In the life of a
small press, some things cannot be said and certainly not as a blog post where
truth, lies and gossip are often equal partners. This means some unspoken
stories go to the grave with their tellers.
Perversely I
correct people who say Karren Alenier is
The Word Works or The Word Works
belongs to Karren Alenier because it started with her.
Fact: Wandering on the Outside by Karren
LaLonde Alenier was the first book published by The Word Works. The year was
1975. Deirdra Baldwin as founding director and chairperson of the board created
The Word Works at the end of 1974 with her brother-in-law Paris Christopher
Pacchione, a graphic artist. They made up the board of directors along with
Yolanda Gerritsen, a Dutch citizen married to the American lawyer Roy
Nierenberg who nailed down nonprofit status for Word Works.
When Deirdra
showed up in 1975 at my house on Bradley Boulevard in Chevy Chase to ask for
the manuscript that would become my first book, I hadn’t seen her in some months.
The truth was I was fed up with her and the antics of a man named Jim
Morrisette, the same man who claimed he was calling Ezra Pound in the middle of
the night but Pound was always willing to talk to him. Perhaps I misheard but
Pound had died in 1972. Morrisette was just looking for his next drink. Yolanda
said Jim had fallen backwards out his chair at the Childe
Harold during a planning meeting Deirdra had called.
Why did Deirdra
pick me as the first author? She believed I knew more people than anyone else
she had in mind and therefore would sell more books boosting the small seed
grant from an anonymous donor (yes, here is one of those secrets). Her plan was
that sale of my book with a foreword from her would fund the next book. It
worked. Paul Revenko-Jones’ the end of
the hand (1975) with a foreword from me came next. After that, Word Works
got two National Endowment for the Arts grants and published In Praise of Secrecy (1977) by John Wellman,
The Emerging Detail (1977) by Deirdra
Baldwin, and The Unicorn and the Garden
(1978) edited by Betty Parry.
Of course this
is only a surface. Every book takes a pound of flesh out of the people involved
in producing them. There are many stories that could be told, but not now and
maybe never. But one thing to know—The Word Works is a literary organization,
not just a publishing house. Our creating papers mandate that we provide an
educational component and we do that through our public programs. Come to Café Muse at the Friendship Heights
Village Center if you want to know more. I might whisper something in your ear.
