6-Week Workshop: Fall 2025 Cohort!

As always, we have a lovely and varied group of authors in our 6-Week Book Publicity Intensive! It’s been a joy watching all the websites and press materials come together and to see the community support in our online group. This Fall cohort includes several professors publishing with academic presses, a narrative nonfiction writer, plus a trio of brilliant novelists and short story writers. And for a cherry on top, one of our authors turned 90 during the course of the workshop — happy birthday Ed Friedman! 🎂

Here’s a spotlight on some of the authors and their work:

Overparenting and overwhelmed: Nina Bendelj’s OVERINVESTED

Contemporary parenting has turned children into investment projects — and it’s exhausting moms and dads, both emotionally and financially. Tracing the shift from postwar parenting advice to today's privatized childrearing, UC Irvine sociology professor Nina Bandelj examines how this intensive mode of raising kids traps families, and calls for radical policy change in order to restore balance. 

OVERINVESTED: The Emotional Economy of Modern Parenting publishes in January 2026 with Princeton University Press. 

After the end of slavery, the asylum: Diana Martha Louis’s COLORED INSANE

Professor Diana Martha Louis uncovers how, in the wake of slavery, psychiatric institutions became a new method for whites to control newly freed Black people—often referred to as the “colored insane” Through figures like Harriet Tubman and five women confined in the Georgia Lunatic Asylum, Louis offers a critical account of this era’s intersection of racism, sexism, and ableism. Louis also traces how Black people forged their own understandings of mental health grounded in freedom and spirituality. 

COLORED INSANE: Slavery, Asylums and Mental Illness in 19th-Century America just published on October 28 by Columbia University Press.

The New Face and Necessity of Nuclear Energy: Edward A. Friedman’s NUCLEAR ENERGY
The debate around nuclear power is shrouded in fear, myth, and misinformation. In this book, Edward Friedman draws on his lifelong study of the field to offer a clear-eyed view of nuclear power’s vital role in mitigating the climate crisis and to explain today’s reactors which promise to be fail-safe and have near-zero emissions. He makes a persuasive case that a sustainable future requires nuclear energy — even more important now with the tremendous energy demands of AI.  

NUCLEAR ENERGY: Boom, Bust, and Emerging Renaissance was published July 2025 by Oxford University Press.

How Companies Profited from the Optics of Racial Justice: Professor Atinuke Adediran’s DISCLOSURELAND

IIn 2020, when it was economically beneficial, companies around the country preached the importance of equity and diversity — but  5 years later and with Trump in office, those promises have all gone out the window. Drawing on data from over 2,000 companies, including Amazon and Walmart, Professor Atinuke Adediran shows why the commitments surged, why they crumbled, and what their unraveling means for shareholders, employees, customers, and the future of racial fairness in America's corporate world. 

DISCLOSURELAND: How Corporate Words Constrain Racial Progress will be published in January 2026 by Cambridge University Press.

China between the past and the present: new novel, OASIS, from Yang Huang

Winner of the Cai Emmons Fiction Award, OASIS by Yang L. Huang follows Kaier, a determined woman who leaves her rural Chinese village as a climate refugee to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor. In the bustling city of Nanjing, she must confront loneliness, job discrimination, and her devotion to the loved ones she left behind. As in her previous novels, Huang’s writing abounds with sharp insights and a quiet humor, revealing the complexity of a young woman's fight to define her future in a world and a climate that is rapidly changing.

OASIS will be published by Red Hen Press in 2027.

Keeping Kids Safe from Coercion, Online and Off: Robin Boyle-Laisure’s TAKEN NO MORE

Human traffickers and cult leaders recruit people using similar tactics of coercion and control, both online and off. This practical guide by attorney and St. John’s Law professor Robin Boyle-Laisure helps parents, teachers, mental health professionals, and law enforcement protect children by building awareness of the risks—without instilling fear. 

TAKEN NO MORE: Protect Your Children Against Traffickers and Cults is publishing this month from Bloomsbury.