Akashic publisher Johnny Temple loves publishing. Like any good publisher, he is excited each season about his new list. He is especially excited about a slew of books his house will publish this fall: cool books for kids like Eric Morse’s What Is Punk? (Oct.), a primer about punk rock music with clay illustrations by Anny Yi (“The book introduces children to rebel voices,” he says), and Adam Mansbach and Owen Brozman’s Seriously, You Have to Eat, a child-friendly sequel to You Have to F*****g Eat (itself a sequel to the huge hit Go the F**k to Sleep). Two forthcoming novels also excite him: Joe Meno’s A Marvel and a Wonder (Sept.), a love story set in the Midwest, and Nina Revoyr’s wilderness thriller set in the Sierra Nevada, Lost Canyon (Aug.)—“a breakout book,” Temple calls it.
But most of all, perhaps, Temple is excited about Kaylie Jones Books, his new publishing partnership with Kaylie Jones, a writing teacher, memoirist, and novelist. Jones is also famous for being the daughter of novelist James Jones.
“Kaylie was the writing teacher for some writers I knew, and she kept an eye on us,” Temple says. “She urged us to publish Heart of the Old Country: The Narrows by Tim McLoughlin [a hilarious and tragic first novel,” said PW’s review]. She also introduced me to Ron Kovic, and in 2005 we reissued his antiwar classic, Born on the Fourth of July—it’s been in print ever since. We stayed in touch with Kaylie. We published her novel Speak Now, and she edited Long Island Noir for us. As a writing teacher, she has a deep conviction about the value of literature and the written word.” Temple says that when Jones suggested to him that she create her own imprint, he was immediately receptive. “One of the things we liked was she would bring books to us that we might not normally recognize the value of. She could bring a sophisticated eye to her imprint and that’s what has happened,” says Temple.
Jones tells the story of the imprint in a similar way. “I helped Johnny over the years by sending books his way. I would try to be helpful from my limited angle as a writer. A few years ago I realized books by my students weren’t getting picked up. They were fabulous novels. It was inconceivable to me that they wouldn’t be picked up by major publishers. But mainstream publishers don’t have a lot of vision. They don’t take chances on things. I called Johnny and told him I wanted to have an imprint with him. Then I thought, nervously, What if he says yes? But he said yes! He gave me carte blanche to publish whatever I wanted to publish.”Kaylie Jones Books kicked off a year ago. “We had high hopes for the imprint, but it has been more successful than we anticipated,” says Temple.
The imprint’s second release, Barbara J. Taylor’s debut novel, Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night, about miners in the anthracite coal-mining region of Pennsylvania in the early years of the 20th century, has sold more than 15,000 copies to date; it was named a PW Pick of the Week and a Best Summer Book of 2014, was nominated for a 2014 Lime Award for Excellence in Fiction, and garnered enthusiastic praise from a variety of publications.
Forthcoming Kaylie Jones Books include Little Beasts (July) by newcomer Matthew McGevna, based on the murder of a child by his peers that shook one Long Island community in 1979. It will be published simultaneously with Kaylie Jones’s own latest novel, The Anger Meridian (Akashic, July), her first novel in more than 10 years. It is a fast-paced drama centered around three generations of women and the web of lies and deception that surrounds them.
Today, Kaylie Jones and two of her authors, Barbara J. Taylor and Matthew McGevna, sign books and ARCs at the Akashic booth (647A) 2:15–3 p.m.
