Their own space
Back in 2006 when Black Ocean started publishing books, small independent presses were like microbreweries: There were a couple great ones, and then the scene began to explode. After a decade of operation, Black Ocean recently opened a brick-and-mortar space in the Vernon Street Studios building in Somerville, a big brick building next to train tracks and down the hill from Highland Kitchen. The space will serve as a by-appointment bookstore, a literary community space for readings, workshops, and seminars, as well as a gallery.
Janaka Stucky, poet and founder of Black Ocean, talks of the concept of the “third space” — a space neither the home space nor the work space — and how Black Ocean’s new home will embody that. “In the discourses of dissent,” Stucky says, “the third space is where the oppressed plot their liberation.”
Stucky admits to being a book fetishist as well as a lover of literature. “Reading is a sensual experience,” he says. “You interact with a book in a tactile way, an olfactory way.” The books Black Ocean produces reflect this, beautifully designed and produced. There’s an away-from-the-screen thrust to the new space as well. “Opening the space feels like taking it to the next step,” Stucky says. “I wanted to engage less online, more in person, and that happens more in that third space.”
A change at Barefoot Books
Barefoot Books, a children’s book publisher, has been a force in Cambridge and in the lives of kids and families around the world for 25 years, publishing children’s books that celebrate diversity in its various forms (“cultural and social; ecological and economic; emotional and spiritual,” according to its manifesto), and committing itself to sustainability and the environment. Tessa Strickland, one of the cofounders and the editor-in-chief, recently announced her retirement, saying that after a quarter of a century at the helm of this project and now that her own children “have flown,” she wants to focus her time on her own writing (she’s written dozens of children’s books under the name Stella Blackstone, including several published by Barefoot), as well as her small psychotherapy practice. Barefoot has published over 600 books and has sold over 20 million. Strickland cofounded the press with Nancy Traversy when the two were young mothers living in England. In a statement on the Barefoot website, Traversy writes that she “will miss Tessa’s wonderful way with words, her wise counsel, her adventurous soul, and her serene, reassuring spirit.”
Coming out
“Leopard at the Door’’ by Jennifer McVeigh (Putnam)
“Unf**k Your Habitat: You’re Better Than Your Mess’ ’ by Rachel Hoffman (St. Martin’s Griffin)
“Falling Ill’’ by C.K. Williams (Farrar Straus and Giroux)
Pick of the Week
Bill Lundgren from Longfellow Books in Portland, Maine, recommends “Arctic Dreams’’ by Barry Lopez (Vintage): “This book is worth reading simply to enjoy Lopez’s account of watching a polar bear stalk a seal and swearing he never saw the bear move as said bear crosses a quarter mile of frozen ice. A riveting narrative of a land most of us will never get to see — traveling vicariously with Lopez is the next best thing to being there.”