My name is Chelsea Debarros and I have recently transitioned from intern to marketing director at Giant Steps Press. I am excited to share with you our first quarterly newsletter which includes:
Titles Coming in 2023
The GSP Holiday Book Guide
The Dual Internship Program
Recently Published at the Press
Rocking Until We Drop! by John Rullo
Review of William Seaton’s Planetary Motions
For the last year, Giant Steps Press has been working with authors and interns to update our website and increase our engagement with you and the writing community. While there is more to come, we want to spotlight ourAbout pagewhere we expand on our mission and vision for the future. As an indie press, Giant Steps Press is committed to establishing an environment that embraces equity, diversity, and inclusion. We work together to actively tear down racism, sexism, and economic inequalities in the art we make, and the communities we work with. To learn more about the press, our authors and their projectsclick here. If you would like to join our team, or would like to publish a book please reach out to us via our contact page.
We are happy to announce that we have expanded as a new member of the Incubation Program at Common Tone Arts, a 501[3][c] non-profit organization, whose mission is to transform lives through artistic creation and education.Click hereto learn more about Common Tone Arts.
Have a wonderful holiday and an upcoming New Year. Stay connected with us onFacebookandLinkedInfor alerts on newly released books, author events, and job openings.
Please feel free to share this newsletter.
Best Regards,
Chelsea Debarros Marketing Director chelseadebarros@gmail.com
Titles Coming in 2023
Warren Smith's Crossing Borders and Playing with Pioneers: My Life in Music
GSP author Warren Smith is a Jazz drummer, conservatory trained percussionist, founding member of the percussion ensemble M'Boom, composer, bandleader, Loft Era proprietor of Studio WIS and among the first generation of Jazz educators at the University level.
Bill Stepheny, music producer and Public Enemy executive member states "Throughout the history of civilization, the drum has served as a vital form of human communication. In traditional West African cultures, those so expert in the craft of speaking and motivating through percussion are bestowed with the title of "Master Drummer." Warren Smith is a Master Drummer inaddition to being a musician of prodigious versatillitv, in collaboration with Max Roach and their groundbreaking ensemble, M' Boom, as a session laver or pit drummer for Broadway shows, Smith is a highly respected educator who has taught the essence of music history by being the essence of music history. When you hear the polyrhythms of contemporary jazz or the syncopated funk breakbeats that became the sonic foundation for Hip Hop, you're hearing the influences of the legendary Warren Smith.
Kirpal Gordon's East River Fall Concerto will be serialized at the Giant Steps Press blog one chapter at a time with a featured photo every Friday starting 12/2/2022.
Giant Steps Press is elated to offer the the Dual Internship Program. This program is offered to college students and recent graduates who are passionate about making positive impacts in their communities.
During this one of a kind dual internship, interns are given the opportunity to write their own book or develop a project under the guidance of our editors, while also getting paid to assist the Giant Steps Press team in book design, digital publishing, public relations and social media. After an incubation period, Giant Steps interns choose an area they want to focus in learning more about and will map out with the team a series of learn-by-doing assignments for the press.
Working with our teams, authors and other interns, creates a well rounded experience as Giant Steps interns grow an esprit de corps and increase their acuity at time management, problem solving and communicating with people from different generations, backgrounds and ethnicities.
Please note the program is completely virtual and interns have the opportunity to grow within the company.
Here are some of our current interns who are success stories:
1) Chelsea Debarros is making an impact in the Guyanese American community as an author with her in-progress non-fiction book Backtrack Journeys: Life of the Undocumented in Little Guyana. Her goal with her first publication is to share the American identity of the undocumented Guyanese in Little Guyana and empower young people to be their authentic selves and embrace all of the parts that construct their identity. To learn more about her project click here.
Click Here to view Chelsea's latest interview in her Women in Writing Series with Mary Louise Kiernan, the author of The Gift of Glossophobia.
Click Here to read Chelsea's interview Unacceptable Rules Made to Be Brokenwith author Jim Cohn on the GSP blog.
2) Helen Izbor is of Ukrainian and Polish-Romanian heritage but born in Moscow, Russia, and has spent the last five years in New York studying Political Science and Criminal Justice at Hofstra University. She is currently writing Russia’s Post-Imperial Trauma: What Putin Learned from Hitler.
Click Hereto read Helen's latest post at the GSP blog Putin Robbed Russians of $1 Trillion.
Click Here to read Helen's latest post at the GSP blog Viewing Russia and Turkey through the Lens of Post-Imperial Trauma.
3) Emily Rivera joined Giant Step Press as an intern in January of 2020 at the start of her final two semesters of undergraduate study. Bringing her skills in public relations, her major, and in photography, her minor, she began to build her career. Since taking a full-time position for a marketing firm as a premium content specialist where she earned a promotion, she now volunteers her services consulting on media. Click here to connect with Emily on LinkedIn.
Click Here to read Emily's Interview with Kirpal Gordon on his book Lyrical Miracle.
For inquiries on our internship program, or if you would like join the team as an intern, please reach out to Chelsea Debarros (chelseadebarros@gmail.com) and monitor our LinkedIn page for job openings.
Recently Published
Jim Cohn's Treasures for Heaven: Collected Poems 1976-2021
In author, poet, and spoken word activist, Jim Cohn's Treasures for Heaven: Collected Poems 1976-2021, hispoetry reflects a unique compendium of lineages: Black Mountian, Beat Generation, New York School, Black Arts, Feminist Poetry Movement, Environmental Jusitce poets, and countercultural luminaries which he identified with since his days as a student at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.
Giant Steps Press has founded the Women in Writing series where woman authors, writers, and poets are featured.
In the first video episode of the series, Giant Steps Press features Mary Louise Kiernan, the author of her new poetry collection The Gift of Glossophobia. In Part one of Mary Louise's interview, she speaks with GSP intern and host Chelsea Debarros about her journey as a writer and how she turned glossophobia into a gift.
John Rullo playing in his band The Cocktails during the Covid-19 Pandemic.
It was a given that during the fifteen years The Cocktails had been together as a band, we would have a gig on the weekends somewhere. We were booked to play at a private party on March 14, 2020, just a few days after a pandemic was declared in the US. It was a strange night watching those who attended keeping a distance, tapping fists, and bumping elbows. There was no hugging, kissing, or shaking hands. It was the last time we played as a band for almost two years.
Just a month later, we got word that our booking agent died in a hospital while on a ventilator. Not long after, the news would periodically leak out about some fellow musicians getting seriously sick from this new frightening disease. Sadly, a few had the same fate as our agent.
Although the pandemic was inspirational for me, as I continually wrote new songs, I wondered if the band was ever going to play again as clubs were closing and the demand for live music had vanished. But then the vaccine came along, and even though we were first reluctant to comply, we knew if we wanted to perform in public places again, we had no choice.
Slowly but surely, things returned to semi-normal. On Thanksgiving Eve, 2021 we played at one of our regular venues only to learn that a couple of days later the gig turned out to be a super spreader. Someone in the crowd must have been infected and in turn infected 75 percent of those in attendance. Thankfully, however, everyone fully recovered, and nobody died. We felt terrible about it since most came to see and listen to us.
We have been gigging regularly again, but those two years made us aware that at anytime, anywhere, anything can happen. We know not to take things for granted and will probably keep rocking until we drop!
- John Rullo
Review of William Seaton's Planetary Motions
William Seaton's Planetary Motions
William Seaton's October 2020 release Planetary Motions is a collection of poems that provides readers the ability to explore the wonders of the world despite the frustrating human inability to fully comprehend it.
Karen Corinne, an author with poetry publications in American Book Review, Compulsive Reader and North of Oxford reviewed Seaton's Planetary Motions on book and poetry review site Compulsive Reader.
Corrine's review breaks down her interpretation of highlighted poems such as On Ganges Shore and reflects on Seaton's citizen of the world perspective.
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