Lynne Elizabeth: Breaking Ground for The New Village

Bill Cleveland: 00:00:01

From the center for the Study of Art and Community. This is Change the Story, Change the World. My name is Bill Cleveland.

Now, back in the day, I mean way, way back in the day when I was in the second grade, my teacher informed my parents that whatever it was that was supposed to be happening in my brain with letters and words and the sounds that was supposed to add up to reading just wasn't clicking. For my parents, this misfiring posed a grave threat to the life of curiosity, exploration and learning that they had imagined for me.

They responded by sending me to a little school in a tiny house by the big circular road that you had to drive around to pass from Maryland where we lived, into Washington D.C. where my dad went to work every morning.

So for a while, mom, dad and myself, we would get in the car and drive down to Chevy Chase Circle where my dad would catch the downtown bus and I would get dropped off at my new other school.

Now, I don't remember exactly what we did there, but I do know that despite my initial trepidations, it turned out to be a very different and truly fun experience that also provided me with a life changing gift.

And that gift was not just the gift of reading, it was that this thing that happened when we parted the covers of a book and turned the pages and dove into the sea of words they contained was truly magic. And not just a beguiling head turning magic, but a powerful all encompassing magic that I could learn and use myself.

So yeah, my parents little intervention, that interlude at the circle worked and I've been working it ever since in service to the magic of the imagination and the incredible stories that so often result.

So, as is often the case, this story is my way of introducing this week's show, which surprise, surprise, is about reading and writing and the birthing of books. Our guest is Lynne Elizabeth.

Now Lynne is the founding director of New Village Press, a nonprofit publisher dedicated to books that inspire social change, build community, and elevate voices that might otherwise go completely unheard. For nearly two decades, she's been nurturing stories that don't just inform, but ignite action.

Stories of artists, activists and change makers working at the intersection of creativity and social justice. But Lyn isn't just a publisher.

She herself describes what she does as a book doula, helping authors bring their ideas into the world and ensuring that each book finds its right place, its right audience, and its full potential.

In our conversation, we'll talk about what it means to publish with purpose, how books can be tools for transformation, and why, despite the Ever expanding digital landscape, she still believes deeply in the power of the printed word. This is a conversation about books. Yes .

But more than that, it's a conversation about stories and their ability to shape the world, to bridge divides and spark change. And if you're someone who still finds magic in the turning of a page, you're going to love this one. So let's get started.

Here's my conversation with Lynne Elizabeth, Part one, the book Doula. So, Lynne, we're both story wranglers from way back, but I. I don't know how often you get to tell your story.

So I'm excited to pull the curtain back on the wizard of New Village Press. Oz.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:04:17

It's true. I like to hide behind the curtain.

I realize that even though I started out with a great interest in being an actress and being out there in the front, I do see that I'm more comfortable behind the scenes.

Bill Cleveland: 00:04:33

So let's start with where are you? Where are you?

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:04:36

All right. I'm on the island of Manahatta, the ancestral land of the Lenape. I'm kind of thrilled that I'm on an island.

Bill Cleveland: 00:04:48

As am I. Which is the home of the Ohlone.

And both of our islands have been in many ways de island, given the number of bridges and tunnels that connect us to the. To the regular world. But there is something to island status. Places get smaller and connections get dissipated.

Actually, one of the wonderful things about doing this podcast is it breaks barriers, often geographic barriers, and gives people opportunity to have conversations that they've never had. And that's one of the things that I would say to you, is that we have known each other for a long, long time.

I have no doubt in our conversation, I'm gonna learn things about you that I never knew.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:05:34

I'll surprise myself. That's what I look for, too.

Bill Cleveland: 00:05:37

So when you're hanging out with folks who've never heard of New Village Press, don't know much about the stories that it tells. What do you tell them is your gig? What do you say you are?

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:05:50

I mean, book publishing itself is not esoteric. Most people know what that is. So I don't have the problem of having a profession that I can't even explain to my mother.

But we are a little bit unique in being a mission driven publisher. What we publish is not random, like a Random House. Rather, we're connecting with each author. It often feels like a stroke of serendipity.

There's something beshearte or somehow meant to be. Our authors often have surprising connections to each Other.

I mean, besides the fact that they often introduce New Village Press to each other, we find connections between them that we wouldn't expect.

So, for instance, Alice Rothschild, who is an OBGYN MD and the author of our most recent book, Inspired and Outraged, delivered the child for another author, Glenna Lang. So our authors do become like family, even if they aren't somehow already.

And we have relationships that span the 20 years that new Village Press is now old.

Bill Cleveland: 00:07:06

Wow.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:07:07

And you go back, Bill, to that very beginning. Some authors bring us the work of their lifetimes, and yet there are others who have brought us 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 books that they've done.

Bill Cleveland: 00:07:21

So you say mission driven. What is it?

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:07:24

Mission driven? It's true. I haven't. I've skirted all of that. So we're about stimulating the discussion with.

Within our society about how we can be our highest selves, how we can be kinder to each other, how can we support each other's creativity?

Most of our authors are activists themselves, and they are working for women's rights, minorities rights, the rights of the incarcerated, freedom of expression in different places and ways, and also healing or transforming painful or ugly situations in our culture. I think I very first came.

Came to this because I was looking for ways to heal the urban ills, and I saw that the arts had a power beyond almost any other. It really took creativity. So I like to just shine a spotlight on these things.

And I think of myself as perhaps a doula, a midwife, someone who is helping the author give birth to something that's likely going to have a life of its own once it's out there.

Bill Cleveland: 00:08:57

So over those 20 years, how many books have you published?

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:09:01

Oh, gosh, there are over 175 ISBNs. We have about 80 authors who receive royalties now. And that's not counting, really hundreds of contributors to books that have multiple contributors.

Bill Cleveland: 00:09:17

So obviously, many books come from commercial enterprises, and then there's a whole world of books that come from nonprofits like yours.

And could you just describe how being mission driven and a nonprofit is different from that other stream that is usually so well represented in the bookstore when you walk in the front door?

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:09:43

Well, this morning, for instance, I happened to be reading a New York Times article about the tremendous success of a new, relatively new publisher that specializes in romance fiction. And so that genre has just grown exponentially during COVID and is still thriving.

And there are kind of overnight TikTok successes, TikTok being, you know, social medium that is making something wildly popular in ways that traditional book Reviews and print magazines used to be the path to recognition in the marketplace. So I'm looking at that field going crazy. And I'm aware that the nonfiction realm has been in decline since. Since COVID And that's where we are.

And yet I'm buoyed by the words of like W.E.B. du Bois, who said, a measure of a healthy society is one that knows how to read and also is reading meaningful work.

So I hope we can continue to have presence of people reading meaningful work.

Bill Cleveland: 00:10:59

Yeah . So here's another thing most people probably don't know much about. You describe yourself as a doula. What is book publishing? Doula work?

What does it encompass? What happens?

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:11:17

What happens? Okay. It can start with encouragement. And it's interesting how these things are reciprocal.

So I'll bring up Lily Yeh, who's been an inspiration for our press from the beginning.

When I was publishing a periodical called New Village Journal, I did a story about her work with the Village of Arts and Humanities, which was more than two decades ago. And I was just so moved by the scope of her work revitalizing really desolate sections of North Philadelphia, which I knew well.

Bill Cleveland: 00:11:54

In a previous episode of Change the Story, here's how Lily described the plight and promise of of that Germantown Philadelphia neighborhood where she was working.

Lily Yeh: 00:12:05

And so I realized that, you know, like seemingly the broken land, the place devoid of resources is a place filled with talents and creativity. It is the beauty that lift our spirits. The beauty, the there are soul yearns like looking at the sunset and then that would lift our spirit.

I think it's essential for our well being. Nature is full of that. And so not to fix a problem, but create a new vision. So

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:12:47

Lily's work was so creative.

I mean, she was reaching all sectors of society. Teenager coming of age ceremonies, making entire abandoned parking lots into works of art.

It was beyond what anybody had been doing in other cities that I was aware of. And that was the spark that got me started in wanting to do this publishing. Anyway, you ask what my role is.

Part of it is just observing and being moved by the people I meet. But Lily, who has authored two books since for New Village Press, and there have been multiple books by other authors about Lilla Yeh's work.

But she is so happy to have me encourage her to be authoring right now a memoir of her life. And so in some cases it's just me listening and being curious or being excited that is encouraging the authors.

In many cases though, authors come to us with completely finished manuscripts and magnificent book proposals. And they didn't need a thing from me.

And then in that case, part of our job is simply reading this material and giving it an evaluation in terms of, does this fit with the rest of our titles? Do we have the capacity to publish this book in the coming seasons? And if so, where would it fit?

And in some cases, unfortunately, we've had to say no. And often it's because of our limited capacity, not the value of the work that's presented to us. So there's that evaluation process.

Then we sometimes give them feedback on either a proposal or a finished manuscript, how it might be shaped a little better, how it might be more compelling, maybe something new, restructuring. Maybe it just needs a forward from someone in the field who is thrilled by the work and wants to encourage others to dive in.

We sometimes send a work to a developmental editor, and then the main type of editing that we do is copy editing. It's the punctuation and the grammar and things like that. We do fact checking. I have a great freelance person who does that. And it's always.

It's often surprising to authors, things they thought. I always thought that this is how this was. And then they're shown, oh, no. Their own recollection of history or a bridge or just little things.

So it really helps to have someone who takes the time to look these details up, because we don't want our authors to be embarrassed by putting out something that isn't correct.

Bill Cleveland: 00:15:41

So I want to say something here. I think the heart of your work, I think Doula is perfect, because a doula isn't just a person who helps you have a baby.

They're a person who is, in a sense, a partner in bringing something to life.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:15:58

Yes.

Bill Cleveland: 00:15:58

You know, and in every possible way, in a spiritual way, in a physical way and a psychological way.

And having gone through the process with you, and I'm sure every author will tell you this, especially authors who are at work, you know, they don't have the finished product sitting there on their desk.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:16:21

Right, right.

Bill Cleveland: 00:16:22

That,the idea that there's this person that number one gets it, number two gets it to the point where they go, oh, yeah, this is worthy of our time and our. We care about it. It's like you're caregivers to this thing together.

Most people who are writers, whether they're practiced and grizzled or brand new, they have a doubting, hypercritical companion on their shoulder going, no, no, no, this is horrible.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:16:58

You know, no, we hardly ever say that.

Bill Cleveland: 00:17:01

No, no, you don't say that. I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about self doubt.

If you're a practiced and good writer, you need self doubt because you have to keep questioning that word's okay, but it's not right. But you're there as a colleague, as a partner, as a friend, and not inconsequentially as a manifester.

And I have to say, anybody that goes online and looks at the incredible inventory of New Village books is that they're wonderful books. The subjects are broad and wide and enticing and exciting, but they're also beautiful, which honors the work inside.

And so I think of you as a co creator, taking care of a particular part of this art form, which is putting words together to make sense and meaning for people or open their eyes to things they don't know about. So you are that person. And my guess is there are lots of people at Random House that have never met.

And I know that when you have a staff meeting, it's in a kitchen. It's a labor of extraordinary care and a labor of love. So you're my choice for Book publisher of the Year,

Part 2, New Village Press.

So Lynne, what was your path into the mission driven bookmaking journey you've been on for all these many years?

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:18:52

Well, it's interesting that you brought up the beauty of the books. I really do want the books themselves to be visually as appealing and compelling as the words inside, the stories inside and the visuals inside.

And I had been a graphic designer for, oh gosh, more than a decade. I was an entrepreneur, had my own graphic design marketing communications firm and it was quite successful.

In some ways it was a more profitable business than this book publishing. But there was a point when I felt like I was whoring my talents. And eventually I just closed up my graphic design business by amazing accident.

Exactly. At that juncture, everything switched to a computerized art world.

And so everything that had been done in drawing tables was now being done on a Macintosh. So that was lucky. That sold my studio and I started a nonprofit called the EOS Institute for the Study of Sustainable Living.

I was interested in environmental issues.

I had been very involved in a peace and disarmament group called Architects Designers Planners for Social Responsibility and something called the Permaculture Institute. And so the EOS Institute was the melding of issues and interests of these two organizations.

And we became deeply involved in the natural building movement.

And we were building experimental structures to modern building code, but using classical materials, in some cases being re engineered, but earth and mud and straw, different configurations of those. And so I authored. I compiled a book on natural building methods, and John Wiley and Sons agreed to publish it.

I was grateful, having had that experience as an author, to see what it was like working with a publisher. When I finished the book, I said, I am never going to do another book. It was so much work.

But then it was around that time, maybe it was a cosmic kick in the rear, but I was removed from the organization that I had founded by my own board of directors. So that was a big surprise.

I had been publishing a periodical called earthword, and then the EOS Institute, the folks who took it over, said, well, sorry, we're going to publish it now. But then the whole thing fell apart. There were no more issues of the magazine.

I became interested in more social issues and started publishing myself. So then I was publishing this periodical called New Village Journal and had done a few issues.

Each one was themed and had an issue that was going to come out on community based arts and the power of the arts to revitalize neighborhoods. And I had invited Linda Fry Burnham to be the guest editor for that issue.

Bill Cleveland: 00:22:15

which I believe are the early: 2000

Linda and Steve Durland, her husband, who'd been publishing the magazine High Performance, were segueing into the digital realm with an everything but the kitchen sink website called the Community Arts Network. That really became a kind of first voice town square for the often ignored but fast growing tribe of creative community change makers.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:22:51

Yes . And so again, it was one of those points in my life when I had a little bit of time to reflect.

My father was dying, and so I had a couple weeks away from my desk, and during some walks in the woods, I thought, oh, gosh, you know, this issue of the Journal really should be a book. When I told this to Linda, she started bringing me more authors.

And the first one was Mat Schwarzman and Bill, you know, the book the Beginner's Guide to Community Based Art? She was advisor to that book. Keith Knight, of course, was the brilliant illustrator cartoonist for that book.

And I remember thinking, well, Linda, this is great, but this isn't exactly what I had in mind. And. And oh, my gosh, this was such an unusual book. It was like a comics book and with stories of community builders, including one about Lily Yeh.

The stories were fabulous. They were extraordinary. All the people that I really cared about there, they were told and illustrated, and it was so accessible.

So we published it, Took a chance. It turned out to be an incredibly successful book. We're still selling it and producing it. And that was 20 years ago. So it was.

Anyway, I think credit goes to so many people, including Linda, for bringing me authors, and then one author would bring another author. And before I knew it, we had New Village Press and we were publishing books. So that was the end of the journal.

Bill Cleveland: 00:24:27

I think one of the other things that people probably imagine is, okay, so book publishing, well, you go through the same thing over and over and over again, and you just push these books out the door. But that's not true.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:24:38

No, it's never the same.

Bill Cleveland: 00:24:39

And I have no doubt that there are stories that really personify that mission that you described in the first place, which is trying to make a difference in the world with the printed word and. And beautiful publications.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:24:56

Yeah , I mean, well, each one of these authors is doing work in their communities. They themselves are magicians. I mean, they are transforming neighborhoods, they're transforming lives.

They are activists right there, speaking truth to power in so many different realms. This is actually a big story.

It occurred to me a second ago when I was telling you the story of Mat Schwarzman's book, but the Beginner's Guide to Community Based Arts, which was the very first book we published, and we got funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, and we printed and delivered that book to Mat 's doorstep in New Orleans the day before Hurricane Katrina hit.

News Announcer: 00:25:47

A monster category three storm and possibly.

News Announcer: 00:25:50

Taking aim at southeast Louisiana, Hurricane Katrina continues to move west in the Gulf of Mexico. It's Saturday, August 27th. Katrina had just taken a surprise 150 mile turn to the west. She was no longer a Florida panhandle concern. She was ours.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:26:07

So all standard kind of launch events we had planned at bookstores throughout the city and region. Of course, I mean, that's minor compared to what happened in New Orleans.

But the little personal story is that Mat and his wife Mimi and dog, I think it was Luna, yes. Got in a neighbor's car. A neighbor lent them a car because they had no. They hadn't figured out how to get out of town.

And they drove all the way to California because they had lived there before. They had a lot of friends there, came all the way out to California, connected there with Keith Knight, who's the illustrator of the book.

And Keith said, okay, we're going to do a book tour.

And they got in the car, Keith and Mat , and they drove all the way to Detroit, stopping at all these cities and towns on the way, and just did ad hoc book presentations about the stories from the Beginner's Guide and how you can revitalize your own neighborhood.

So to me, these stories, this was so typical of New Village Press authors who were just making the best of what was really a horrendous situation and jumping in and looking to people in other communities and saying, well, we know what's happening with people in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans, and tell us about some of the problems you're having in your own neighborhoods and how can the arts be of service there?

Bill Cleveland: 00:27:46

Writers who walk the talk. You know, Lyn, a lot of people who are writers, professional writers, many journalists, are not experts in the thing they write about.

What they are expert in is telling a story about a thing that happened and doing the research. Most of your authors are the people who lived the experience, who did the work, who, you know, who are practitioners.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:28:13

And they have the power to tell those stories, too.

Bill Cleveland: 00:28:15

I will say, and I would say actually, that the idea of them getting in the car and, you know, and inventing events across the country is part of the work, you know.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:28:29

Oh, it is. It is. And we have an author, for instance, right now, Muriel Fox, who was one of the co founders of the National Organization for Women.

She was Betty Friedan's first lieutenant, if you will, and she has authored a book called the Women's Revolution just this year. She is 96 years old, and she has emailed me twice this morning.

And she has had events since before that book came out with international organizations for women that she also co founded, and she's been to multiple states, given talks. She is out there organizing events, and she's doing the legwork. I mean, she's just astounding.

Bill Cleveland: 00:29:14

It's a strange thing. I think one could almost say the model for this is a ministry where you have a thing that you know how to do, you have a story to tell.

But you're not just interested in having people hear your story. You're interested in passing on the good word so that other people can learn from you and plant the fertile seeds in other places.

So it's more than just here's an interesting author. It is. Here's a living, breathing practitioner coming into my community and telling this story.

Here's a book that you can take with you that can further feed your curiosity and your interest. So it is almost evangelical, isn't it?

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:29:59

Well, and I think a lot of our authors, too, have fascinating life stories that they share. We publish quite a lot of memoirs, but some of our books that aren't even memoirs have that personal quality to them.

So Mindy Fullilove, for instance, who was trained as a clinical psychiatrist and taught at Columbia University, she was doing research on AIDS communities and how it affected especially people of color.

And one of the things she discovered in her research was that urban planning decisions were having a major effect on the health of these neighborhoods, especially because entire thriving neighborhoods were being displaced. I mean, they were basically urban renewal projects of the 60s and even continuing later were simply, you know, taking their land, moving them out.

And so she authored a really seminal book called Root Shock, which was her discovery of this, you know, coming from a completely different field and writing about it. And that book just celebrated its 20th anniversary.

And Mindy has continued, she has subsequent books, Urban Alchemy, which is about how to heal from that displacement and so on. But she has a knack for writing her stories from the standpoint of discovery, her own learning path. So her work is not didactic.

It's not, this is how you do it. It's discovery. And students love it. I was worried, oh, this might be sophisticated enough for people in the urban planning field. No, I was wrong.

The undergraduates eat it up because they, they feel that the person writing it understands, coming from not really knowing how this all is all interconnected. And I do think a lot of our authors are crossing fields and so they're making those connections that we all need to live more holistically.

Bill Cleveland: 00:32:08

Yeah, the cross sector nature of this.

I can't imagine any of your authors who aren't card carrying members of 3, 4, 5 different sectors of community and whose stories ultimately weave together people, institutions, organizations, geographies that personify the thriving future that we have to evolve into. And it's not just somebody sitting thinking, here's a great idea. There are almost all people out there who are moving stuff and they have.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:32:47

Real experience and real practical solutions for how do we talk to one another.

And we just published a book this fall by Fern Tiger, who has case stories from six different parts of mostly western United States, including Hawaii.

And, you know, how to get all the stakeholders in a community together to wrestle with some difficult issue and not just bring in the loudest people and the people who are usually there. Lots of different methods, methodologies.

Our book Place Making with Children and Youth was about how to give children and teenagers a voice in the design of their own neighborhoods that most urban planners don't even think we need to hear from the children.

Bill Cleveland: 00:33:38

The little bridge here.

I really feel that your practice, I'm going to call it a practice, has some similar characteristics of Lily Yeh's practice in that Lily cut her teeth in the story you talked about at first in Philadelphia in the village of arts and humanities.

But she has since become, in a sense, an evangelist for her practice that involves intense collaboration and community art making in communities all around the world. And actually, my conversation with Lily will have preceded this show on our schedule. I believe it's episode number 114.

And the story that she told in the book that you published is another one of those little miracles that are very unlikely and unexpected, but makes complete sense for Lily and her path. Could you talk about that?

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:34:56

Are you talking about Awakening Creativity and the Dandelion School in the outskirts of Beijing?

So Lily worked together with a non profit organization that was building a middle school for the children of migrant workers who otherwise were not provided any schooling. They're Chinese people, but because they've come from another part of the country, they were squatting essentially in that neighborhood.

There were no schools for their kids. So they took an abandoned factory and turned it into something that looks like Park Guell, Antoni Gaudi.

You know, beautiful mural, ceramic mural walls that these middle schoolers created themselves. They worked together. They all worked as a team, and the teachers worked together.

And Lily had explained to me that in China, where she herself was born, that the arts that had once been revered was now almost completely ignored in the school system, as in the United States, they thought to get ahead, you just had to have math and writing and so on. And so this was a school that really celebrated the arts, and it was recognized in some of the bigger museums when it was all built in Beijing.

Now, you might not know this built, but the entire neighborhood and this magnificent Dandelion School, which was exquisitely beautiful, all were torn down since that book was published for development. But the beauty of Lily is she is undaunted. She hasn't said one disparaging word about that. They created a new dandelion school.

Bill Cleveland: 00:36:43

Oh, my God.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:36:44

Yeah , I know. That's Lily. I often say to myself, what would Lily do when I have a bad day?

Bill Cleveland: 00:36:52

One of the other interesting things that we have in our society is that when people ask, here's a problem, who do we call? And the assumption is, we need an expert. And the term expert means the person who's going to fix it, Right?

You call the plumber, you leave the house, the plumber fixes the plumbing. You come back and you can flush the toilet again.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:37:14

Oh, right, okay.

Bill Cleveland: 00:37:15

But that's not Lily. No, Lily is. This is our problem. We are going to solve the problem. In fact, it's not a problem at all.

It's a gigantic opportunity, and, man, are we going to have a great time doing it.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:37:33

Well, I think she sees herself bringing light to dark places, and art is her medium for doing that. But really her goal is to bring, you know, restore that sense of joy in life.

Bill Cleveland: 00:37:50

Yeah. So she comes to a place that appears dark and the people there can't see the light. And she just says, oh, it's here. Here's a paintbrush.

We'll draw a window and light will come through it, you know?

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:38:07

Well, you know, a lot of our authors, their creative work has come from dark places. Rob Shetterly, who is a painter of over 275 portraits of people that he calls Americans who tell the truth, started with his despair after the U.S.

invasion of Iraq after 9 11. And he was so downhearted.

He was already a painter, but he thought if you could paint a portrait of someone that he really admired, he might feel better. And he was amazed how it changed his whole demeanor. Even his wife said, you're a new person. So he kept doing it.

Bill Cleveland: 00:38:50

Here is Rob Shetterly describing how his portrait project unfolded.

Rob Shetterly: 00:38:55

When I started with Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman and Eugene Debs and Mother Jones and Jane Addams and all these people, 19th century figures. And I realized what I was doing was painting the people who had been marginalized by the society.

And when you look closer, you realize that these were the folks who were trying to insist that this country live up to its own ideals.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:39:21

And so his body of work, which includes a portrait of Lily Yeh and actually several other of our authors, Alice Rothschild, for instance, whose book, Inspired and Outraged, is the last book that we published. The overlap of the authors appreciating each other is.

Bill Cleveland: 00:39:40

It's beautiful to see you have built a powerful community.

Part 4 the future of the Book

Now I'm going to ask you a question. You and I and your authors are all very deeply invested in the book.

Could you talk about the book in the 21st century? What do you see and what do you hope?

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:40:05

It's an art form.

Bill Cleveland: 00:40:06

Yes.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:40:07

And in some ways, maybe it's like a guitar that I see behind you. It's an instrument, it has a shape, it may change, but the basic principles that you apply so that it functions and makes sound.

So same thing with the book. And for a while, I thought that digital books would completely take over. I didn't expect print to last as long as it has.

I can speak to the beauty of A physical book. I'm surprised it has lasted as long as it has, and perhaps it's because people have continued to make something beautiful. It still works.

Last night when I went to bed, I had a book in my hand, and I was reading it, and I found it much more pleasant than the iPad that I also had next to my bed, and I could read from that. But I liked the physical book. I'm 75 years old. I think, well, they'll probably stick around another 20 years, so maybe you don't have to worry.

Bill Cleveland: 00:41:16

Well, I'm gonna put an editorial here.

I think the act of writing, and I'm gonna distinguish between the keyboard and the pen, is one of the most powerful manifestations of human presence on Earth. And knowing just a sliver of the history of how that actually came about.

All of the art forms, in a sense, are caught up in the ability to write and read.

The image, the rhythm, the music, the story itself, the cinematic aspect that manifests in your imagination when, in fact, you become the director of your own movie when you're reading. And that relationship that any person can have once they get given access to that magic thing called reading.

And then the entire process of getting above and beyond the sentence and the paragraph into what is the structure of a story. How do stories manifest?

And as you well know, because of the title of my podcast, I believe the story is the most potent manifestation of human imagination because of all of the things that it can do for us and, as we know, against us. It's powerful. It's really powerful.

And the people in history that understand that there are people who have wielded it in incredibly beneficial ways, but the opposite is also true. And so what it is that you do, which is to help people bring to fruition something they imagined through words into the real world in a physical way.

And I just think that's so, so important that these things exist. When I walk into a house and there is a library, it's more than just shelves with paper and book covers. To me, it's a sacred space.

So, you know, when the camera was invented, a lot of people just said, well, that's it for painters and printmakers. And that's not the story as it's unfolded at all.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:43:55

Exactly. It's true.

Bill Cleveland: 00:43:57

And I truly believe that what we're going to be challenged with is, are we going to sustain the values and benefit and power of this magic thing that we call writing, reading, and story making? What is that, really? Because we take it for granted. Right?

And you and I Both know there are places in the world where people would walk 50 miles to get their hands on a book. They have to pay a significant part of their income. to allow their kids to go to school to learn how to read and write, and tha, that will determine their future in the world. So I believe, you know, your mission is, is really important.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:44:50

Well, I thank you for speaking up about really the value of the written word and the story. And I'm also thinking of just how these things are melded together.

As you were speaking, I was looking at this most recent book we published, Alice Rothschild's memoir. The subtitle is the Making of a Feminist Physician.

And the COVID illustration is actually a painting by Robert Shetterly, who has authored the three books Portraits of Peacemakers, Portraits of Earth justice, and Portraits of Racial Justice. And Alice is one of the subjects of Americans who Tell the Truth.

And she's also written an essay in the Portraits of Peacemakers because she's a peace activist as well as a physician who speaks up about her training and what needed to be changed and what she worked very hard to change in women's healthcare. And Alice wrote this entire work in free verse. Yes . And she's an md and it's beautiful. It's narrative. It's very accessible.

She describes how using poetry as the form instead of prose, she was able to cut to the meat of her story so easily and convey the emotion and the different people in the scenes. And you immediately see what it's like in an operating room and all the different players. I am continually surprised by the work that comes to me.

I guess I don't think so much about the future of this medium. I'm just immersed in it and lifted up by it, and I'm compelled by it. You know, when I see this work, I just have to share it with someone else.

And that's where my energy comes from, because I don't want it to just be me reading this. I want you to read it and my friends to read it. So, all right, let's put it together and get it out there.

Bill Cleveland: 00:47:04

I'm going to conclude here with what is normally a fairly simple question for you. It's probably going to be hard if you have maybe three works of creation that have made an impact on you that you would want to recommend.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:47:23

Tell us three books that you just published.

Bill Cleveland: 00:47:25

That would be great.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:47:27

Yeah, Well, I did mention Alice's that Just Came out and See Me, which is about prison theater workshops and love and this for Jan. So, so many of your Listeners know Jan concruse because you speak to her in your podcast.

But a lot of our authors bring us work after they've stepped out of their formal life, and they feel a sense of freedom to tell some of the stories that they were perhaps a little cautious about telling when they were professionals. So I feel that Jan did that with this work. So there's so much to learn in this work.

And I was also flabbergasted that Jan has gone on multiple tours, you know, all over Great Britain and then New Orleans and Texas, and it's just non stop Affirmed Tiger's book that I mentioned to you earlier about creative instigation, helping communities really solve difficult issues and bringing all the stakeholders together and having their voices heard.

The Portraits of Peacemakers by Robert Shetterly, which came out actually at the same time that an exhibition of all 275 of his paintings in this portrait series were exhibited. And so he not only paints a portrait, but he profiles them. So just diving into his books is a source of wonderful energy and inspiration.

But I'm excited about the coming season where I have the fifth book from Margaret Randall, someone who has authored, can you believe this, 200 books in her life. Yeah . And she's a poet, she's an essayist. She does oral history, she does translations.

We celebrated her 88th birthday at City Lights just a couple weeks ago. And her newest book is a unique one for her.

It's letters correspondence that she has made with five people that she calls outriders who are creatives who resist conformity to any kind of social and political pressure. And it covers, oh, gosh, decades of her life as an activist. And so you really get a sense of what the struggles are like.

And then we have one back on the arts again. Barbara Benesh, who's an artist who started Retreat center for Artists.

It's also an ecological retreat center, and so it tends to attract what we're defining as eco artists now. And it's in Czechia, Czech Republic. So it's her beautiful story and she has wonderful photography, so it's going to be visually exciting.

Bill Cleveland: 00:50:21

So as we close here, I'd just like to let folks know that links to New Village Press will be scattered throughout our show notes and also specific links to these specific books. A lot of those books would not be in the public realm without your work. I really believe that. And I just tip my hat to you and I thank you.

Lynne Elizabeth: 00:50:46

Thank you, Bill. You're welcome. Thank you.

Bill Cleveland: 00:50:48

All right, and here we are again at the end of another stimulating conversation with another one of my superheroines in a world that I believe is calling for a collective marshaling of creative superpowers in service to a just insane world. Or at least something that makes sense. Anyways, thank you to all of you who've tuned in.

We really appreciate both your listening and for those of you who've shared your thoughts and suggestions, your contributions to the continuing Change the Story Story Change the Story Change the World is a production of the center for the Study of Art and Community. Our theme and soundscape spring forth from the head, heart and hands of of the maestro Judy Munson.

Our text editing is by Andre Nebbe, our effects come from freesound.org and our inspiration comes from the ever present spirit of UKE 235. So until next time, stay well, do good, and spread the good word. And once again, please know that this episode has been 100% human.