NEWS: StepSister Press / Bridge Books Announces the Publication of “Making Way: Sailing Into The Revolutionary Storm”

NEWS

StepSister Press / Bridge Books Announces the Publication of “Making Way: Sailing Into The Revolutionary Storm”, a collaborative book project, by Dick Farkas author, M.A. Papanek-Miller artist, and Jessica Larva, designer.

MAKING WAY: SAILING INTO THE REVOLUTIONARY STORM

StepSister Press, an imprint of Bridge Books, publisher of the Bridge Journal, a division of Bridge Art Nfp, the registered Illinois 501 (c) 3 not for profit organization that also publishes the weekly online Bridge magazine at bridge-chicago.org, today announces publication of its first Young Adult title. 

Written by Dick Farkas with drawings by M.A. Papanek-Miller and designed by Jessica Larva, Making Way: Sailing Into The Revolutionary Storm is an adventure story that takes place on the waterways of colonial America, on a schooner (sailing ship) named Commerce. The story embraces a group of unlikely teenagers who find each other, an experienced sailor and a dog who collectively embark on a life changing journey during the political upheaval that surrounded the start of a new country. The teens face uncertainty living in a society not yet crystallized and not yet framed by a clear value system, which creates questions and presents dilemmas as their lives unfold. The main characters are challenged to reflect on and measure their own simple logic and their moral instinct against the mores and discrimination of the society around them. With every chapter, the drawings are in conversation with the written story, and they provide a visual context for the revolutionary era time period. The story, drawings, and book design evolved as a creative collaborative project which gave rise to this book as an object to hold, read, see, and experience.

“Young adults today face challenges unimagined just a generation or two ago,” says Farkas. “The characters in Making Way: Sailing Into The Revolutionary Storm were also confronted by choices never anticipated in their world. In both, the pace of change is accelerating. Readers are coaxed to offer choices to their peers and begin to focus on the consequences.”

“As the last title in development by outgoing StepSister Press founder Annie Heckman, I was honored to have the opportunity to shepherd this title to fruition,” says StepSister Press / Bridge Books Publisher Michael Workman. “Our publication of Making Way: Sailing Into The Revolutionary Storm also marks the launch of our focus line of new Young Adult titles. 

“I couldn’t think of a better way to launch our Young Adult line than with this moving story of Alan, Na, Nev, Chris, Rose and Bud’s teenage adventures on the waterways of colonial America. This story of struggle and survival, charged with the first encounters of a new world depicted in such classic young adult titles as Chandler Warner’s Boxcar Kids, while also recalling the moral development that takes place in Huck Finn’s travels on the waterways of the Mississippi.

“Brought to life by M.A. Papanek’s exquisitely wrought drawings throughout the book, and cohesively drawn together in an attractive book design by Jessica Larva, we expect Making Way: Sailing Into The Revolutionary Storm to transfix and thrill our target 12-18 age group, and Young Adult readers in general, for years to come.”

About Dick Farkas

Dick Farkas grew up on the East Coast sailing in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. With an undergraduate degree from Northwestern and a Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in Political Science, he has been teaching college students for over fifty years about the ways politics intersects with life in a world with accelerating rates of change. Teaching about "comparative" politics, the responsibilities have facilitated travel to over sixty countries, four continents, six oceans, three circumnavigations, and countless relationships with fascinating characters. Politics is a driving force in our lives whether students and young adults understand and appreciate that or not. Making Way is the attempt to challenge young adults to think about that and to coax them to set their own courses.

About M.A. Papanek-Miller

M.A. Papanek-Miller is an artist who creates layered mixed media and drawing related works that are informed by our human relationships with animals, plants, water access and use which are seasoned with a bit of humor and worry. She explores quiet color on a variety of different sizes and surfaces and the images in her works are often drawn from collected childhood and related objects which contain their own individual stories. She was awarded an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, received an Individual Artist Grant from the Seattle Arts Commission, and exhibits with Jean Albano Gallery inChicago. She has an MFA in Art from the University of Houston, TX. and she is an Art (drawing) Professor and the Director of The Art School at DePaul University. She served in similar positions at The University of Montana, Bemidji State University, MN, and at Cornish College of the Arts, WA. She lives and works between Chicago and the Northwoods Lake Country of Minnesota.

About Jessica Larva

Jessica Larva is a contemporary artist whose work explores phenomena of visual perception. She earned a BFA and MFA in new media art at the Ohio State University, and now lives in Chicago, Illinois where she is an Associate Professor in the Art School at DePaul University. Larva's artwork has been exhibited in notable exhibitions including solo shows From Where I Stand in Riley Hall Gallery at the University of Notre Dame, Leeward at the College of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas, and Fluid Horizons at Ohio Dominican University. Other recent exhibitions include Flourish at the d'Art Center in Virginia, Insight at the Cape Cod Museum of Art in Massachusetts and Inhabit at theManifest Gallery in Ohio. Larva was formerly the studio assistant for artist Ann Hamilton and a founding member of Fuse Factory, an art and technology non-profit. Visit her artist website.

View the full press release here.