Welcoming Fellows from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop

Kyle Lucia Wu, June 2018

Kyle Lucia Wu is a writer based in Brooklyn. She is the Programs and Communications Manager at Kundiman, a nonprofit dedicated to nurturing Asian American literature, and the co-publisher of the literary journal Joyland. She was awarded the Asian American Writers Workshop Margins fellowship in 2017, and has received residencies from the Byrdcliffe Colony and the Millay Colony. She has an MFA in fiction from The New School, and teaches at Fordham University. Her work has appeared in Literary Hub, Guernica, Electric Literature, Interview Magazine, and elsewhere. She is working on her first novel.

About her project: She’lll be revising a draft of my first novel. "Win Me Something" is a voice-driven literary novel that explores mixed-race identity, class tensions, and blended families. It centers around the Chinese-American twenty-something Willa Chen, the child of an early divorce and blended families who falls into a job as a nanny in Manhattan, and has to reconcile the differences between the wealthy, white family she lives with, and the splintered, multi-race family she grew up around.

Paul Tran, August 2018

Paul Tran is a 2018 "Discovery"/Boston Review Poetry Prize winner. They live in Missouri, where they are Poetry Editor at The Offing Magazine and Chancellor's Graduate Fellow in The Writing Program at Washington University in St. Louis. Their work appears in The New Yorker, POETRY, and elsewhere, including the anthology Inheriting The War (W.W. Norton, 2017) and movie Love Beats Rhymes (Lionsgate, 2017). A recipient of fellowships and residencies from Kundiman, Poets House, Lambda Literary Foundation, Napa Valley Writers Conference, John Ashbery Home School, Vermont Studio Center, The Conversation, Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Miami Writers Institute, The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, and Eliza So Fellowship, Paul is the first Asian American since 1993 to win the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam, placing Top 10 at the Individual World Poetry Slam and Top 2 at the National Poetry Slam.

About their projects: Paul will be working on their first full length poetry collection. To be acquired by One World/Random House, the collection examines intergenerational trauma, sexual violence, and U.S. Empire following the Vietnam War.

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Special thanks to our our donors

Individual fellowships are made possible with support from the Amazon Literary Partnership, Submittable, the New York Public Library’s digital short story collection, and private donors. If your organization would like to partner with Plympton to sponsor a fellowship, please reach out to writingdowntown@plympton.com.

To find out even more, visit http://www.writingdowntown.com

Two New 2018 Fellows from Grub Street for our Writer's Block Writers Residency in Las Vegas

In partnership with Boston’s Grub Street, we’re welcoming two new fellows to our writers residency in Downtown Las Vegas.

Fellows will spend a month in the vibrant heart of downtown Las Vegas, engaging with and becoming a part of the city’s thriving arts scene. The fellowship is designed to give talented writers and other creatives the space, time, and freedom to work on their long-form projects. Fellows live in a fully furnished apartment near Las Vegas’ literary hub, The Writer’s Block bookstore.

Special thanks again to the Woodside community, Amazon Literary Partnership, Submittable, the New York Public Library, and private donors for helping bring these fellowships to life.

KL Pereira, April 2018

KL Pereira's debut short story collection, A Dream Between Two Rivers: Stories of Liminality was published by Cutlass Press in September 2017, and her chapbook, Impossible Wolves, was published by Deathless Press in 2013. Pereira's fiction, poetry, and nonfiction appear in LampLight, The Drum, Shimmer, Innsmouth Free Press, Mythic Delirium, Jabberwocky, Bitch, and other publications. She's a member of the New England Horror Writers Association and has taught creative writing in high schools, domestic violence shelters, colleges and universities, and writing institutions throughout New England for over ten years. She's been awarded grants and fellowships from Vermont Studio Center and Writing Downtown. Find her online klpereira.com.

About her project:

My month at The Writer’s Block will be an immersive experience in connecting with the literary community and working on my novel, Becoming Alien. This epistolary novel (complied of pages from diaries, zines, cassette liner notes, newspaper articles and other documentary ephemera) is told from the point of view of a teenage girl in the early 1990s, who, with her twin sister, migrates with a coyote to the United States from Mexico City after the death of their mother. The twins make their way to an unnamed metro area in the western United States to live with their white, American grandmother, the mother of the father they never knew. Abuela, as she known in the story, lives in constant fear of her grandchildren being exposed as “aliens” and constantly pushes a white identity on them. While one twin spends a lot of time hiding her undocumented status from neighbors and school mates, trying hard to assimilate into an “American” identity, the protagonist becomes obsessed with, and then begins to identify as, the mythological creatures she sees on a popular weekly television show, all of whom are never quite proved real, yet whose stories seem to live on despite the shadowy fear of being discovered. This novel is her testament to what it is like to push against shifting identities and ideologies while retaining a sense of self.

Ethan Gilsdorf, MArch 2018

Ethan Gilsdorf is an American writer, poet, performer, editor, critic, teacher, journalist, and author of "Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms" (The Lyons Press). Gilsdorf began his writing career in the 1990s as a poet and fiction writer, publishing in literary magazines such as Poetry, The Southern Review, The Quarterly, Exquisite Corpse, The North American Review, The Massachusetts Review and in several anthologies. He is also the winner of the Hobblestock Peace Poetry Competition and the Esme Bradberry Contemporary Poets Prize. He began writing nonfiction in 2000 as a Paris-based freelance journalist. He now writes about arts, culture, media and technology, and reviews books and films, for such publications as the New York Times, Boston Globe, Wired, and Salon. He also works as a writing instructor and consultant for GrubStreet, where is on the board of directors and where he co-founded GrubStreet's Young Adult Writers Program. He's been awarded residencies from the Millay Colony for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center; and grants from the Somerville Arts Council and Vermont Arts Council. More info at ethangilsdorf.com and Twitter @ethanfreak.

About his project:

A book-length memoir based on my article “The Day My Mother Became a Stranger,” published in 2015 in Boston Magazine, and named a “Notable” essay in the 2016 Best American Essays anthology.

Tentatively titled “Wild Kingdom: A Mother, a Son and a Catastrophic Brain Injury,” my memoir concerns my mother’s tragic story --- at age 38, Sara Gilsdorf was stricken down by a mind- and body-crippling brain aneurysm. The book is an effort to finally fathom the aftershocks, both physiological and emotional, of what befell her, and me. The memoir is my effort to make sense of what happened when her “brain exploded,” reclaim her lost life, and finally reckon with her legacy in my life. My exploration into this wrenching medical and personal story reveals not only my own torn and troubled relationship with her, but also how those wounds might be transformed and, in some way, redeemed.

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Individual fellowships are made possible with support from the Amazon Literary Partnership, Submittable, the New York Public Library’s digital short story collection, and private donors. If your organization would like to partner with Plympton to sponsor a fellowship, please reach out to writingdowntown @ plympton.com.

To find out even more, visit http://www.writingdowntown.com

Update: Sadly, KL Pereira was unable to join us for the Writers Residency in Las Vegas due to unforeseen conflicts in scheduling. We wish her all the best!

Welcoming New Writing Downtown 2018 Fellows to Las Vegas

This winter, we’re welcoming three new Writing Downtown fellows, Matt Farwell, Chris Edmonds, and Joshua Baldwin.

Fellows will spend a month in the vibrant heart of downtown Las Vegas, engaging with and becoming a part of the city’s thriving arts scene. The fellowship is designed to give talented writers and other creatives the space, time, and freedom to work on their longform projects, and the bibliophilic joy of living in a fully furnished apartment near Las Vegas’ literary hub, The Writer’s Block bookstore.

Special thanks again to the Amazon Literary Partnership, Submittable, the New York Public Library, and private donors for helping bring these fellowships to life.

Matt Farwell, December 2017

Matt Farwell is a writer. His work has appeared in the Rolling Stone, Playboy, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Men's Journal and other publications. Prior to writing he was an infantryman with the 10th Mountain Division and fought in Afghanistan. He lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas with his lovely cat Marie Claire.

About his project:

"American Cipher" a book from Penguin Press about the SGT Bowe Bergdahl case.

Chris Edmonds, February 2018

Chris Edmonds is a writer and editor living in Providence, Rhode Island, with his wife and two young sons. His fiction and poems have appeared in Iron Horse Literary Review, Pembroke Magazine, and elsewhere.

About his project:

A novel about a whale, coastal erosion, and isolation.

Joshua Baldwin, May 2018

Joshua Baldwin's dispatches from Las Vegas have appeared at The Paris Review Daily, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The New York Times. He is the author of The Wilshire Sun, a novella, and his short fiction and poetry have appeared at n+1, The Brooklyn Rail, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn. Born and raised in New York City, he lives in Los Angeles.

About his project:

Joshua will be working on a book-length project that expands on the dispatches from Las Vegas he's written over the past two years — an impressionistic, walking chronicle that excavates the past, present, and future of the city.

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Individual fellowships are made possible with support from the Amazon Literary Partnership, Submittable, the New York Public Library’s digital short story collection, and private donors. If your organization would like to partner with Plympton to sponsor a fellowship, please reach out to writingdowntown @ plympton.com.

To find out even more, visit http://www.writingdowntown.com

Las Vegas Writing Residencies Fall Fellows

We’re thrilled to announce our next three Writing Downtown fellows, in partnership with A Public Space, Ember, and Words Without Borders. Fellows will spend a month in the vibrant heart of downtown Las Vegas, engaging with and becoming a part of the city’s thriving arts scene. The fellowship is designed to give talented writers and other creatives the space, time, and freedom to work on their longform projects, and the bibliophilic joy of living in a fully furnished apartment near Las Vegas’ literary hub, The Writer’s Block bookstore.

Special thanks again to the Amazon Literary Partnership, Submittable, the New York Public Library, and private donors for helping bring these fellowships to life.

Jamel Brinkley, September — A Public Space

About Jamel

Jamel Brinkley was raised in Brooklyn and the Bronx, New York. He is a Kimbilio Fellow and is an alum of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. He has been awarded scholarships from the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, the Tin House Writers’ Workshop, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. A recent graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he was also the 2016-17 Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in A Public Space and Gulf Coast, and his debut short story collection will be published in 2018 by Graywolf Press. He is currently at work on a novel, Night is One Long Everlasting.

About his project

In Night is One Long Everlasting a teenage boy named Malik and his mother, Ruby, have returned from New York to Ruby’s hometown in southern Virginia for her father’s funeral. Malik is approached by a man, a stranger, who says that he recognizes Malik because he is the spitting image of his father, who abandoned Malik and Ruby when the boy was a newborn. This mysterious, fleeting encounter is the catalyst for everything else that happens in the novel. Malik is forced to confront his Southern heritage, while he pursues the mystery of his father. Along the way, he has a tense romance with a girl named Sierra, who knew his grandfather and acts as a guide for Malik and the reader to the kind of man he was. For Ruby, her son’s encounter brings her face to face with the mysterious man. The weeks she and Malik end up spending in Hobson force her to confront a place she fled. She is also forced to revisit her own decisions as a very young mother. The novel builds toward a conversation between Ruby and Malik about his father, a crucial one they’ve both spent years avoiding.

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JC Hemphill, October — Ember

About JC

JC Hemphill has more than thirty short fiction publications across a range of mediums. In 2012 he won the Washington Pastime Literary Award and has been fascinated with the art of storytelling ever since. When he’s not writing, he spends his days exploring the great outdoors with his wife, son, and two dogs. (jchemphill.blogspot.com)

About his projects

In Downward, a loving mother-son relationship quickly descends into one of extreme possessiveness after a deranged man attacks the Krisch family in their home. Narrowly escaping the encounter convinces Alice that the world is a dangerous place for her son, Charlie, and that she must do whatever it takes to keep him safe.

While Melanie, Alice’s only other child, is visiting from college, it becomes apparent that Charlie is in more danger with Alice than without. But Melanie’s attempts at reason go ignored and after several weeks of Alice’s increasing distrust tearing the family apart, events culminate when an elderly neighbor finds her scrubbing poor Charlie’s mouth with Lysol – “To protect him from germs,” she explains.

Melanie and the neighbor decide it’s time to save Charlie from his mother. It’s a justified idea, but neither of them realizes the extent of Alice’s delusions. To her, Melanie and the neighbor are kidnapping Charlie: it isn’t the outside world that’s the villain, but her internal one. Full of rich characters and steadily rising tension, Downward is a terse thriller that inspects how love and the pursuit of safety can be our downfall.

In Vultures, a new drug has users seeing dark visions, drawing them into a cult, and Elsie Donovan must find the source to save his community.

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Jennifer Croft, November – Words Without Borders

About Jennifer

Jennifer Croft is the recipient of Fulbright, PEN, MacDowell and National Endowment for the Arts grants and fellowships, as well as the inaugural Michael Henry Heim Prize for Translation and a Tin House Workshop Scholarship for her novel Homesick, originally written in Spanish. She holds a PhD from Northwestern University and an MFA from the University of Iowa.

She is a founding editor of The Buenos Aires Review and has published her own work and numerous translations in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, VICE, n+1, Electric Literature, Lit Hub, BOMB, Guernica, The New Republic, The Guardian, The Chicago Tribune, and elsewhere. Her translation from Spanish of Romina Paula’s August was just published by The Feminist Press, and her translation from Polish of Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights was just published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in the UK and is forthcoming in the US from Riverhead.

About her projects

Jennifer will be translating fiction by contemporary Argentine and Polish writers and co-translating, with Boris Dralyuk, poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. She’ll also be expanding the translation component of her own novel, Homesick .

Looking Towards 2018

We’re already gearing up for our 2018 fellowships. We welcome writers of all genres, including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, screenwriting, playwriting, songwriting, and any other creatives who work in the publishing world, including translators and designers, to apply via individual sponsors. The month-long fellowship includes housing and, potentially, stipends and other incidentals, depending on the arrangement with the partner.

During the program, fellows will lead a public event at The Writer’s Block, in the form of a workshop, lecture, or other community building activity.

Individual fellowships are made possible with support from the Amazon Literary Partnership, Submittable, the New York Public Library’s digital short story collection, and private donors. If your organization would like to partner with Plympton to sponsor a fellowship, please reach out to writingdowntown@plympton.com.

To find out even more, visit http://www.writingdowntown.com

Stories from the Strip: Announcing our Downtown Las Vegas Writing Residency Program

We’re delighted to announce our first residency program for writers, in partnership with The Writer’s Block bookstore in Las Vegas. As fellows in the Writing Downtown residency, writers will enjoy the freedom to work on longform projects while engaging with the city’s vibrant arts scene. June, July, August, and September fellowships have been awarded and we are currently working with partners for fellows for future months.

Why Vegas?

“Too weird to live, to rare to die” – Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Las Vegas is known for being…distracting. It’s also a place where hidden desires are openly celebrated, misfits are welcomed home, and misfortunes are cast aside. It’s a place to be oneself but also completely anonymous. Writers seeking solitude can find it in the desert, and those seeking connection can find it in a revitalized downtown, filled with eateries, parks, and public art displays.

The Writer’s Block

The Writer’s Block is the only independent bookstore and publisher in the city of Las Vegas (and the second one in the entire state of Nevada), and its leading literary presence. It is the home to CODEX, a studio that offers free writing instruction to local students. Through book clubs, readings, educational events, and lectures, The Writer’s Block is a sanctuary for bibliophiles young and old.

The Residency

Writers will live in a furnished studio a block away from the store, tastefully decorated by Scott Seeley, who has extensive interior design experience. It has a separate kitchen area, and comes equipped with a table and printer.

Meet this summer’s fellows

 

Melissa R. Sipin (June) – Submittable

About Melissa:

Melissa R. Sipin is a writer from Carson, CA. She won Glimmer Train’s Fiction Open and the Washington Square Review’s Flash Fiction Prize. She co-edited Kuwento: Lost Things, an anthology on Philippine myths (Carayan Press 2014), and her work is published/forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Prairie Schooner, Guernica Magazine, PEN/Guernica Flash Series, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, Eleven Eleven Magazine, and Amazon’s literary journal Day One, among others. Melissa is a cofounder of TAYO Literary Magazine. Her fiction has won scholarships and fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Poets & Writers Inc., Kundiman, VONA/Voices Conference, Squaw Valley’s Community of Writers, and Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and is represented by Sarah Levitt at Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency. She really loves yellow mangoes and strictly believes you’re finally home when you’ve found your favorite Chinese delivery restaurant and a parking ticket on your car’s window dash.

About the project: 

Scorched-Earth follows Dolores, an ambitious immigrant daughter of an ex-meth addict and ex-prostitute. After returning home from a five-year absence and winning a prestigious artist fellowship at the newest contemporary museum in downtown Los Angeles, she finds herself excavating her family’s past for answers. It is a novel based on the Marcos Regime and the experiences of WWII Filipino guerrilla fighters and “Comfort Women,” who were captured and systematically raped during the war. It is a book of mirrors: a mirror between Dolores and her grandmother Pacita, of being born within an empire and during the beginning of an empire’s colonial experiment, and the consuming fire that exists between the love of a daughter and her chosen-mother.

Calvin Gimpelevich (July) – Electric Literature

About Calvin:

Calvin Gimpelevich is an author and organizer based in the Pacific Northwest. His fiction appears in Electric Literature, Plentitude, Glitterwolf, cream city, THEM, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of awards from Artist Trust, Jack Straw Cultural Center, and 4Culture, in addition to residencies through CODEX/Writer’s Block and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. A founding member of the Lion’s Main Art Collective, Calvin has organized shows at venues throughout Seattle and performed at Henry Art Gallery, where he was also a featured speaker. A transgender first-generation American, his work deals with immigration, politics, subcultures, gender, and class.

About the project: 

“Tenderloin is a literary multi-perspective ghost story I’ve been working on for the past years, set in the San Francisco Bay Area, exploring history, politics, and subcultures. I’m in the last round of major of edits and applied to the fellowship for the privacy, time, and space to immerse myself in the book and make those final changes. I’m hoping (with the residency) to be done by October.”

Joanne McNeil (August) – Macmillan/Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux

About Joanne: 

Joanne McNeil is a writer working on a book called Lurk for Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux. She was a digital arts writing fellow at the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation and a resident artist at Eyebeam. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Baffler, Dissent, and other web and print publications.

Why she applied for the fellowship: 

The residency is of interest to me because this summer I plan to work on my book for a month with no interruptions (currently I’m juggling the writing between freelance projects.) I have been working on the book for just under a year and hope to turn in the manuscript by autumn. The location in Las Vegas is appealing to me because I work better in urban environments. Ambient noise like traffic outside helps me concentrate. Also, since my book is about everyday contemporary internet use, I am always curious about how apps and social networks are used outside New York and San Francisco. I wonder if I might find some interesting stories for my book is Las Vegas.

About her project:

Lurk is a book about what it means to be an internet user. Three periods of time are in focus: 90s cyberculture, then blogs and social media in the early aughts, and finally the launch of the iPhone and apps that followed. I’m interested in how the internet became normal to us. People still talk about internet experiences as science fictional and weird, but soon enough it will be taken for granted like driving a car. I want people to remember feeling like the internet is weird. The book is my way to preserve this friction.

Spots are open in November, and December 2017

We welcome writers of all genres, including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, screenwriting, playwriting, songwriting, and other creatives who work in the publishing world, including translators and designers, to apply via individual sponsors. The month-long fellowship includes housing and potentially stipends and other incidentals, depending on the arrangement with the partner..

During the program, fellows will lead a public event at The Writer’s Block, in the form of a workshop, lecture, or other community building activity.

Individual fellowships are made possible with support from Amazon Literary Partnerships, Submittable, the New York Public Library’s digital short story collection, as well as private donors. If your organization would like to partner with Plympton to sponsor a fellowship, please reach out to writingdowntown@plympton.com

To find out more, visit http://www.writingdowntown.com/.

Lincoln in the Bardo VR with The New York Times

We're thrilled to announce the release of LINCOLN IN THE BARDO, a virtual reality adaptation of George Saunders' highly anticipated forthcoming novel. This innovative, joint collaboration between The New York Times, creative studio Sensorium, director Graham Sack, and literary studio Plympton, Inc. has been nearly a year in the making. For the author, the novel is a new departure from the short story form—for us, the virtual reality adaptation is a departure from expected storytelling avenues.

Saunders, a National Book Award finalist and recipient of a MacArthur genius grant, expressed enthusiasm for the project from the very start, and collaborated throughout the creative process with writer and director Graham Sack to develop a script that both stayed true to the spirit of the novel and took advantage of the unique potential for audience immersion afforded by virtual reality technology.

"Ironically, the piece is not about our technological future, but about our historical past," Sack said. "On February 22, 1862, Willie Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's youngest son, is laid to rest in a marble crypt in a Georgetown cemetery. That very night, in the midst of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln arrives at the cemetery shattered by grief and, under cover of darkness, visits the crypt to spend time with his son's body."

LINCOLN IN THE BARDO viewers inhabit a dead soul newly arrived in the afterlife, granting them a front-row seat to Lincoln's night of mourning and the neurotic monologues of the piteous, comedic spirits who narrate the afterlife action. It's a viewing experience more akin to theater than film, a fact highlighted by the theater backgrounds of many of the castmembers: the result is a gripping, poignant exploration of death, grief, and the powers of good and evil.

Because the entire narrative arc of LINCOLN IN THE BARDO takes place in a single location over the course of a single night, Saunders' newest work was an ideal opportunity to venture into the previously unexplored territory of novel-to-VR translation. Film production involved a combination of live action shooting, extensive use of green-screen technology, and careful VFX overlay.

Shooting in this manner was an ambitious, complex endeavor. Lincoln himself, played by the talented Pete Simpson, was the only character filmed live on set at Greenbrook Cemetery; the many ghosts who haunt Lincoln over the course of his cathartic night were all filmed in front of a green screen. Hundreds upon hundreds of pieces of film were then manipulated and stitched together, and eventually combined with full spatial audio, to create a seamless, atmospheric viewing experience.

"It's a new medium through which books can be shared," Graham says. "There isn't anything else like it."

We hope our interpretation of LINCOLN IN THE BARDO will prove to be the beginning of a symbiotic relationship between literature and virtual reality. Our novel-to-VR film is the first of its kind, but—if the overwhelmingly positive responses from viewers are any indication—it certainly won't be the last.

LINCOLN IN THE BARDO is scheduled to arrive on bookshelves February 14, 2017. The film is currently available for viewing via the New York Times' Virtual Reality app, free of charge.

Introducing Plympton on Audible Channels!

We here at Plympton are excited to announce that a project we’ve been working hard on for the past year has finally come to fruition! Audible, in a collaborative effort to expand the reach of short-form audio, recently launched a new subscription service, Channels.

The press is excited, too.

Plympton worked closely with Audible and the Channels team to curate a high-quality collection of notable short fiction and nonfiction by both established and emerging authors.

We’re especially proud that many of the stories featured on Channels were originally published through Plympton, as DailyLit Originals. We’d like to give a special shout-out to our talented cover designers: Juan Sebastián Pinto-Díaz, Ed Gaither, and Aaron Perry-Zucker.

We hope you enjoy this one-stop platform for diverse, quality short-form programming, from us to your earbuds.

50×50 at The National Archives

Recovering the Classics had a 50×50 exhibit at its most prominent location yet: The National Archives, as part of DPLAfest.

The piece, “Space Raft Time Ship,” was created by Anthony Johnson, a Navajo artist who traveled in from Phoenix to execute the pieces.

Anthony managed to design, construct, install and perform his piece in 72 hours after he landed.

The artist says, “My main concern was to honor all the beautiful book covers. Artists from all around the world are participating in this amazing project, so I wanted their work to be the focus, but I also wanted to make a statement about storytelling and highlight some little known facts about the founding of our nation. So I channeled one of my favorite books, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (hence the raft) and decided to make the piece about our collective life experience through storytelling. So that’s how the name works. We’re all on this incredible space raft called Earth, moving through time, and the stories we write, our histories, our heritage…these are the things that allow us to evolve our consciousness. They shape our experience in Space and enhance being alive.”

To give emphasis to the book covers, Anthony wove paper covers printed in 12 foot sections through metal grates to create a rug-like patten. He also attached them to pieces of rope knotted in deliberate intervals. He says both weaving and knotting are methods that Indigenous People use to tell stories and keep history.

“I’m Navajo and my people are known for weaving. Some rugs have even been sold for a million dollars. But a lot of people don’t know these rugs are like books for us. They contain stories and knowledge that is passed on orally from generation to generation, just like a book can be. With the knotted rope, I wanted to show that many Indigenous People had intricate documentation systems. In fact, the Incan People used a system of knot tying called Quipu to keep history. People in that society were trained specially to create and interpret that system. This is just like how we use the written word to communicate today. And that’s why the smaller book covers are attached to knotted pieces of rope.”

Because the work was displayed in the National Archives, he wanted to reference documentation systems other than the written word. This is in spirit with Recovering the Classics because we are using visual imagery to reinvigorate interest in classic books.

Lastly, the wooden structure was created to showcase the book covers and give a raft-like feel. Not only was this practical to hang the rope from, it is also a deeply significant representation for the artist himself.

As Anthony describes in his own words:

When you get the opportunity to show something in the same building as the US Constitution, it better have some meaning. Some people might look at the wooden structure as some pieces of wood tied together, but it is actually a representation of the many types of lodges and shelters we Indigenous Peoples use to tell stories and govern ourselves. The tripod structure is reminiscent of the tipis Plains People use in their life way as both shelters and ceremonial houses. Additionally, the three poles also represent the three branches of our American government and that we are all connected to the Earth, the Ultimate governance system.

The pole structure is also symbolic of the lodges our people build to dance and hold ceremony in. A lot of people don’t know that Benjamin Franklin frequented the villages of the Iroquois Confederacy and Algonquin people around the Northeast United States, documenting his thoughts in an essay called “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America.

He extracted many of their practices and shared them with the Founding Fathers while they sought to make a government that was more harmonious. That’s why everyone in Congress has the opportunity to speak. That’s why they sit in a circle. He got these and many other concepts from the Indigenous people in his area. The other part of these lodges that is important is the fire. That’s why in the piece, each tripod has a pile of cards below it. They represent fire. It’s something we use in all our ceremonies, in all our homes. We talk around fire, tell stories. We warm ourselves. We cook. We read books. There’s something primal and essential about it.”

Yiying Lu’s New Plympton Logo

The fabulous artist Yiying Lu has given Plympton a facelift and designed a bold new wordmark. Yiying’s clients have included Disney, Twitter, Scholastic, and even Conan O’Brien. So we are thrilled she took the time to design the Plympton logo. (The fact that she collaborated on the Dumpling Emoji with Plympton co-founder Jennifer 8. Lee may have helped).

Yiying’s new Plympton logos

Salient examples of Yiying’s work include the beloved “Fail Whale”, the erstwhile logo of Twitter service outages which helped her gain worldwide fame. More recently she redesigned that whale for Conan O’Brien’s website.

Her eclectic style is informed by work in many different visual mediums including web design, illustration, origami, dolls, and packaging.

Yiying’s work is typified by vibrant colors and joyous characters, often animals. But she also is equally experienced in corporate branding and delivering to companies styles that fit their needs. Her design for Plympton is an understated departure from her harlequin mode. It opts for a striking stencil look that evokes a classic printer’s ink style.

The Plympton  “P” is a take on the paragraph or pilcrowsymbol.

You can see more of Yiying’s work on her website

Bring Recovering the Classics to Your Community: The 50×50 Campaign

We were so blown away by the response to Recovering the Classics at ALA 2015 that we have big news:

We’re bringing the covers to all 50 states, and we need your help! We’re calling the campaign 50×50. The idea is to build a community of book-lovers across the country by exhibiting at least 50 covers in libraries, book festivals, galleries, schools, and other places of your imagination in all 50 states. 

You can become involved by volunteering to organize an event of your own! We’re already getting started with some great folks in North Carolina, Massachusetts, Illinois, Ohio and other states. And we’re planning a Kickstarter in the fall to help bring down the costs for exhibitors.

Below is our official announcement:

Recovering the Classics Presents 50×50

Celebrate the success of Recovering the Classics by hosting your own 50×50 event! With your help, we can showcase 50 classic book covers in all 50 states, and nurture communities of book-lovers in the process.

In 2013, Recovering the Classics asked designers from around the world to reimagine covers for great books in the public domain. This spring, we announced a partnership with the New York Public Library, the White House and the Digital Public Library of America to bring the covers to libraries and schools nationwide through special edition ebooks.

Now it’s time to celebrate! We’re looking for libraries, schools, book stores, galleries, local civic organizations, and others across the country to create their own events around the covers — exhibits, readings, school activities, or design-a-thons.

By coming together for this series of events, we’ll develop a community of readers who will share ideas, events and curricula around these classics for years to come.

Host Your Own

Do you want to hold your own local Recovering the Classics exhibit? We have posters in different sizes, as well as postcards and stickers. Right now, we are working on bringing down these costs for partners, which is where our future Kickstarter and sponsorships comes in.

To really do it right, you would pair our covers with designs by your local artists, giving everything a distinct regional flair.

If no single local organization can exhibit 50 covers, we can send batches of 10 or 25 to multiple groups within a state. We’re happy as long as there are at least 50 distinct covers in each of the 50 states!