EP Books and Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service have formed a new company, Grace Distribution Inc., a nonprofit that will produce, sell, and distribute English-language Christian books in the U.S. and Canada, as well as books in English, French, and Russian in Africa, Russia, and other eastern European countries. Under the Grace Distribution umbrella, Cumberland Valley Book Service will manage retail activities, and EP Books will oversee trade and distribution sales. EP Books is the U.S. distributer for Evangelical Press, Carey Publications, Bryntyrion Press, Grace Publications, Wakeman Publications, and ET Perspectives. CVBBS has a dedicated bookstore and warehouse in Carlisle, Penn., and is a Web retailer of Christian books from a variety of publishers.
WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group, Random House’s Christian publishing division, has added two publicity staffers in its Colorado Springs offices: Cindy Brovsky as publicist and Laura Tucker as publicity assistant. Brovsky has 20 years of experience as a newspaper reporter and was part of the Denver Post staff awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for coverage of the Columbine shootings. In 2007 she co-wrote former Denver mayor Wellington Webb’s autobiography, Wellington Webb: The Mayor, the Man, and the Making of Modern Denver, published by Fulcrum. Tucker returns to WaterBrook Multnomah, where she worked in 2005–2006 as receptionist and production assistant. This announcement comes on the heels of layoffs of five unspecified employees earlier this month.
CBA Executive Director Curtis Riskey has closed his store, B.A.S.I.C. Books and Café, in Oshkosh, Wis. The closing was blamed on “difficulties operating from a distance.” Riskey moved to Colorado Springs in 2007 to join CBA as the association’s strategic solutions executive, then served as interim executive director when CEO Bill Anderson resigned in fall 2008. Riskey was named executive director in March. In a statement Riskey said he is closing his 10-year-old store “with grace and dignity by meeting all financial obligations and without filing for bankruptcy.” He liquidated his inventory and closed earlier this month.
Rev. Lawrence Boadt, a leading Catholic biblical scholar and longtime president of Paulist Press, died in Mahwah, N.J., on July 24, 2010. Father Boadt, who was 67, died after a long battle with cancer. Lawrence Boadt was a longtime professor of biblical studies at several institutions including Fordham University and the Washington Theological Union, a Roman Catholic school of theology in the nation’s capitol, where he taught for 21 years. He also was the author of scholarly books, including Ezekiel’s Oracles Against Egypt, two volumes of commentaries on Jeremiah in the Old Testament Message series, a commentary on Ezekiel for the New Jerome Biblical Commentary, and almost 100 articles and reviews in leading biblical journals such as the Catholic Biblical Quarterly, the Journal of Biblical Literature, and Vetus Testamentum. His most popular work is Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction, published by Paulist Press in 1985. It has been the standard introduction to the Hebrew scriptures in many colleges and seminaries. Father Boadt was named president of Paulist Press in 1998 and served in that post until spring 2010. He had been the scripture editor of the press since 1975; his final contribution was the highly acclaimed Catholic edition of a Lectio Divina Bible.
