If you already donated to the Press, thank you so much. If you haven't yet, please consider offering a tax-deductible contribution before the year ends. We are down to the wire, with $4,000 more to raise and a promise from our Board of Directors to match every gift to the Press dated, called in, or pledged before midnight on December 31.
2010 marked our 15th anniversary, and we are proud of all that the Press has accomplished while remaining true to our founding mission: to publish high quality, groundbreaking, yet overlooked literature by women writers. And educating the public about these books and writers. Our mission is as essential now as it was in 1995.
In the past month, we've received enthusiastic notes and donations from many new donors, continuing donors, and individuals who supported the Press years ago and have returned to support it again. Please help launch Paris Press into the new year, to assist in the publication of our fall book combo (a CD of Ruth Stone reading from NBCC-Award-winning Ordinary Words and Simplicity, along with a new edition), and a soon-to-be-announced collection of short stories or novel.
We welcome your help, and hope you will forward this letter to friends who will also support the groundbreaking literature by women writers that Paris Press publishes, keeps in print, and educates the public about: Sisters: An Anthology (with well-known and emerging writers as diverse as Gwendolyn Brooks, Delia Ephron, Ana Maria Jomolca, Audre Lorde, M.F.K. Fisher, Jeanne Leiby, and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala); On Being Ill by Virginia Woolf; Visa for Avalon by Bryher (as politically timely as when it was first written in 1964); and our raison d'etre, Muriel Rukeyser's The Life of Poetry, her verse drama Houdini, and Irish memoir The Orgy; Zdena Berger's Tell Me Another Morning (which so profoundly and perfectly complements The Diary of Anne Frank and Night); and all the other extraordinary and previously neglected works of literature that the Press has championed during the past 15 years.
Sisters: An Anthology has become its own story, resonating with readers from all walks of life. And it has led to SISTERS Celebrations across the country, with readings from the book by family and community members, teens and adults, the authors included in the Anthology, and other acclaimed writers and women from a variety of fields such as Rose Styron, Carol Gilligan, Jessica Harris, Margaret Roach, and Marion Roach Smith. All singing Irving Berlin's "Sisters - Sisters" at the end of every program!
Thanks to supporters like you, we were able to give Sisters to 300 teens and women - including cancer survivors in support groups, teen mothers at the Holyoke Care Center, and teens from Girls Inc. In the spring we will begin Sisters writing workshops. Sisters Celebrations are scheduled to take place around the U.S. (check our website), we will continue to pursue a staged adaptation of the collection, and transform and expand the "Sisters Talk" interviews into a documentary that - if our dream comes true - will launch on International Women's Day at Times Square in 2012.
Which leads us back to the Ball Drop on New Year's Eve. Please help Paris Press thrive.
We look forward to sharing our 2011 plans as we begin new projects in the coming months. Please visit our website, or become a "fan" on FACEBOOK to learn more about our forthcoming activities and publications, and to share your ideas with us.
Your tax-deductible contribution can be mailed to Paris Press, P.O. Box 487, Ashfield, MA 01330 or you can send it electronically by visiting our secure website and click on "Donations". You may also phone our office at 413.628.0051 to speak with us directly regarding pledges, stock contributions, and other matters related to your interest in Paris Press. Thank you for helping to make the past 15 years bountiful, and the future of the Press possible.
Wishing you inspiration, good health, and great reading in 2011!
