By: Beth Kephart ,
on 11/29/2014
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 5/27/2014
You know how proud I am to be a Shebooks author. You know how much I've loved the Shebooks I've read. You know how much it means to be able to support other writers of fiction, memoir, long-form journalism. To support other women, too.
And so here I am with Shebooks again, but this time I'm talking about the Kickstarter campaign. I'm going to let the official press release speak for Shebooks here. But I hope you'll stop to watch the movie. To be inspired by it, even, to help the campaign, to write a Shebooks of your own.
Shebooks Launches Kickstarter for its 2014 Equal Writes Campaign
New digital publisher kicks off campaign to raise awareness of gender bias in publishing.
San Francisco, CA (May 27, 2014) – Shebooks, a new digital publisher of short e-books by women,
today launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise awareness of the gender bias in publishing—and to
build a fund to pay women writers. “Our goal is to publish as many short e-books by women as we
can this year.” says Laura Fraser, Shebooks Cofounder and Editorial Director. “As an author, I’ve seen the space for quality women's writing shrink and shrink. That’s why we started Shebooks, to give more women a platform to publish their work.”
The 30-day Kickstarter campaign has a goal to raise $50K, all of which will go to pay women writers in 2014. At every pledge level, Shebooks offers fun, creative campaign rewards, including a Shebooks subscription, a chance to get your own original work published in an upcoming Girl Power anthology, an “EQUAL WRITES” T-shirt, a night out with Shebooks authors, author visits to your book club, the opportunity to have a protagonist named after you in an upcoming book, and much more.
To date, Shebooks has published over 40 original books by top authors and journalists. Shebooks
authors include international bestselling author Hope Edelman, New York Times-bestselling author
Caroline Leavitt, former Deputy Editor of Essence Teresa Wiltz, founder of Ms. Magazine Suzanne
Braun Levine, and National Book Award finalist Beth Kephart. This week’s Shebook, I’ll Give You
Something to Cry About, is an original novella by New York Times-bestselling novelist Jennifer Finney Boylan, who was recently named the Anna Quindlen writer-in-residence at Barnard.
“We are thrilled by the quality of the e-books that we’ve published so far and are excited to discover
new voices and publish many more,” says Peggy Northrop, Cofounder and President of Shebooks.
“Kickstarter is the perfect vehicle for getting the word out to a wide audience about this exciting new media form.”
About Shebooks
Shebooks is a new publisher of short e-books by and for women, cofounded in 2013 by magazine
editor Peggy Northrop, bestselling author Laura Fraser, and media executive Rachel Greenfield.
Shebooks.net offers a curated collection of original and hard-to-find memoir, fiction, and journalis tailored to women and designed to be read in under two hours. Shebooks can be purchased individually for $2.99 or by subscription.
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 5/24/2014
What prompted you to write Nest. Flight. Sky.?
I teach memoir at Penn, I’ve written about its glories, challenges, and consequences in Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, I blog daily about life (Beth Kephart Books), and once, a lifetime ago, I wrote five memoirs. But it has been many years and many books since I’d dared to write the extended truth. By the time Shebooks emerged, I was desperate to speak. My mother had passed away. I had become obsessed with birds and nests, but I did not understand why. I believe that it’s only in writing toward questions that we find at least some of the answers. I wrote Nest. Flight. Sky. to find some answers.
Birds and nests have been a recurrent theme in your work. What is the origin of this?
Nest. Flight. Sky: On love and loss, one wing at a time is, indeed, about recurrent images. It’s about those birds, those wings, those nests that have entered into all the fiction I have written—one book after another, ever since my mother died. It all began with winter finches tapping on my windowpane in the months after her passing. It became a quest for hawks, for hummingbirds, for flight.
When did you first decide you were a writer?
Do we ever decide that we are writers? Or do we just decide that we must write, that we will not be able to breathe if we do not? I’m not sure, even all these books in, that I am a writer. I think readers are in charge of that decision. I only know that, since I was nine, words and their melodies gave me a sense of being nearly whole.
By: Maryann Yin,
on 8/16/2011
To celebrate the publication of Life…The Reader’s Digest Version: Great Advice, Simply Put, Reader’s Digest will host the “Your Life…” contest. The grand prize winner will receive $25,000, and ten runner-ups will win $2,500. The eleven honorees’ stories will also be published on ReadersDigest.com.
In addition, Facebook fans will have the chance to vote for their favorite stories. The most popular Facebook entry will also receive $2,500. To enter, submit your life story in 150 words or less on Reader’s Digest‘s Facebook page. The deadline has been set for November 1st. Glee actress Jane Lynch submitted the first entry in the contest. Perhaps it’s a teaser for her soon-to-be-published memoir Happy Accidents?
Global editor-in-chief Peggy Northrop had this statement in the release: ”We’ve collected hundreds of thousands of stories and jokes from our readers over the years. This opens the door for them to share in a whole new way and to get their friends, families and fellow readers involved in the action.”
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
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