Universal Table

HOW THE WISING UP PRESS WRITERS COLLECTIVE DEVELOPED

Our interest in publishing came through Universal Table and our commitment to using art, particularly narrative, to increase our abilities to Find the We in Them, the Us in You. As writer/publishers we feel very lucky that recent changes in publishing allow us to publish very good books in the way we have always wanted.  For us, healthy relationality is core to how we publish and what we publish. It is also why we write - to enter into deeper and truer relationship first with ourselves and our own experiences and then with others and theirs. In other words, we're interested, at any age, in wising up. Together.

Our approach can be summarized in the same way we describe some of the activities that are natural offshoots of our publishing: Writing for Insight.  Reading for Relation.  Our interest in developing the Wising Up Anthologies came from our interest in and commitment to fruitful pluralism.  We had a desire to encourage a more musing and insightful way of exploring different topics of common social concern by combining many points of view, many voices.  Our focus on fiction, poetry and memoir uses the natural richness of narrative as a way to allow us to safely walk in someone else's shoes, look through their eyes, hold each other more generously in imagination and in life.  The topics we have chosen for our anthologies are ones we feel have important implications for living in richer inter-relationship with one another in an increasingly pluralistic world.

This reading for relation takes place for us as editors as we hear resonances and feel new conceptual frames emerging as we read different authors exploring the same themes.  It comes when we create books that try to shape and share that fascinating experience with others. It has delighted us that the authors in our anthologies often write us upon receiving their contributor's copy to say they feel honored to be included - which means to us that they have felt a sense of mutual amplification when their work is put in resonant conversation with that of others.  They have found the We in Them, the Us in You that we are so committed to.

The Wising Up Writers Collective has felt like a natural progression for us and was inspired by the talent of many of the writers who contributed to our anthologies and who also felt a special affinity to the social commitments of Universal Table, who understood us when we said we wanted our books to be catalysts for conversation and who had the same approach to their own writing. We have enjoyed watching their work develop over time, increasing in integrity and authority with the encouragement of publication.  We have found it particularly rewarding to offer this encouragement at a point in a writer's life (whether 28 or 82) when it would make the greatest difference in their artistic and personal development.

We understood that for us publishing individual works needed to be a collective activity if we were really interested in building sustaining and sustainable relationships.  We see the Collective as a way of creating a network of positive, mutually empowering and amplifying creative relationships between us and the writers individually and together.  The Collective creates a rigorous artistic standard and supportive social context for all members. We also see the Collective as having as its core purpose creating larger social conversations, an approach that appeals to writers who see their books as an opportunity to be in richer and more fluid relationship with others around subjects of mutual concern - in real time, real life.

Here are some of questions we ask writers publishing through the Wising Up Press Writers Collective:  Would you write this book even if wouldn't be published? Is this book the best you can make it? Who do you want to be in conversation with through this book? After writing this book and creating a home for your own experiences, what stories and experiences of your readers are you now able to hold more generously and respond to more fully?  And we ask ourselves, often, What is the conversation that is made possible through the mysterious mediation of a book that is not possible in any other way?

We are pleased our books sell but what concerns us most is how well our books serve as catalysts for more insightful conversations.  We work hard to create affordable, beautiful books with evocative and complex stories and we want these books to make real changes for the better in the lives of those who write them and those who read them.  For the better, for us, means feeling that you and what you hold most dear also has a place at that universal table we all hunger for.

Mutually rewarding self-sufficiency on a sturdy shoe string is our style at Wising Up Press - a style that we extend to the Collective.  Everyone involved in the Collective contributes, as we do, to the general publishing fund for the Collective and also volunteer their skills to help support the Collective in ways that speak to their own interests and sense of community as well - as readers, developmental or copy editors, proofreaders, publicists, sponsors of home readings across the country, developers or facilitators of workshops and discussion groups.  We're in this for the long term, which means our books never need to go out of print, our books don't need to be remaindered.  We can share them this year and for many years to come. We delight each time one of them finds a true home in someone else's heart as they have in ours - and are willing to take the time to let that happen.

Our approach and goals are not for all writers, but if they speak to you and you are interested in learning more about us, please read further. Learn about the subjects we are particularly interested in below, and also learn more about some of the people who are already part of the Collective Editorial Advisory Board and their personal journeys to the Collective.

If you think this approach is suitable for you and that you have a manuscript that would fit well with our interests and social commitments, write us at collective@universaltable.org - or give us a call at 404/276-6046.

• Subject area
• 1-2 page description of book
• Brief bio with publishing history
• 5 page sample and table of contents
• 1-2 page statement exploring why you think your book would contribute to Universal Table's commitment to Finding the We in Them, the Us in You, and how you as a writer, and this book in particular, would benefit from publishing through the Universal Table/Wising Up Press Collective.