6-Week Workshop: Fall 2025 Cohort!
As always, we have a lovely and varied group of authors in our Fall 6-Week Book Publicity Intensive! It’s been a joy seeing them support each other almost daily in our online forum. This season, we have a majority-scholarly crew with a welcome handful of novelists and an essay writer sprinkled in.
Here’s a spotlight on a handful of authors and their wonderful 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 from 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 published October 28 from 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 published July 2025 from 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 is released in January 2026 from Cambridge University Press.
China between the past and the present: new novel, OASIS, from Yang Huang
Winner of the Cai Emmon’s Fiction Award, OASIS by Yang Huang follows Kaier, a determined woman from rural China who moves to the bustling city of Nanjing to follow her dream of becoming a doctor. She must balance her hopes with academic hardship, familial expectations, and a devotion to those she left behind. As in her previous novels, Huang’s writing abounds with sharp insights and a quiet humor, revealing the complexity of family relationships amidst a rapidly changing culture.
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: Protect Your Children Against Traffickers and Cults
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.