Historic Partnership, Award Winning Books
South End Press, Leading Independent Publishing House, Enters Historic Partnership with Medgar Evers College/CUNY
South End Author Frank Wilderson's Incognegro Receives 2010 NEA Literature
Fellowship and Hurston/Wright Legacy Award
New York, NY - December 09, 2009
This fall a historic partnership was realized when South End Press--one of the country's oldest independent, nonprofit presses--established residence at
Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York. Through the joint efforts of the College's Center for Black Literature and DuBois Bunche Center for Public Policy, the 32-year-old press opened a new editorial office at the College's MetroTech Center satellite in Downtown Brooklyn. (New phone: 718-874-0089)
Both South End Press and Medgar Evers College emerged from a broad legacy of educating and distributing educational resources generated by often marginalized communities. This shared tradition provides the foundation for this mutually beneficial partnership, which will help sustain one of the country's most respected presses in a manner that fully preserves the Press's autonomy while expanding both material and intellectual resources available to students, faculty, staff, and the larger communities served by Medgar Evers College. Established in 1977, South End Press has over 250 titles in print, reflecting the Press's commitment to publish on a broad range of issues from diverse perspectives. South End authors include bell hooks, Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, Winona LaDuke, Andrea Smith, Manning Marable, Cherrķe Moraga, Arundhati Roy, Vandana Shiva, Howard Zinn, and Frank B. Wilderson, III author of the critically-acclaimed book Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid (winner, 2008 American Book Award), and the recipient of a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts literature fellowship and of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.
Alex Straaik, a South End Press editor/publisher, states, "We are tremendously excited and grateful to Medgar Evers College for their generosity in assisting our efforts to sustain this press. That said, we are not only interested in ensuring the sustainability of South End Press. Like the extraordinary students, faculty, staff, and administrators at Medgar Evers College, South End Press is most interested not in what we have been bequeathed, but in making sure that this legacy endures."
Dr. Brenda M. Greene, executive director of the Center for Black Literature, adds, "Through this collaboration, South End Press will work with the Centers and Medgar Evers College in fulfilling its mission to develop the next generation of leaders and community change-agents. South End's activities will include working with faculty to publish books; conducting publishing workshops, lectures, and authors' programs; providing student internships in editing, marketing, production and research; and working with the Centers to develop educational programs in printing and publishing. We look forward to the benefits that this collaboration will bring to the overall academic goals and programs of the Centers."
In March 2010, the Press will collaborate with the Center for Black Literature to develop pre-conference programming for the Tenth National Black Writers Conference and provide direct marketing support for the conference. Prior to the conference, Medgar Evers College will officially welcome South End Press to campus with a presidential reception.
Innovative Strategies for Sustainability
This partnership, along with the Press's Community Supported Publishing (CSP) movement, is among the innovative strategies the Press is using to sustain independent publishing while weathering tough economic times. "Especially in the wake of the consolidation of publishing. When one of our movement presses falls, where does the work go?" asks Jocelyn Burrell, a South End Press editor/publisher since 2004. Modeled after the widely successful Community Supported Agricultural (CSA) movement, South End's CSP movement is a grassroots, membership-driven subscription, with CSP members contributing $20 per month for regular deliveries from South End Press (books and other media instead of fruit and veggies). The CSP movement frees the Press from strict reliance on the caprice of holiday shopping and the Wal-Mart wars by helping to normalize cash flow with grassroots support--sustaining the Press as it supports new books and the movements they advance.
Roger L. Green, executive director of the DuBois Bunche Center for Public Policy, explains, "The disappearance of venues for publicly distributing the ideas and experiences that advance social justice--witness the shuttering of Kitchen Table and Third Woman Press--is a powerful reminder of why it is crucial to protect and sustain independent political publishers, and makes it clear why Medgar Evers College, itself an important organ for progressive thought and action, would want to partner with South End Press. It is not only the ideas that are advanced by small presses that are important to preserve. It is the presses themselves."
As a small, independent, and politically radical publishing house, the Press is faring better than expected during the economic crisis. Sales were down last year but only by 12.8%, which is less than a point greater than the 12% sales decline seen by industry giants. And the Press is optimistic about what the next years will bring now that it's closer to many of its allies in the NYC independent publishing, academic, movement-scholar, and activist communities. With the CSP movement growing, South End Press will continue to expand the program, its audience-reach, and the all-volunteer South End Press Street Team through literary events and community involvement which will assist in developing new partnerships and movements, as well as the indie press grassroots funding base. As Burrell notes, "We realize that South End's history and successes are not of a single movement press, but the inheritance and continuing evolution of a broad assembly of movements for social justice."
ABOUT SOUTH END PRESS
Founded in 1977, South End Press is an independent, nonprofit, collectively-run book publisher with more than 250 titles in print. The Press publishes books that encourage critical thinking and constructive action on the key political, cultural, social, economic, and ecological issues shaping life in the United States and in the world. Collectively organized since its inception, the Press is a small publishing house that provides an alternative to the practices and products of corporate publishing, and forms editors and publishers to carry on this work. The Press's author list--which includes bell hooks, Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, Winona LaDuke, Andrea Smith, Manning Marable, Cherrķe Moraga, Arundhati Roy, Vandana Shiva, Howard Zinn and Frank B. Wilderson, III --reflects the Press's commitment to publish on a broad range of issues from diverse perspectives. As a mission-based organization committed to social justice, the Press also challenges the pernicious hierarchies of the publishing world through a structure that develops the publishing capacity of individuals and groups from diverse communities.
ABOUT FRANK B. WILDERSON, III
Frank B. Wilderson, III is the author of Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid (South End Press) and Red, White and Black: Cinema and the Structure of US Antagonisms (forthcoming, Duke University Press), and the director of Reparations...Now, a film in progress. A critically-acclaimed scholar and artist, Wilderson's writing has garnered numerous awards, including the American Book Award, the National Endowment for the Arts literature fellowship, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the Judith Stronach Award for Poetry, the Loft-McKnight Award for Best Prose in the State of Minnesota, and the Maya Angelou Award for Best Fiction Portraying the Black Experience in America. He teaches African American studies and drama at the University of California, Irvine.
ABOUT MEDGAR EVERS COLLEGE/CUNY
Medgar Evers College was founded as a result of collaborative efforts by community leaders, elected officials, the Chancellor, and the Board of Trustees of The City University of New York. The College, named for the late civil rights leader, Medgar Wiley Evers (1925-1963), was established in 1969 and named in 1970, with a mandate to meet the educational and social needs of Central Brooklyn's residents. In keeping with the philosophy of The City University and Medgar Evers College, the College is committed to the power of education to positively transform.
ABOUT THE CENTER FOR BLACK LITERATURE
The mission of the Center for Black Literature is to expand, broaden, and enrich the public's knowledge and aesthetic appreciation of the value of black literature. The CBL convenes and supports various literary programs and events such as author signings, writing workshops, panel discussions, conferences, and symposia--building an audience for the reading, discussion, and critical analysis of contemporary black literature and a forum for research and the study of black literature.
ABOUT THE DUBOIS BUNCHE CENTER FOR PUBLIC POLICY
The DuBois Bunche Center for Public Policy (DBC) is an academy of scholar activists and advocates dedicated to forging solutions to the challenges confronting people of color living within urban communities in the United States and throughout the African Diaspora. DBC produces research, formulates policies, sponsors conferences and produces public affairs media programming that advances economic and social justice.
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