIC AT TORDESILLAS by Marjorie Sandor has been named winner of the 2020 Foreward INDIES Award for Historical (Adult) Fiction. As the editor-in-chief of Hidden River Publishing, and the proud publisher of this wonderful book, I am very happy for Marjorie, who has created a world that every lover of historical fiction should be eager to enter. It is the court of Juana the Mad, during the time of the Spanish Inquisition. It was a time when even the court musicians had to face the horrors of the Inquisition and were forced to renounce their own religions. What happens when a court musician secretly holds fast to his own spiritual traditions at risk of death? What happens to the underground religious communities during this time of great religious violence? You need to get your hands on this book and enter this world. Everyone who loves historical fiction should be rushing to add this book to their bookshelf.

https://www.forewordreviews.com/awards/books/the-secret-music-at-tordesillas/

Hidden River is Flowing

The Schuylkill River. “Schuylkill” is Dutch for “Hidden River”

We’ve been quiet for a while, during the pandemic. But it’s time for some COVID updates:

As with many arts organizations, Hidden River has faced some obstacles, some slow-downs, some difficulties, during the pandemic. But we are still here. Submissions to our awards are still being deliberated – and we’ll be announcing the semi-finalists and finalists of a few of the awards over the next two weeks.

Our publishing pipeline has been a bit paralyzed, but we are starting to move once again, and will be launching two new titles – The Emigrant and Other Stories by Justine Dymond and Hillbilly Guilt by Roy Bentley – more news on that later this week. The next two books in the pipeline are Remembering Water by Tuan Phan and Houses by Charles Wyatt. We’ll be releasing news about all the titles in our pipeline shortly.

During the COVID shut downs, we put some of our awards on hold so that we could catch up with our existing submissions. As we move forward, we may be making some changes to the awards, so follow us here on our blog in order to be up to date on those details.

So, as summer 2021 begins, things here are coming back to life. Please be sure to stay connected by following us here, and we’ll be sure to keep things updated as Hidden River begins to flow again!

Jeffrey Voccola Receives the Inaugural Blue Mountain Novel Award

Jeffrey Voccola
winner of The Blue Mountain Award for his novel KINGS ROW

Jeffrey Voccola, of Kutztown, Pennsylvania has won the inaugural Blue Mountain Novel Award for his novel, Kings Row.** The award carries a $1,000 cash prize and publication with Hidden River Press, an imprint of Hidden River Publishing.

Jeffrey received an MFA from Emerson College. His fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Cabinet, Noctua Review, Cottonwood, Beacon Street Review, Folio, Whirligig. His essays have been published in Inside Sources, The Las Vegas Sun, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Jeffrey is currently Associate Professor of Fiction Writing and Director of the Writing Program at Kutztown University.

Kings Row is what Jeffrey calls a “literary mystery” about the murder of a university freshman in a post-industrial college town by one of the working class men of the community. Describing his novel, Jeffrey tells us, “Kings Row explores elements of racism and class-ism as they exist today, particularly in small communities…as rapid changes in demographics and social norms threaten their way of life. Kings Row is a tragic and heartbreaking story of two Americas growing farther apart. The book contains multiple points of view, including the victim, Christopher Roche, and the murder is mentioned in the first chapter. As a result, the reader is able to follow these two young men as their lives intersect. As a professor at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, I have a deep understanding of the characters, setting, and premise of this novel. Although the book is a work of fiction, the central conflict is based on an actual event that took place in Kutztown only a few years ago.”

The manuscript captured the imagination of our staff at Hidden River for its deep understanding of a struggle taking place across the U.S. and in all areas where the shifts in economy have hollowed out formerly thriving manufacturing towns, ruining lives and families and fracturing communities. The violence that takes place in the novel is representative of the kind of rage that is boiling beneath the surface of our society, rage which is often taken out on the most vulnerable among us rather than on those truly guilty of destroying our once-thriving economy.

Exploring a heartbreaking subject with language both honest and transcendent, Kings Row carries the reader along, through its exploration of the inner lives of many characters, to create a tapestry of suffering truly illustrative of current day America.

Here is a clip of Jeffrey reading from a portion of the novel:

Submissions are currently being accepted for the next cycle of our Blue Mountain Novel Award.  Please see our blog page for The Blue Mountain Award guidelines.

** Kings Row can also be purchased at all online booksellers, including Barnes & Noble, Bookshop and others. It can also be special ordered at your local bookstore. 

Celebrating the Launch of Kings Row by Jeffrey Voccola

Kings Row by Jeffrey Voccola

The inaugural winner of our Blue Mountain Novel Award, Kings Row by Jeffrey Voccola has been launched, published by our Hidden River Press imprint.

Description:
Joel Martin is a twenty-four year old construction worker who lives with his mother and struggles to provide for his four year old son. Longing to break free from the bleak confines of Langley, Pennsylvania, the dried-up industrial town where he has lived his entire life, he commits a series of burglaries with his brother, Derek, in the hope of finding more. Faced with legal troubles, problems with his ex, and the possibility of being separated from his son, Joel begins to unravel, and the unthinkable occurs when his life intersects with Christopher Roche, a freshman at Waylan University. Kings Row explores class disparities as they exist today and the tragic events that inevitably unfold when people are driven by anger and resentment. Rich in character and carefully observed, Kings Row is a gripping story of two Americas growing farther apart.

Praise For Kings Row

“In the utterly absorbing Kings Row, Jeffrey Voccola shows himself to be a master of the faultlines of class and of all the ways, large and small, in which people hurt each other. I couldn’t stop turning the pages of this suspenseful novel. Kings Row is a stellar debut.” –Margot Livesey, author of Mercury and The House on Fortune Street

“This beautifully-paced, eloquent and suspenseful novel is full of persuasive, sharply observed psychology, sociology, and topology, and an honest voicing of working class people, male and female….Voccola writes with dead-pan lyricism, an attentive ear, and generous heart.” –DeWitt Henry, author of Sweet Marjoram and co-founder of Ploughshares

“From its masterful opening chapter on, Kings Row captures the divides and resentments that have brought us to this moment in America. This novel is a deep study of people unsure of their positions in their personal lives and in the larger sphere of change. Voccola writes beautifully and compassionately, even about tragedy.” –Tim Parrish, author of Fear and What Follows: The Violent Education of a Christian Racist, A Memoir

“Kings Row masterfully deconstructs a killing deeply emblematic of the class and race issues that plague our time. With lyrical, heart-piercing realism, Jeffrey Voccola evokes our deepest compassion for these ill-fated characters, showing us ourselves reflected in college students struggling to belong, in displaced working class communities. Provocative and suspenseful, Kings Row introduces an exciting new writer to watch.” –Wayne Harrison, author of The Spark and the Drive and Wrench and Other Stories

Kings Row can be purchased at
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Powell’s
BookShop.org

The Blue Mountain Award is offered yearly. The next cycle of submissions opens August 30, 2020 and deadlines March 31, 2020. Please see the guidelines.

Jeffrey is available for readings, conferences, interviews and other events. To discuss options, please contact us. More information about Jeffrey, and a link to a live reading from Kings Row can be found here.

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