On September 1, Central Avenue Publishing will release Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort During the Time of Covid-19, a collection of essays, poems and interviews that will benefit independent bookstores.
Created by journalist and author Jennifer Haupt, the collection features more than 75 contributors, including Kwame Alexander, Jean Kwok, Lidia Yuknavitch, Garth Stein and Luis Alberto Urrea. Net profits from sales of the collection will go to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation.
Alone Together is divided into four sections--Love, Grief, Comfort and Possibilities--and has an overarching theme of finding grace and humility in such a devastating time. Each section begins with at least one interview conducted by Haupt, who is the curator of the blog Psychology Today.
She started putting the book together in April, when she wrote on Facebook: "Putting this into the universe: I've been struggling with how to do something positive during this time of hardship for many. I don't have money but I DO have a strong community of compassionate writers and readers. So: I'm putting together a collection of interviews and essays on Love and Comfort During Covid-19. The net profits will go to the Book Industry Charitable Foundaiton to benefit the bookstore owners who have supported readers and writers and now need our help."
From there, she approached her publisher at Central Avenue, Michelle Halket, and after a few bestselling authors came on board, "the whole thing started snowballing."
Alone Together will be distributed by Independent Publishers Group.
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With so many upcoming trade shows postponed or held virtually, a group of publishers including Workman Publishing, Abrams, Bloomsbury Publishing, Candlewick Press, Chronicle Books and Sourcebooks have teamed up with Binc to create Indie Shindig, a virtual event series aimed at helping indie bookstores discover new books "published by the independent-minded publishing community."
The event series will run June 22-September 28, with new events every Monday at 2 p.m. Eastern, except on Labor Day. Each event will have a theme, with the first being In Solidarity: Black Voices Matter. For every bookseller who attends each event, all participating publishers will split a $10 donation to Binc, with a cap of $15,000 total.
The full Indie Shindig schedule can be found here, and interested booksellers can sign up here.