Yaddyra Peralta, author of Anxious Art and associate editor at Mango, has been featured in an article for Publishers Weekly! Read the article, and Yaddyra’s feature here.
Call and Response: Social Justice Books 2020-2021
By Diane Patrick and Calvin Reid
In an effort to understand how the public outcry over systemic racism has impacted publishing programs, PW contacted a wide range of publishers, soliciting commentary from editors at big New York trade houses, independent presses, university presses, and self-help, religion, and lifestyle publishers. The responses suggest how social justice publishing is changing and give context for works acquired years ago that are arriving in the market at a pivotal moment.
We spoke with the following editors and publishers in adult and children’s publishing: Ellen Adler, publisher of the New Press; Shabnam Banerjee-McFarland, an editor at Berrett-Koehler; Walter Biggins, Robert Lockhart, and Laura Waldron, editor-in-chief, senior editor, and marketing director, respectively, at the University of Pennsylvania Press; Justin Chanda, senior v-p and publisher at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, Atheneum Books for Young Readers, and Margaret K. McElderry Books; Megha Majumdar, an editor at Catapult; Tim McKee, publisher of North Atlantic Books; Ryan Pazdur, associate publisher of Zondervan Reflective and Zondervan Academic; Yaddyra Peralta, associate editor at Mango Publishing; Maura Roessner, senior editor at the University of California Press; and Alicia Samuels, editorial director at Flyaway Books.
Peralta: Social justice has always been threaded through Mango’s publishing program since the company’s inception. One of our earliest titles was [2016’s] Racism in America by Pulitzer Prize–winning Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts, who has been writing about the African American experience and race for close to 30 years. Another Miami Herald legend we published in 2018 was the paper’s former publisher, David Lawrence. His book, A Dedicated Life, an autobiography about a life in the newspaper business, also focuses on his work to create equal access to early childhood literacy in the state of Florida. As Mango has grown and brought in more acquisition editors of Latinx and Afro-Caribbean descent, the program on social justice–related titles began to organically grow. Having an inclusive editorial team plugged in to the nation’s social and political concerns has kept social justice at the forefront at Mango.
Read entire article here!
Anxious Art
A Creativity Journal to Help Calm You
A 2016 study at Drexel university that examined the effects of creative activity on reducing levels of the stress hormone cortisol discovered that “45 minutes of art making…resulted in statistically significant lowering of cortisol levels.” We all know cortisol is the stress hormone, so grab a pen or pencil and let the meditations and writing prompts in this mindfulness journal take you on a calming journey to a healthier, happier mind.
T.S. Eliot once said, “Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity,” but if he had this creative journal during times of worry, he surely would have said creativity was the handmaiden to peace. With this friendly, calming companion, you will find that you are much more present in the here and now.