Announcing our fourth book!

And a sneak peek at blurbs

We are very excited to announce our fourth acquisition! THE DAYS OF MIRACLE AND WONDER, by Irene Zabytko, will come out next Spring. Irene is a first generation Ukrainian American who grew up in Chicago's Ukrainian Village and traveled to Ukraine in 1992, just after the fall of the Soviet Union, where she was one of the first Americans to teach English in Kyiv. Her trip took an unexpected turn, and the result is a moving, off-beat set of stories-within-a-story, part memoir and part fiction, that paint a picture of a difficult time during which Ukrainians wanted democracy, liberty, and independence but were not economically ready. Well. And here we are. This book is timely on various levels.

Irene is the author of the novel THE SKY UNWASHED about Chornobyl (Ukrainian transliteration), and the short story collection WHEN LUBA LEAVES HOME set in her neighborhood in Chicago. She received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award in Ukraine for research for an upcoming novel and she teaches at the Gotham Writers' Workshop. We'll be sharing much more about Irene and about her book in the months to come.

Our other three books are in various stages of production: one is with the interior designer and cover designer (two different people), one is almost ready to go to the copyeditor, and one is in the hands of the author, with revisions due to us next month. Something we are engaged in now is chasing down blurbs—you know, those pithy, engaging quotes by (hopefully famous) authors that call out to you from the cover of a book and make you say hey! I love that person’s writing, and they love this book, so I should buy it! Right? Isn’t that how it works?

In truth, to blurb or not to blurb is a recurrent question in publishing. There are various arguments for and against, both among those seeking blurbs and those who tend to get asked for blurbs. In January 2025, Sean Manning, publisher of the Simon and Schuster flagship imprint, made the bold announcement that he was doing away with the requirement for authors to obtain blurbs for that imprint, claiming that they are a huge time suck for authors trying to obtain them and authors asked to provide them. James Folta in Lit Hub teases out some of the subtleties of the blurbing practice and lays out a few arguments for keeping it, including that “there’s not a lot in place to pick up the slack if blurbs go away.” (And the more I write that word, blurb, the weirder it looks.) We’re sharing our inside scoop on the process for our paid subscribers, along with a sneak peek at two fabulous blurbs we have received for Robyn Ryle’s SEX OF THE MIDWEST.

But first, a little poll!

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