2010: A BANNER YEAR FOR PARIS PRESS’S 15TH ANNIVERSARY

As we move into the season of giving thanks and celebrating the year, we here at Paris Press are so grateful for your generosity, the support of our volunteers, Board and Advisory Board members, readers, writers, and public and private foundations. The following accomplishments are yours as well as ours. You helped bring Sisters to life!

MEDIA ATTENTION AND BACK TO PRESS

• Sisters: An Anthology received rave reviews in Ms., People Magazine, RealSimple.com, Library Journal, Curve, The Chicago Tribune Reader’s Blog, The Greenfield Recorder, The Daily Hampshire Gazette, and the Amherst Bulletin. It was highlighted on TheSisterProject.com, a blog by Margaret Roach, Marion Roach Smith, and Paige Orloff. 

• NPR-affiliate WFCR interviewed actress, playwright, and Sisters contributors Ana Maria Jomolca, Tsipi Keller, and co-editor Jan Freeman about Sisters on “Morning Edition.” Sisters authors Jeanne M. Leiby and Ana Maria Jomolca, Jan Freeman and her sister, anthropologist Carla Freeman, were interviewed about sisters on WAMC’s “Roundtable.” WGBH’s “The Callie CrossleyShow” featured Jan Freeman for International Women’s Day. Vail Public Television interviewed Jan Freeman about SISTERS Celebrations.
   
• Chilmark Library SISTERS Celebration participants Carol Gilligan, Rose Styron, and Jessica Harris were interviewed about sisters for Martha’s Vineyard PlumTV and MVTV. NBC Affiliate, Channel 22’s MassAppeal featured Jan Freeman speaking about SISTERS Celebrations, and previewed clips from the new SISTERS film project. (For links to interviews, visit www.parispress.org.)
   
• Open Me Carefully went back to press for its 3rd printing following Joshua Wolf Shenk’s essay in Slate about the creative partnership between Emily Dickinson and Susan Huntington Dickinson.

SISTERS EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH IN THE COMMUNITY

• Teacher and writer Helen Gallagher hosted two interactive Celebrations in Chicago and Winnetka, IL. Painter Elizabeth Stone hosted a SISTERS Celebration in Northampton, MA with poet and teacher Patricia Lee Lewis and actor and producer Jeannine Haas reading from the Anthology.
   
• Ana Maria Jomolca and Tsipi Keller read their work from Sisters to a packed house at Books and Books in Coral Gables, FL. McNally Jackson Books in NYC hosted a packed SISTERS Celebration, featuring contributors Catherine Chung, Ana Maria Jomolca, and Myra Shapiro. The Co-Op Bookstore at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, hosted a Celebration with contributor Catherine Chung, co-editor Emily Wojcik, poet and director of the Litchfield County Writers’ Project Davyne Verstandig, and Lisa Starr, poet laureate of Rhode Island.
   
• Women’s History Month SISTERS Celebrations: Media consultant and master gardener Margaret Roach and her sister, author Marion Roach Smith, joined Nancy Fitzpatrick, arts advocate and owner of the Red Lion Inn, for a Celebration at the Berkshire Botanical Garden. International Women’s Day Celebrations: Porter Square Books in Cambridge, with Sisters contributor and award-winning novelist Julia Glass, contributor and poet Barbara Greenberg, and Libana percussionist Marytha Paffrath; NYC’s Madame X, with Ana Maria Jomolca, organized by the I Can Still Do That! Foundation; and an Upper West Side psychoanalytic reading, hosted by Robi Akeret, with Nancy Carroll and analysts, and contributors playwright Clare Coss and poet Myra Shapiro.
   
• Sisters contributor and novelist Catherine Chung, Margaret Roach, and Marion Roach Smith took part in a SISTERS Celebration at the Arts Center of the Capital Region, in Troy, NY.The Vail, CO, Public Library hosted a Celebration with contributor and novelist Tsipi Keller, librarian Lori Ann Barnes, and Susan Cody. Advisory Board member Barbara Alfange organized an overflowing Celebration at the Leverett Library, with community members Chris Nelson, Janine Roberts, and Nicki Robb reading their favorite pieces from the Anthology. The Chilmark Library, on Martha’s Vineyard, hosted a SISTERS Celebration with cookbook author and culinary historian Jessica Harris, psychologist, novelist, and Advisory Board member Carol Gilligan, and poet and human rights activist Rose Styron.
   
• Gloriosa & Company hosted an Ashfield’s Fall Festival SISTERS Celebration with community members. Teens Amelia and Analise Cain and Clare Donohue-Meyer joined Renee Rastorfer, Susan Todd, and Patricia Donohue to read poetry and prose from the Anthology. The Hampshire County Smith College Book Club hosted a Celebration and discussion of Sisters with co-editors Jan Freeman and Emily Wojcik. Amherst Senior Center hosted a SISTERS Celebration with MA Representative Ellen Story, Young at Heart Chorus-member Shirley Stevens, and actress and PVPA theater teacher Irene Thornton.

EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH IN THE CLASSROOM

• Mercy High School (San Francisco, CA) selected Zdena Berger’s Tell Me Another Morning for their 2010-2011 All-School Read. Zdena will travel to the girls’ high school in March 2011 to discuss her autobiographical novel with students.
   
• Paris Press welcomed Smith College student Sarah Green for a six-week Praxis internship.
   
• The MassPOP Poetry Retreat for High School Teachers, dedicated to helping teachers incorporate poetry into their classrooms, gave copies of The Life of Poetry to participating teachers. Mass Humanities made this generous donation possible. A Paris Press dream come true!
   
• The Press offered SISTERS Celebrations throughout the Pioneer Valley. Contributor Ana Maria Jomolca traveled from NYC to read “Twin Bed” and discuss it with students at the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School, Holyoke’s Girls’ Inc., and the CARE Center of Holyoke.

EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH IN CONFERENCES AND COMMUNITY FESTIVALS

• Paris Press attended the Associated Writers Program Conference in Denver, where Sisters contributors Catherine Chung, Martha Rhodes, and Robin Becker read from the Anthology. Jan Freeman participated in a panel discussion about Muriel Rukeyser in the 21st century. The Press reconnected with readers, writers, teachers, students, publishers, friends, and fans.
   
• Assistant editor Emily Wojcik and Advisory Board member Nikki Lloyd-Kimbrel represented the Press at the Juniper Literary Festival, at the University of Massachusetts.

• Advisory Board members Barbara Alfange, Laurie Slap-Shelton, and Nikki Lloyd-Kimbrel joined intern Sarah Green and Emily Wojcik at the Paris Press book table during Ashfield Fall Festival. Jan Freeman and Advisory Board member Lisa Newman launched the SISTERS film project, interviewing children, teens, and adults about sisters throughout the Ashfield Fall Festival.