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Our Story

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Our Ideals

our business philosophy

We value authenticity and fresh ideas. From the submissions process where we choose our projects right down to the crafting of each finished book, we aim to produce an experience that will enrich the lives of our readers.

ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY 

We greatly value the wild and invest in environmental conservation. Our books are printed on paper with chain of custody certification from the Forest Stewardship Council, Sustainable Forestry Initiative, and the Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification.

Small Press, Big Ideas

We are a small press with big ideas set on publishing substance over flash. We routinely work with authors who don’t fit neatly into the corporate publishing model, giving a voice to the countless independent thinkers currently neglected by the mainstream media.

Giving back

We have a strong sense of community. Over the years, we’ve donated to and worked with countless charities from the ACLU, to OXFAM, to the Make a Wish Foundation, to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, the Edible Schoolyard and more.

A Land Acknowledgment

Homebound Publications was founded in the small fishing village of Stonington, Connecticut on lands once occupied by the Pequot and the Mohegan people (known in present-day as the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and the Mohegan Nation, respectively) whose lands were taken from them by force and duplicity. We honor this history and hold it within our minds and hearts as we midwife our creative endeavors from this space on the Connecticut shoreline. The names of the land as quoted within our books have gone by many names in the languages of both the native peoples for whom they were home and eventually the European settlers. But let us also remember that the land exists as a sentient being beyond labels, borders, and quantification.

Our Story

Founded in a small fishing village in Connecticut in 2011 by Leslie M. Browning, Homebound Publications has grown into one of the premier independent publishers in the country. Collectively through our imprints, we publish twenty books each year, we have over one hundred titles in our library.

Over the years, our authors have received dozens of awards,  including, Foreword Reviews’ Book of the Year, the Nautilus Book Award, Benjamin Franklin Book Awards, Saltire Literary Awards and more.

We are a small press with big ideas. As an independent publisher, we strive to ensure that the mainstream is not the only stream. It is our intention to preserve contemplative storytelling. We publish full-length introspective works of creative non-fiction, literary fiction, and poetry. In all our titles, our hope to introduce new perspectives that will directly aid humankind in the trials we face at present as a global village and enrich the lives of our readers.

A Letter from the Founder

More than a Company, We are a Community

 

In 2011, I founded Homebound Publications in an effort to bring together a community of like-minded thinkers and see what the dialogue yielded.  I gathered my friends and the most insightful colleagues I knew and began. I didn’t know how the house would sustain itself or how anyone would even find our work—I couldn’t answer all the questions of viability from a business standpoint —but I nonetheless felt the need for the space to create and that was enough. In the beginning, I didn’t have any sense of how big the press would grow or how widely our titles would be shared. I simply carved out a space in which others could speak and share those deep thoughts they’d pondered, not because I saw the monetary profits in such an endeavor, but because I could see the benefit to the mind and soul.

I have always been an ardent believer in creative minds requiring a circle of fellows to push them. We’ve seen the prolific flow of ideas that occurs when the right community is gathered together to foster one another, whether it is in the Concord Transcendentalists, the Bloomsbury Group, or the Beat poets out in San Francisco. The discussion, the inspiration, the contemplation, and the community encourages the kind of boundary-pushing, ego destruction, and refinement of beliefs that bring about movements of change in the larger world. The circle I gathered back in 2011 has become bigger than I expected. It is composed of both reader and writer alike.

I think we all find our way through this life with the aid the communities we gather closest to us.  In these challenging times, when we all feel strained and lost, I urge you to gather your circle and keep them close. No one person knows the path forward. We chart the way together. I am grateful to you—our readers and contributors—for making the journey with us for the last eight years. I hope you’ll continue with us for many more to come. There is a great deal more to explore and discuss.

With Gratitude

 

Leslie M. Browning

Founder of Homebound Publications & Divisions

 

The Board of Advisors

Les Browning

Les Browning

Founder and Board Chair

L.M. Browning (they/them) is a two-spirited bestselling poet whose hybrid of introspective travel writing and visual art focuses on the alchemizing of trauma through active awe-seeking and a re-wilding of one’s life and self.

Over the last fifteen years, Les’ twenty-something intention to help “ensure the mainstream isn’t the only stream,” has taken shape in the form of the enduring indie platforms: Homebound PublicationsWayfarer Books,The Wayfarer Magazine Navigator GraphicsTheir own published works have received five Pushcart Prize nominations, two Foreword Review Book Awards, and the Nautilus Gold Medal for Poetry.

Recently Browning accepted a position on the State of Connecticut’s/NAMI’s Lived Experience Committee and received national certification as a Survivor of Suicide Attempt (SOSA), Group Peer Facilitator through the Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services Foundation in Los Angeles. They are a graduate of the University of London and Harvard University. 

Les and their coydog, Kiva, divide their time between New Mexico and Wayfarer Farm in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts.

Jason Kirkey

Jason Kirkey

Author

Jason Kirkey is an author, poet, and the founder of Hiraeth Press. He grew up in the Ipswich River-North Atlantic Coast watershed of Massachusetts. With a background in both environmental philosophy and conservation biology, Jason’s work is focused on rewilding the human heart and mind. He has written four volumes of poetry, including Estuaries, and a nonfiction book, The Salmon in the Spring. Jason is currently at work on his second nonfiction book and a novel.

Gail Collins-Ranadive

Gail Collins-Ranadive

Author and Eco-Activist

Gail Collins-Ranadive, MA, MFA, MDiv, is a retired Unitarian Universalist minister, a former nurse, a licensed private pilot, and a workshop facilitator. Author of seven non-fiction books, including two for children and two Homebound titles, she writes the environmental column for The Wayfarer. An Easterner by birth and a Westerner in spirit, she and her partner winter at her home in Las Vegas and summer at his in Denver. Gail is the mother of two and the grandmother of five.

J.K.McDowell

J.K.McDowell

Artist and Poet

J. K. McDowell is a poet, an artist and a mystic celebrating the creative spirit. His poetry collection “Night, Mystery & Light”.  An expatriate Ohioan, welcomed into the arms of Acadie, McDowell lives 20 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico with his soul mate who also happens to be his wife and their two beautiful companion parrots. McDowell’s poems and essays have appeared in The Wayfarer published by Homebound Publications. McDowell is also an artist and appreciator of art glass.
Theodore Richards

Theodore Richards

Author

Theodore Richards is the director and founder of The Chicago Wisdom Project, a core faculty member of The Fox Institute, and the author of six books. He is the recipient of numerous literary awards, including two Independent Publisher Awards, The USA Book Award, and the Nautilus Book Award. He lives in Chicago with his wife and daughters.

David K. Leff

David K. Leff

Author

David K. Leff is an essayist, Pushcart Prize nominated poet and former deputy commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection. He is the author of six nonfiction books, three volumes of poetry and a novel in verse.  His 2016 book, Canoeing Maine’s Legendary Allagash: Thoreau, Romance and Survival of the Wild won a silver medal in the Nautilus Book Awards for memoir and a silver medal in the Independent Publisher Book Awards for regional nonfiction.  In 2016-2017 the National Park Service appointed him poet-in-residence for the New England National Scenic Trail (NET).  David’s journals, correspondence, and other papers are archived at the University of Massachusetts Libraries in Amherst.

Eric D. Lehman

Eric D. Lehman

Author

Eric D. Lehman teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Bridgeport and his work has been published in dozens of journals and magazines, from Berfrois to Gastronomica. He is the author of twelve books of fiction, history, and travel, including Shadows of Paris, Homegrown Terror, Afoot in Connecticut, The Foundation of Summer, and Becoming Tom Thumb.

Eric D. Lehman teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Bridgeport and his work has been published in dozens of journals and magazines, from Berfrois to Gastronomica. He is the author of twelve books of fiction, history, and travel, including Shadows of Paris, Homegrown Terror, Afoot in Connecticut, The Foundation of Summer, and Becoming Tom Thumb.

Amy Nawrocki

Amy Nawrocki

Author

Amy Nawrocki is the poetry editor of The Wayfarer and author of five poetry collections, including Four Blue Eggs and Reconnaissance. She is the co-author of A History of Connecticut Food, A History of Connecticut Wine, and Literary Connecticut. She teaches English at the University of Bridgeport and lives in Hamden Connecticut.

Francesca G. Varela

Francesca G. Varela

Author

Francesca G. Varela was raised in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. In 2015 she graduated from the University of Oregon with degrees in Environmental Studies and Creative Writing, and she then went on to receive her master’s degree in Environmental Humanities from the University of Utah.

Francesca’s dream of becoming an author began in third grade, and her writing career had an early start; she wrote her award-winning first novel, Call of the Sun Child, when she was only 18 years old, and she wrote her second novel, Listen, when she was only 20.

When not writing or reading, Francesca enjoys playing piano, figure skating, hiking, identifying wild birds, plants, and constellations, and traveling to warm, sunny places whenever she can.

Heidi Barr

Heidi Barr

Author & Managing Editor of The Wayfarer Magazine

Heidi Barr lives in Minnesota with her husband and daughter where they tend a large organic vegetable garden, explore nature and do their best to live simply. As a mother, spouse, gardener, and wellness coach, she is committed to cultivating ways of being that are life-giving and sustainable for people, communities and the planet. Heidi holds a Master’s degree in Faith and Health Ministries, and coordinates with yoga teachers and organic farms to offer nature-based retreat experiences.
Visit her at heidibarr.com

Iris Graville

Iris Graville

Author & Editor At Large for Homebound Publications

Iris Graville writes creative nonfiction from her home on Lopez Island, WA. She holds an MFA in writing from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts and is the publisher of SHARK REEF Literary Magazine. Iris’ first book, Hands at Work, received several accolades, including a Nautilus Book Award. Her memoir, Hiking Naked—A Quaker Woman’s Search for Balance, was a finalist in the 2015 Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Contest and is now available wherever books are sold.

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Mailing Address

PO Box 1601, Northampton MA 01060

Email

info@homeboundpublications.com

Phone

(860) 574-5847