The Return of AADL's Fifth Avenue Press: Local authors celebrate the release of their books on May 22
The Ann Arbor District Library's Fifth Avenue Press, which started in 2017, helps local authors produce a print-ready book at no cost—from copyediting to cover design—and the writers retain all rights. In return, the library gets to distribute ebooks to its patrons without paying royalties, but authors can sell their books—print, digital, or audio—in whatever ways they choose and keep all the proceeds.
Fifth Avenue launches its fourth round of books on Sunday, May 22, with a book-release celebration from 1-3 pm in the lobby of AADL's downtown location, featuring author readings from many of the imprint's 10 new titles.
Click the book titles below to jump to interviews with the authors and illustrators:
Moonberry Pie by James Barbatano with illustrations by Douglas Bosley: A friendly witch travels to the moon to search for a special fruit in order to bake a special pie. (Children)
My Daddy's Not Like Other Daddies by Ryden Allen with illustrations by Victor Martins: This warm picture book celebrates the close bond between a child and their transmasculine father - who also gave birth to them. (Children)
Grandpa Cai's Garden by Sam Ankenbauer, Alex Jiahong Lu & illustrated by Jenny Kalejs. Grandpa Cai and His Garden is the sweet picture book about a grandfather's journey, accompanied by his faithful dog, to grow vegetables in his garden and then use them in a dinner for special company - his grandchildren! Told in both English and Chinese, Grandpa Cai and His Garden emphasizes the importance of nature and family. (Children)
Maribel the Bat by Brad and Kristin Northrop: In this gorgeous picture book take a nighttime journey through the world of art as Maribel the Bat uses her imagination to explore her surroundings. Each encounter with a place or an animal is interpreted using a different art style. (Children)
Center-Mid by Jeff Kass: Center-Mid is the story of uncompromising young women who play field hockey as hard as they can and, whether they're dealing with family problems, relationship issues or challenges at school, won’t let anything distract them from their goals. (Teens)
Watching by Charles Taylor: A mystery about Detroit detectives and former lovers George Eaton and Karla Bassett who have always stuck with low-risk cases until a new clients asks them to investigate a murder and suddenly, everyone from a local crime boss to the police poses a deadly threat! (Adults)
Dali/Dalai by Richard Solomon: Using surreal, monolithic poems about nine Salvador Dali paintings as guide-posts, this collection of poetry moves from the dream world through progressive inquire to the spiritual. (Adults)
Bring Your Words: A Writers' Community Anthology by J.D. Akins, Kaleb A. Brown, C.D. Gillikin, Carol May, Ivy Obuchowski, Abby O'Meara, Lila Scott, Kathryn Orwig, S. Alastor Node: Ten authors present essays, short stories and poetry. Wherever the ideas came from, penned and morphed into shape, they’ve found a home here. (Adults)
What Are You Looking At? by Erin Wakeland: This unique book details four social experiments: mending and returning red solo cups from a fraternity’s yard, hanging a banner hand-stitched with “You Have Everything You Need” in places of commerce, placing postcards in public places with a prompt to be returned to me, and en plein air painting in the Meijer Superstore. (Adults)
Accidental Engineer: A Sixty-Year Trek Through Technology and Beyond by Dean Douthat: The following are stories of an accidental engineer’s encounters with real engineers and engineering. (Adults)
Moonberry Pie by James Barbatano with illustrations by Douglas Bosley
Q: Give us a short synopsis of the book.
BARBATANO: Miss Witchen is a friendly witch who owns and runs a popular bakery in Nilbog, Michigan. One day, one of her customers orders a slice of moonberry pie, but Miss Wicken ran out of moonberries and has to go to the moon to get more.
Q: What inspired the book?
BARBATANO: One day, the title Moonberry Pie simply popped into my head. During this time, I was taking a masterclass on writing and storytelling taught by R. L. Stine and he suggested coming up with a title before writing the actual book.
Q: What was the most enjoyable part of writing your book and what was the most difficult?
BARBATANO: For me, the joy of storytelling comes from the brainstorming process. I get to create whatever worlds and characters I want and put them into any situation. However, if I have to be honest, writing the actual book is the real challenging part because it’s difficult to construct original prose and put it down on paper.
BOSLEY: This was one of those projects in which the moment I heard the brief I knew it was going to be fun; so this is actually a tough question to answer. Like most projects, it’s difficult in the beginning since it’s a rough process of figuring out what everything needs to look like and making sure it feels right. The latter stages are the most enjoyable since that’s when things are slowly becoming more and more realized, and that’s both gratifying and energizing. Oddly enough, the sun pie drawing was probably the most difficult individual drawing and required the most back-and-forth revisions before it felt right.
Q: Do you have any writing or drawing rituals?
BARBATANO: What I like to do before I start writing is start by reading something to get my creative juices flowing. I like to read a lot of comic books and the occasional children’s books, but I’m getting into the habit of listening to audiobooks. You can just read whatever you want and it’ll help you with your writing process.
BOSLEY: I keep paper and drawing vellum on rolls. When I start a project I like to do a free sketch on that material. I’ll pull down and start a sheet and just pull a bit more down when I run out of room. That way everything flows naturally, and I don’t have any interruptions. The result is a big piece of paper that I pin up to the wall so I can see all the iterations and gradual development of characters, locations, etc., all at once.
Q: People who like your book will also like...
BARBATANO: If I had to choose a series of books I’d like to recommend, it would have to be The Magic Treehouse series by Mary Pope Osborne. Jack and Annie are a brother-sister duo who travel across time in a magical treehouse and learn about history as they collect trinkets and tools that’ll help them become powerful wizards like Merlin the Magician. As a kid, my mother would read these to me before going to bed because they had everything from fantasy adventure to historical intrigue. I recommend these books because they get children thinking and excited about reading.
Q: What advice would you give other authors who would like to submit their works to Fifth Avenue Press?
BARBATANO: If I had some advice I would like to share with budding writers it would have to be: always construct your stories first. I like to plot my stories using a simple method I’ve developed. My method is called, “The Ingredients of a Good Story.” Here are my ingredients:
- Characters: Who is the main character and where are they?
- Want/Desire: What does the main character want and why?
- Road of Trials: What is the main conflict that’s keeping the main character from achieving their goal?
- Resolved Situation: How will the story end in a way that’ll hit the audience like a brick?
BOSLEY: Don’t be afraid to share your work, and don’t be afraid to allow it to change and evolve. Working in a team is great because as soon as you have other eyes on your draft, they will start to notice things you didn’t. That will only make the work stronger. Don’t be too beholden to your initial ideas about your project. You might be surprised to find that there is more to it than you realized.
My Daddy's Not Like Other Daddies by Ryden Allen with illustrations by Victor Martins
Q: Give us a short synopsis of the book.
A: My Daddy's Not Like Other Daddies is a picture book about a child with a nonbinary transmasculine parent. It tries to hit on the joys of the parent-child relationship while also discussing some of the challenges of having a parent who's different.
Q: What inspired the book?
A: I'm a nonbinary transmasculine parent, and while there are other books about transgender people and even some picture books about having transgender parents, nothing felt like a reflection of my identity. For example, I love my chest, I have no problems with a vaginal birth, I identify as "dad" but also embrace certain feminine attributes. There is very, very little material about that, which I really try to address in all my writing. When I was pregnant, I wanted a book for my child to explain all of this so he wouldn't feel alone as he got older and understood these differences more.
Q: What was the most enjoyable part of writing your book and what was the most difficult?
A: The most enjoyable part was the beginning and end. Getting an idea and when you see that idea, in reality, is the best because those are the moments when you're the most passionate and really inspired by your idea. The most difficult part, I found, was shopping it around because you get a lot of rejection. That's always the hardest. It's also hard for me working with illustrators because there's limited contact and I personally am not very visual, so I'm not super helpful with that! I was lucky in that Victor understood the idea behind the book and seemed to have an interest and passion for LGBTQIA++ material that worked well with mine.
Q: Do you have any writing rituals?
A: I write every day, no matter what. I wrote my first book while going through a hard time a few years ago, and I realized how important writing was to me, so I have made a point of writing every day since. That's changed a little since having a child. Right now, the ritual is to read him some books at bedtime and then he knows I'm going to "work"—when I call it "writing," he wants to join in!—and then he needs to start settling down for bed. Some days are more successful than others, but I am very adamant that this is my writing time, whether it's a half-hour or a few minutes.
Q: People who like your book will also like...
A: Probably my other book, Expectations, haha. Some good picture books are They, She, He, Me: Free to Be! by Maya Christina Gonzalez; She's My Dad! and He's My Mom! by Sarah Savage; and The Gender Wheel also by Maya Christina Gonzalez. The Maya Gonzalez books go a little beyond the standard transition story, which we really need more of, and She's My Dad! will touch on having a transgender parent, similar to my book. At this point, there are more and more books about being transgender, so hopefully, we'll see more books on these two specific topics coming soon.
Q: What advice would you give other authors who would like to submit their works to Fifth Avenue Press?
A: I don't know about specifically Fifth Avenue Press, but in general, I really recommend people get someone else to edit your work. First, authors will publish thinking they've done all the editing, it's perfect, and then the readers will catch every typo and mistake—and there will be many! Second, working with an editor, they've been able to draw out more from my books than I was able to give on my own. So it really is worth it if you want the best book possible.
Grandpa Cai's Garden by Sam Ankenbauer, Alex Jiahong Lu & illustrated by Jenny Kalejs
Questions answered by Sam Ankenbauer:
Q: Give us a short synopsis of the book.
A: Grandpa Cai and His Garden is a story about a grandfather's journey to grow vegetables in his personal garden to use in a special dinner when his grandchildren come over to visit. The book is told in both Chinese and English with Chinese pinyin to help with pronunciation.
Q: What inspired the book?
A: The book was inspired by our shared love of nature and family. Additionally, (co-author) Alex has a grandfather who gardens as a hobby. His grandfather turns vacant plots of land into large-scale gardens complete with irrigation systems, trellising, and terracing all done by hand with whatever's readily available. His baskets of vegetables definitely inspired the story.
Q: What was the most enjoyable part of writing your book and what was the most difficult?
A: The most enjoyable part of the process was just ideating images and ways of describing scenes. It's both daunting and exciting to close your eyes and imagine a scene.
Q: Do you have any writing rituals?
A: I'm not sure I can think of writing rituals at the moment but I know the work was written in English first and then translated by Alex into Chinese. Afterward, we both worked on the pinyin and formatting. For Jenny and her illustrations, each page would have a little board of inspirational woodblock prints and images of nature that we'd taken. Then, she would paint the illustrations outside, taking inspiration from the movement of trees and whatnot.
Q: People who like your book will also like ...
A: We tried to take inspiration from Beatrix Potter and her Tale of Peter Rabbit, with her white-background watercolor style, variety of greens and browns, and investment in natural surroundings. We also tried to take some slight inspiration from traditional Chinese poets, like Bai Juyi.
Q: What advice would you give other authors who would like to submit their works to Fifth Avenue Press?
A: I'm not sure what advice I would feel qualified to give but I think everyone at Fifth Avenue is great and really invested in helping you. I would also say that it's so important to keep your senses open and available to the world around you and to feel free to be inspired by anything.
Maribel the Bat by Brad and Kristin Northrop
Q: Give us a short synopsis of the book.
A: Maribel the Bat flies through the moonlit sky on an amazing, imaginative journey. She explores her nighttime surroundings as the sounds in her environment come to life through vibrant, whimsical images. The illustrations tell Maribel's story and are inspired by a variety of artistic styles.
Q: What inspired the book?
A: As teachers and parents, we have read countless children’s books over the years. Our students and our own children have always been intrigued by colorful, detailed illustrations and animal characters. We started with the character—a bat—because we wanted a nocturnal animal. Maribel the Bat came to life after several drafts with very different stories. We created this story when we decided the focus was going to be about using your imagination, and when Brad decided he wanted to show illustrations inspired by artists and art styles from around the world.
Q: What was the most enjoyable part of writing your book and what was the most difficult?
A: Most enjoyable: researching a variety of artists and art works. Most difficult: narrowing down which art style would work best for each page throughout the storyline.
Q: Do you have any writing rituals?
A: For writing: Kristin writes a lot of drafts, then goes through phases of rereading and rewriting. Reading the story aloud is very helpful when editing a children's story that is meant to be read aloud. For illustrating: Brad gets inspired by one aspect of the book and focuses entirely on that illustration until it's completely finished, and then he begins the next picture only after he's satisfied with his current work. This can take many weeks or just a few days.
Q: People who like your book will also like...
A: Akeina the Crocodile by Brad and Kristin Northrop; Stellaluna by Janel Cannon; Fish Is Fish by Leo Lionni.
Q: What advice would you give other authors who would like to submit their works to Fifth Avenue Press?
A: Our advice is to stay inspired, persevere, keep writing/drawing, and keep imagining! Our Fifth Avenue Press graphic designer is amazingly helpful and creative. Be open to hearing others' advice when you are creating a children's book. Everyone on the Fifth Avenue Press team has been supportive and we have appreciated their support and hard work through our publishing journey.
Q: Give us a short synopsis of the book.
A: Former life partners Karla Bassett and George Eaton remain partners in their detective agency after their romantic relationship ends. They specialize in infidelity cases but are drawn into a homicide investigation when Karla’s onetime friend, now a Detroit Police Department division commander, hires them to “mess around on the outskirts a little.” What begins as a risk-free gig as DPD subcontractors soon becomes a struggle to escape an ever-tightening web of deception, intimidation, and murder.
Q: What inspired the book?
A: I’ve enjoyed a good deal of written and filmed detective fiction, starting with Sherlock Holmes but quickly centering on urban American and African-American PIs from authors like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Walter Mosley, and Barbara Neely. I also wanted to feature a detective agency run by a female/male partnership.
Q: What was the most enjoyable part of writing your book and what was the most difficult?
A: I most enjoyed dealing with the ironies and tensions of a couple whose relationship was destroyed by infidelity, working in a field where unfaithful romantic partners supply most of the work. The most difficult though no less enjoyable element was writing a female co-protagonist that I hoped would feel relatable for as many readers as possible. I had lots of help—and influences—from women among my family and friends, and from my invaluable Fifth Avenue Press editor, Amy Sumerton.
Q: Do you have any writing rituals?
A: I’ve shifted from writing mostly very late at night to combining night writing with brief stints at various times of the day. That adjustment became possible after I began creating in-depth character “bibles” and plot indexes. They allow me to rejoin my recent developments in a story relatively quickly, even when writing in very fragmentary portions.
Q: People who like your book will also like...
A: I love Walter Mosley’s vision of a private eye, Easy Rawlins, driven by the need to complete an investigation to earn a living, but also situated within a demographic of African-Americans fighting hard to build and maintain a middle-class existence against a range of formidable obstacles. It was also great to see how writer/director Carl Franklin represented that reality in his adaptation of Mosley’s novel Devil in a Blue Dress. The final scene, in which Easy both acknowledges the struggle and celebrates his and other African-Americans’ triumphs in 1940s L.A., continues to astonish me. I can’t remember seeing that specific milieu presented as vividly in any other film.
I also recommend the Barbara Neely novel Blanche on the Lam. Its title character is a detective with an extraordinarily unique perspective—Black, a single mom, and primarily reliant on domestic work—which Neely uses to present a singular brand of social observation.
Q: What advice would you give other authors who would like to submit their works to Fifth Avenue Press?
A: Treat your submission draft as a version you expect to be seen by the public. In other words, revise and proofread until it sings to you. Then, if it’s accepted, be open to working with your editor to bring additional depth and polish to the final manuscript.
Q: Give us a short synopsis of the book.
A: Dali/Dalai is divided into nine sections with nine ekphrastic poems dedicated to and based on the surreal paintings of Salvador Dali. The poems within each section move, in a very roundabout way, from daily life’s surreality to spiritual reality, from the dreamscapes of Dali to the loving kindness and mystical presence of the Dalai Lama.
Q: What inspired the book?
A: The book was inspired by years of spiritual practice removing any doubt about the existence of an inherent and imminent spiritual reality. The book was also inspired by the resilient suffering of children—I am a pediatrician—and by love for my family, friends, and community.
Q: What was the most enjoyable part of writing your book and what was the most difficult?
A: Putting into words what is essentially beyond words is a joy and a challenge. A joy when the impulse and impression and "image" is received; a challenge to create something truly beautiful. When a poem works, it is a delight and a surprise. I loved working with Amy Sumerton who helped to shape the book into its current form. Without her help it would have been a much less effective work.
Q: Do you have any writing rituals?
A: Raymond Chandler said he only writes when he’s inspired, and he’s inspired every day at nine o’clock. Poetry comes to me when I’m not looking (see the poem "The Poem I’m Really Writing"). I write down the essence and then sit and brood on it until it hatches, sometimes quickly (the best) sometimes for months or years, into something living and worthwhile.
Q: People who like your book will also like...
A: People who like Dali/Dalai will like the works of W.S. Merwin, Jack Gilbert, the later Allen Ginsburg, William Blake, Emily Dickenson, Milarepa, Rumi, Ryokin’s One Robe, One Bowl, and Tagore’s Gitanjali
Q: What advice would you give other authors who would like to submit their works to Fifth Avenue Press?
A: If you have a work of writing you feel is worthy of publication, the Fifth Avenue press is a great outlet. Send your manuscript to them! The people there are wonderful to work with and so supportive. The experience was wonderful.
Bring Your Words: A Writers' Community Anthology by J.D. Akins, Kaleb A. Brown, C.D. Gillikin, Carol May, Ivy Obuchowski, Abby O'Meara, Lila Scott, Kathryn Orwig, S. Alastor Node
Q: Give us a short synopsis of the book.
A: Bring Your Words is a collection of essays, poems, and short stories.
These words bound here in their final form all began in various places and stages. Some as snippets of scenes scrawled into margins of notebooks as half-remembered dreams, others as stanzas missing that poignant turn of phrase, and at least a few were assignments born into the world on a looming deadline, polished to perfection long after the class concluded.
Wherever ideas come from, penned and morphed into shape have found a home here. Within this anthology, we bring you our words. Words we love, words we hate, words we may never use again to show glimpses into worlds far vaster than their page count gives them credit for here. We hope you take delight, sigh, cry, laugh out loud, and most importantly enjoy them all as you read; as much as we have enjoyed writing them.
Q: What inspired the book?
A: In 2019 Kathryn had an idea. All of the authors had been writing and critiquing each other’s work and met through the University of Michigan Writers’ Community at one point or another and had short stories, poems, novels in progress, and essays. But what if we combined our work into a collection and sent it off together? Amazingly, Fifth Avenue Press turned our crazy idea into a reality. Huge thank you to the Ann Arbor District Library for supporting authors with their publishing imprint Fifth Avenue Press. This all wouldn't have been possible without you and your belief in our work! Especially since we are the first multi-author anthology collection the press has taken on.
Q: What was the most enjoyable part of writing your book and what was the most difficult?
A: For Kathryn, the most enjoyable part of any project is always the writing itself. It was fascinating going through edits with the copy editors and reviewing cover design options (shout out to the amazing Amanda Szot for our book layout and design!). Seeing the finished book and holding it in hand is beyond words. The most difficult part was trying to predict the pandemic and how soon the printers could ship the initial sample copies!
Accidental Engineer: A Sixty-Year Trek Through Technology and Beyond by Dean Douthat
Q: Give us a short synopsis of the book.
A: This book is a memoir of over 60 years of doing creative engineering work at the leading edge of technology. I had no training as an engineer. I had taken science and math in college and picked up engineering and computer programming on the fly. Included are stories of working on the Apollo Project, Computer Numeric Control, side-looking radar, missile simulations, the human genome project, deep-space communications, and others.
Q: What inspired the book?
A: I was inspired to write the book by my late wife. She called me "The Forrest Gump of Technology" because of my penchant for accidentally landing on high-profile projects.
Q: What was the most enjoyable part of writing your book?
A: The most enjoyable part of writing the book was recovering all the old memories of the successes, failures, and people over those years. The most difficult part was explaining highly technical subjects in non-technical terms. Fortunately, I had a wonderful editor, Heidi Morse, from the library. She held my feet to the fire making me rewrite technical sections until she understood and was happy with them.
Q: Do you have any writing rituals?
A: I didn’t have a writing ritual. I did generally do my writing in the morning right after breakfast. That was the time of day I was most alert. At my age (86), that’s important.
Q: People who like your book will also like...
A: I can’t think of other books like mine.
Q: What advice would you give other authors who would like to submit their works to Fifth Avenue Press?
A: If submitting to Fifth Avenue Press, be sure to have lots of local angles in it. Specifically, Ann Arbor but also Washtenaw County.
Fifth Avenue Press' release reception is Sunday, May 22, 1-3 pm, in the lobby of the Ann Arbor District Library's downtown branch, 343 South Fifth Ave. Read our interviews with the 2017, 2018, and 2019 Fifth Avenue authors and check out their books and ebooks from AADL.