Barry Lopez calls Knopf his publishing home and has three more books under contract there to follow 1994's Field Notes. His next book, however, Lessons from the Wolverine, is coming out this October from the University of Georgia Press with a 30,000-copy print run that's the largest in the press's 59-year history.
"I believe all writers have certain books more easily accommodated by a publisher other than their usual one," said Lopez, who over the years has seen projects published by Scribner, Andrews &McMeel, the University of Kentucky and North Point Press. The evolution of Lessons from the Wolverine is just the latest case in point.
Lopez told PW that as he was writing Lessons, it dawned on him that the narrator resembled Tom Pohrt, the illustrator who collaborated with him on the fable Crow &Weasel, the surprise New York Times bestseller published by North Point Press in 1991. Lopez suggested another collaboration and presented the concept (with Knopf's approval) to Barbara Ras, Crow and Weasel's editor at North Point, who by then, in the wake of that house's closing, was editor-in-chief at Sierra Club Books. But after signing the book there, Ras was named Georgia's senior editor last fall, with a charge to build the press's list to better reflect the university's prominence in interdisciplinary environmentalism. She rejoined the project, though, when Peter Matson, Lopez's agent, amicably fulfilled his client's wish to follow her.In addition, David Bullen, formerly North Point's designer but now a Bay Area freelancer whom Ras has tapped to again showcase the work of Lopez and Pohrt, also followed. The 32-page, 4 1/2 by 8 1/2 "elegant keepsake," she thinks, "has an appeal similar to that of Crow and Weasel." Apparently BOMC, where that earlier book was a hit, agrees, since Lessons from the Wolverine has been taken as a selection by the main club as well by as its One Spirit, children's and QPB divisions.
