Another Denver independent bookstore is making news: today BookBar launches its book publishing division, BookBar Press, with its debut release, Bite Size: An Anthology of Micro Theatre. The anthology features 10 short plays that were originally produced in 2018 by the Denver Center for the Performing Arts and staged at BookBar. The plays, all written by area playwrights, all deal with books in some way and touch upon such au courant topics as social justice, prisoner rights, religious revelations, and transgender experiences. A virtual book launch party will be held this weekend.
"As an indie publisher, we want to focus on our local community, so it made perfect sense to launch BookBar Press with Bite Size as our debut title,” said BookBar and BookBar Press owner, Nicole Sullivan. The books will be produced in small print runs and also made available via print-on-demand and in a digital format. There will be up to five releases each year.
BookBar Press will focus on “literary, under-served voices, whose stories reflect the shared experience of our community,” Sullivan told PW earlier this year, and is headed by publishing director Heather Garbo, a writer and editor with a marketing background who is a graduate of the Denver Publishing Institute. Its next release, In Praise of January by Shirley Sullivan (who is the bookstore owner's mother-in-law) will be published on January 26. A cookbook and a children’s book about the adventures of the BookBar bookmobile and its delivery bicycle are in development.
In conjunction with BookBar Press, BookBar recently launched a writer-in-residence program, with visiting writers provided with lodging in an apartment upstairs from the bookstore that previously served as an Airbnb rental. So far, six authors have stayed at the lodging for a week each, and it is booked through May 2021.
