Pulley Press attended the 2023 Association of Writers and Programs Conference in Seattle to share our poetry books from rural writers and meet with other talented writers from all over the country.

Ted Kooser’s, “A Man With A Rake” receives praise from Kirkus Reviews! The review hones in n Kooser’s ability to capture the beauty of the in-between moments in American rural life. For Kooser, it was the creaks of a house settling or farm animals that turned into music. A time in our lives when everything felt like what stood in front of us was enough.

Intentional Balk: Baseball’s Thin Line between Innovation and Cheating, written by Daniel R. Levitt and Mark Armour and published by Clyde Hill Publishing, is the winner of the 2023 Dr. Harold and Dorothy Seymour Medal, which honors the best book of baseball history or biography published during the preceding calendar year.

The Moon Bear, a full-color children’s book recently released by Clyde Hill Publishing, marks the literary debut of Seattle’s beloved Public Radio host Steve Scher, who built a reputation at KUOW-FM for giving guests the space to present their ideas with nuance. Scher brings a similar sensitivity, and an ear for poetic language, to his newest project. 

In Intentional Balk, to be released in July by Clyde Hill Publishing, nationally recognized baseball historians Dan Levitt and Mark Armour examine cheating in baseball as the pursuit of a competitive edge that, in other endeavors, might be heralded as innovation.

We Had Our Reasons, a groundbreaking new volume of poetry from Pulley Press, offers a startling look into an American community of Mexican farmworkers. Centered around the town of Othello, in eastern Washington state, this collection by Ricardo Ruiz was written in collaboration with his friends, family members and coworkers, many of whom are, or were, migrants. Ruiz—a decorated college graduate, military veteran, former farmworker and recovering addict—is a gifted poet whose work here ushers in a powerful new voice in American poetry.

Clyde Hill Publishing announced today that A Spark of Revolution: William Small, Thomas Jefferson and James Watt, by Martin Clagett, will be released on Feb. 22. This first-ever biography explores the curious connection between the American Revolution and the Industrial Revolution.

Clyde Hill Publishing today announced that Frances McCue, the Seattle-based poet, author, professor and literary activist who co-founded Hugo House, one of the nation’s largest literary centers, will be the founding editor of a new poetry imprint devoted to discovering and promoting voices from rural America. Pulley Press will supplement Clyde Hill Publishing’s current list of nonfiction titles focused on the confluence of business, economics, technology, history and society.

With this beautiful set of eighteen poems by Kooser, Pulley Press is charting its course to celebrate poetry from the rural interior of America. A Man with a Rake is an auspicious launch– Kooser, in his eighties now,  is a master of American letters (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry and twice the US Poet Laureate), and he’s well-known for his poems about life in the middle of the country. 

We began Clyde Hill Publishing and our emerging poetry imprint, Pulley Press, because we’re interested in people who think differently – founders innovators, thinkers, and tinkerers. The painter and sculptor Jasper Johns checks all of these boxes. And more.

John Rossman, a former Amazon leader, announces the 3rd edition of The Amazon Way (June 8, 2021, Clyde Hill Publishing) – the ultimate leadership manual for innovation, digital transformation and business growth.

This business classic translates Amazon’s unique culture and management practices into insights and opportunities, as only an Amazon executive and expert advisor could do.

We are honored and thrilled to share we are recipients of a Silver Stevie Award for Best Business Book 2021. Hire Purpose: How Smart Companies Can Close the Skills Gap, written by Deanna Mulligan with Greg Shaw, explores how emerging technology will revolutionize nearly every job, eliminate some, and create new forms of work that we have yet to imagine.

Clyde Hill Publishing’s writers and editors contributed to 3 books that won 4 literary awards this month.

In I Had No Idea You Were Black, Dr. Crutcher takes readers on his journey, which unfolded against the backdrop of America’s Civil Rights Movement. As a child musician, he met with Coretta Scott King. As an educator, he sat at Maya Angelou’s holiday table. But it is Dr. Crutcher’s success as a Black intellectual navigating highly charged social issues that makes his story both timely and unforgettable.

2020 was a pleasantly productive year for me, literarily speaking. I did a lot of writing of my own. More on that another time. I also decided to stop pretending that I had read, really read, some seminal classics, like Don Quixote, Beowulf and Canterbury Tales. That’s right, I finally read them, carefully. I loved the new translations of Beowulf and Canterbury Tales. No comment on Quixote. (Stick with the theatrical version of the man from La Mancha. Blasphemy, for sure.) In leaning toward the backlist, I was right in line with prevailing trends: during Covid many of us caught up on some serious reading of time-tested classics.

This has been a blazingly busy year at Clyde Hill Publishing, as we’ve helped to bring the stories of activists, physicians, and intellectuals to the world. I’ve also had the pleasure of reading more, and more widely, than ever. These books were among my favorites from a year when taking a few hours to see the world through another person’s perspective provided more than mere escape.

Is it possible to have a good death, free from unnecessary pain and trauma? What if our final days were designed to bring about reconciliation and release? In this wise and large-hearted book, Dr. Jim deMaine offers advice pointing the way toward a grace-filled transition out of life.

Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac inspired many environmental readers and writers not only to love the little things in nature but also to do what we can to protect them. I first read it as a young speechwriter for a former U.S. Secretary of the Interior. Leopold’s essay on the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon in 1914 touched me so deeply that I, a nonscientist, took up serious bird-watching and also the study of phylogenetics. Not long after the radio program, “Bird Note,” began broadcasting on Seattle’s NPR station, I suggested the story of the Passenger Pigeon to producers, which lead to a beautiful memorial.

In the winter of 1917, as Europe spiraled rapidly out of control and pulled the U.S. into the greatest conflict the world had ever seen, a talented band of athletes in the Pacific Northwest fought to turn themselves into an elite team. That elite team would battle the looming war, their own insecurities, and fierce opponents on both coasts of Canada to captivate a community and journey toward hockey immortality.

A lot of writers cast editors as the bad guys, the kill-joys. Clods who stomp all over our brilliant linguistic trills. It’s always perplexed me because, in my writing life, editors are the unsung heroes. I’ve weathered mismatches, sure, editors who saw themselves as sausage-makers. Who didn’t have the time, or the ear, or the knowledge of a topic that I might have wished. But through thirty years of having my sentences kneaded and tweezed, even when I haven’t initially agreed with an editor’s decision, I’ve always come to understand why it was made