What We Think
The Head & The Hand Press is a Craft Publishing Company based in Philadelphia.
We call it that because we consider writers to be artisans and we think that they should have control over the process of crafting a book from when the first word is put on the page, to when the first book hits the shelf. The Head & The Hand Press is inspired by the growing movement of artisans who are reviving Philadelphia’s fractured post-industrial landscape into a local network of quality craft manufacturing. With that same spirit, we hope to build a publishing company that can successfully market books while keeping the integrity of the work in the hands of the writer.
With the right mix of good business practices and artistic integrity, we look for books that have the power to change and to entertain. We strive to work with authors, both aspiring and established, whose work is not specific to one set of ideas or to one way of life. Our only goal is to produce writing that shows a connection from the head to the hand. These thoughts can be of this world or of a world yet imagined. And the actions provoked can manifest physically or abstractly. Whatever the relationship or the result, we hope that all of the work we produce documents a progressing society and an evolving humanity.
The Head & The Hand Press is supported by a team of bibliophiles led by Nic Esposito. Along with developing urban farm projects in the city, he and his wife Elisa operate a small urban homestead populated by a dog, two cats, chickens and a whole bunch of bees. He writes about social change for blogs and magazines and has spoken on sustainability at the 2010 TED X Philly Conference. He is the author of Seeds of Discent and is currently working on his second novel.
Our correspondence and literary sensibility come from Linda Gallant. Her love of books began with a well-worn copy of The Wizard of Oz and culminated in stints at Princeton University Press and Time Inc. She hopes that the story of Baum coming up with the title for his book by glancing at a file cabinet marked O-Z is true.
Our marketing and promotion efforts come from Kerry Boland. She developed her passion for words at a very young age–writing her first short story at age 6 about an anthropomorphic rug. It is a passion that has carried her through a diverse career in communications, including gigs in public relations, ghost writing, and magazine publishing. She wishes that Mark Twain had lived long enough to have had a Twitter account.
Chloe Westman provides us with editing assistance and workshop support. Her stint in publishing utilizes her lifelong bibliophilia, which began with a few well-worn Roald Dahl paperbacks and now encompasses most of her apartment. A recent graduate of Temple University, she comes to us with a background in media studies and various editing gigs. When not reading or writing, she maintains an embarrassingly large number of ongoing needlework projects.
Our marketing support comes from Claire Margheim. Claire has always wanted to be a painter, but her brother Luke got all the talent. She decided to stick with writing, and its taken her from reporting and speechwriting to nonprofit marketing. She counts going to a reading by poet Richard Wilbur as one of the best-spent nights of her life. Claire and her husband Stephen live in West Philly with their cat, Moxie.
Jeannette Bordeau manages our presence in the Twitter world, and all other social presences. She was first struck by poetry from the works of John Donne and Pablo Neruda. Jeannette joined us with a background in public relations and an editorial eye, along with degrees in PR & English from Penn State. A stickler for quality greeting cards with the briefest messages, Jeannette also makes her own with card stock and wrapping paper scraps.