Alice Sebold on Europa Editions Launch
To All Interested Readers
Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones and The Almost Moon on Europa Editions.
I traveled to Italy in the spring of 2003 for the first time to support the Italian translation of my novel, The Lovely Bones. Italy is a country that almost everyone swoons over and it was no different for me.
What I did not expect from my visit to Italy, however, was to so quickly fall in love with my amazing publishers, Sandro and Sandra Ferri. No, I didn’t fall for them because they were publishing me! I fell in love with them because they so passionately believe in what they do for a living, in the business – edizioni e/o – they began in 1979 and which they continue to run out of a small office in Rome.
Now, after nearly 30 years in the business, just when the more obvious choice might be to sit back and relax, the amazing Sandro and Sandra are doing a crazy thing.
To start a new publishing house in the United States? Crazy.
To offer works from a wide variety of European and Middle Eastern authors, most in translation and many of whom have no established reputation in the U.S.? Crazy.
To do so in this difficult political and business climate with no safety net, no imprint status, no protection from a large corporate house’s reassuring wing? Yep, Crazy.
To insist that if work is good, no matter what, people will read it? Say it again!
Perhaps that’s why I like them. Despite the odds and no matter the challenges, they believe in what they are doing above everything.
In the coming months, Europa Editions will present you will be presenting us with a variety of titles. They will kick off in the fall of 2005 with The Days of Abandonment by the mysterious Elena Ferrante and the 2004 Booker-nominated Cooking with Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson.
By taking the time to give serious consideration to these novels and the books coming out in the months ahead you are joining two wild rebels with a wonderful dream: publishing is an art, that small voices from distant cities matter, that if we work together, books can change not just our city or our nation but they can light our way in a darkening world.
EUROPA EDITIONS – VIVA!
Alice Sebold
Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones and The Almost Moon on Europa Editions.
I traveled to Italy in the spring of 2003 for the first time to support the Italian translation of my novel, The Lovely Bones. Italy is a country that almost everyone swoons over and it was no different for me.
What I did not expect from my visit to Italy, however, was to so quickly fall in love with my amazing publishers, Sandro and Sandra Ferri. No, I didn’t fall for them because they were publishing me! I fell in love with them because they so passionately believe in what they do for a living, in the business – edizioni e/o – they began in 1979 and which they continue to run out of a small office in Rome.
Now, after nearly 30 years in the business, just when the more obvious choice might be to sit back and relax, the amazing Sandro and Sandra are doing a crazy thing.
To start a new publishing house in the United States? Crazy.
To offer works from a wide variety of European and Middle Eastern authors, most in translation and many of whom have no established reputation in the U.S.? Crazy.
To do so in this difficult political and business climate with no safety net, no imprint status, no protection from a large corporate house’s reassuring wing? Yep, Crazy.
To insist that if work is good, no matter what, people will read it? Say it again!
Perhaps that’s why I like them. Despite the odds and no matter the challenges, they believe in what they are doing above everything.
In the coming months, Europa Editions will present you will be presenting us with a variety of titles. They will kick off in the fall of 2005 with The Days of Abandonment by the mysterious Elena Ferrante and the 2004 Booker-nominated Cooking with Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson.
By taking the time to give serious consideration to these novels and the books coming out in the months ahead you are joining two wild rebels with a wonderful dream: publishing is an art, that small voices from distant cities matter, that if we work together, books can change not just our city or our nation but they can light our way in a darkening world.
EUROPA EDITIONS – VIVA!
Alice Sebold