Indie News

Less than three years after publisher Douglas Seibold founded Agate Publishing, the Evanston, Ill.–based press has made the big time with a novel set during the 1960s Civil Rights movement—and launched a new career as a writer for its author, Denise Nicholas, a former TV actress who starred in the groundbreaking comedy drama Room 222 from 1969 to 1974. Freshwater Road, Nicholas's debut novel, was inspired by her experiences in Mississippi during Freedom Summer. Freshwater Road just won the First Novelist award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. The book was already featured in "Best of 2005" book compilations in five major newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It also received a glowing review on the front page of the Washington Post Bookworld, and Newsday called it "Perhaps the best work of fiction ever done about the civil rights movement." Paperback rights recently were sold to Pocket Books, which plans on issuing it in paper this fall. Before becoming a TV actress, Nicholas worked with the Free Southern Theater in Mississippi in 1964. Agate is distributed by Consortium. —Claire Kirch

Dalkey Archive is the American home of literary prose experiment, keeping alive the works of Barthelme, Hawks, Elkin and countless international writers. When William Gass's long-awaited big novel, The Tunnel, fell out of print in '99 (Knopf in hardcover, HarperCollins in paper), Dalkey brought out a new edition. Now, associate director Chad Post is taking a new tack in trying to give readers entree to Gass's demanding "masterpiece" by bringing out the house's first audiobook—45 hours packed into three MP3 CDs. "Gass spent 30 years on the book; it's a huge achievement," said Post. "We are trying to make it more accessible in any way we can, by of course keeping it in print, but also by making Gass's reading of his wonderful prose available." In what Post calls "a kind of re-launch," Gass will talk about the making of the audio on February 22 at Housing Works in New York City in an event co-sponsored by Dalkey and the Lannan Foundation.

—Michael Coffey