A little over a year ago we launched a print-on-demand machine at Politics & Prose. The move suddenly made millions of out-of-print titles available to our customers. And that’s not all. Because the machine, which we nicknamed Opus, could print brand new works as easily as it could old ones, it opened the way for local writers to self-publish in our store. Since Opus was installed in P&P’s fiction room, an array of novelists, poets, students, professors, school groups, and retirees have worked with our Opus staff to turn their manuscripts into high-quality paperbacks.
Many of these books are available for purchase at P&P. But we also have been thinking of other ways to give Opus authors platforms to talk about their books and bring their work to the attention of a wider community. Later this month—on January 26 at 1 p.m.—we’ll host our first-ever event for writers who have printed their books on Opus.
Called Opus Open Mic, eleven writers will have five minutes to read from or talk about their books in modified open-mic style. The program will include writers of poetry, novels, children’s lit, biography, memoir, medical science, and personal growth. Here are the authors and book titles that will be featured:
Joseph T. Wilkins, The Speaker Who Locked Up the House (historical fiction)
John and Joy Saul, Candle in the Window (poetry)
Ruth Levy Guyer, A Life... Interrupted (biography)
John Guernsey, A February Song (mystery)
Agi Kiss, The Cheetah Who Wouldn’t Run (children’s)
Sonja Plummer, Piece by Piece: Love Poems (poetry)
John Nelson and Tymofey Wowk, Making English Grammar Meaningful and Useful (teaching manual)
John Kelly, The Fallen Snow (novel)
Dana Dalrymple, Artemisia Annua (medicine)
Clare Dickens, A Dangerous Gift (memoir)
Kristen Crockett, The Gift of Past Relationships (relationships)
The event will be free and open to the public. And everyone is invited to stay afterward to meet the writers and talk with our Opus staff about how the self-publishing process works and how it can help turn your story into a book. We offer not only the printing service but professional design and editing services as well. For more information, including a list of pricing, please check out our website pages.
- Brad and Lissa
