Ig Publishing

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American publishing company

Ig PublishingFounded| 2002

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Country of origin| United States
Headquarters location| New York City
Distribution| Publishers Group West (US)
Turnaround Publisher Services (UK)[1]
Key people| Robert Lasner
Publication types| Books
Official website| www.igpub.com

Ig Publishing is a New York-based press devoted to publishing original literary fiction and political and cultural nonfiction. The editor is writer Robert Lasner, and the publisher is Elizabeth Clementson. The press was founded in 2002.[2]

Among Ig's awards are a PEN/Hemingway Honorable Mention for Damn Love by Jasmine Beach-Ferrara,[3] an Indie Next selection for Rachel Weaver's Point of Direction,[4] a Sydney Taylor Honor book selection for Isabel's War by Lila Perl,[5] a 5 Under 35 pick for The Hopeful,[6] an ALA Notable pick in fiction for Missile Paradise by Ron Tanner,[7] a Montana Book Award Honorable Mention for A Bloom of Bones,[8] a Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Shortlist Selection [9] a 2018 CLMP Firecracker Award nomination for Empire of Glass, a Center For Fiction longlist selection for Restless Souls, a Great Group Reads selection for Unfurled.[10] Ig's titles have been reviewed in The New York Times, Booklist, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Oprah Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, NPR, and many other places.

## History

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Ig was founded in 2002 with the release of Robert Lasner's novel For Fucks Sake. The press also released a series of Dive Bar guides to select cities – New York, Chicago and San Francisco – from 2002 to 2004. Ig also released several literary novels, including Grant Bailie's Cloud 8 and Richard Madelin's Careful!

Inspired by the rise of the progressive political blogosphere, Ig began publishing political non-fiction, along with literary fiction.[11] Among the blog books that Ig released were Confessions of a Former Dittohead (2006), Framing the Debate by Jeffrey Feldman, Moving A Nation to Care by Ilona Meagher, and Steeplejacking: How the Christian Right is Hijacking Mainstream Religion by John Dorhauer and Sheldon Culver (all in 2007).

During this time, Ig also re-published several non-fiction classics, including Edward Bernays's Propaganda, Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders, and Empire As A Way of Life by William Appleman Williams.

## Increasing reputation in politics

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Ig's political list continued to grow, as the press gained a reputation as an important voice in progressive political publishing. In December 2007, Moving A Nation to Care: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and America's Returning Troops was highlighted before Congress when its author was called to testify at a House Committee on Veterans' Affairs hearing.[12] And, in the lead-up to the 2008 election, Ig published Loser Take All: Election Fraud and The Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008, highlighting the vast electoral fraud in the 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006 elections. The collection was edited by Mark Crispin Miller.

Other political highlights for the press were Jill Richardson's Recipe for America (2009) on the American food system; union activist Joe Burns on the need for the labor movement to bring back the production-halting strike, Reviving the Strike (2011), and its companion title, Strike Back (2014) on the rising public employee labor upsurge; Crow After Roe, on the state-level war against abortion; and Part of the Family, about the rising movement to gain rights for domestic workers.

In 2013, Ig released The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism by award-winning investigative journalist Trevor Aaronson.[13] An outgrowth of Aaronson's article for Mother Jones magazine, The Terror Factory exposed how the FBI, under the guise of engaging in counterterrorism since 9/11, built a network of more than 15,000 informants whose primary purpose is to infiltrate Muslim communities to create and facilitate phony terrorist plots so that the Bureau can then claim it is winning the war on terror.

In 2016, Ig published Boy With A Knife by Jean Trounstine. Boy With A Knife tells the story of Karter Kane Reed, who, at the age of sixteen, was sentenced to life in an adult prison for a murder he committed in 1993 in a high school classroom. Twenty years later, in 2013, he became one of the few men in Massachusetts to sue the Parole Board and win his freedom.

Recent political/current affairs titles have included American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle for Self-Determination and Inclusion by Stephanie Woodard, which offers the most comprehensive and compelling account of the issues and threats that Native Americans face today, as well as their heroic battle to overcome them; The Tribalization of Politics by Ian Reifowitz, which explores how the conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh “tribalized” American politics through his racially divisive, falsehood-ridden portrayal of President Obama; an updated edition of Strike Back by Joe Burns; The End of Roe v. Wade by Robin Marty and Jessica Mason Pieklo; and Why America Needs Socialism by G.S. Griffin. In 2021, Ig released The Heartbeat of Iran by Tara Kangarlou, and in 2022, Putin's Trolls: On the Frontlines of Russia's Disinformation War Against the World by Jessikka Aro. In the book, the author, a Finnish journalist, writes about being targeted by Russian social media trolls.

## Literary fiction

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Ig is particularly known for its literary fiction. In 2012, the press released The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets by Diana Wagman, which was named a Barnes and Noble Discover pick. In 2014, Ig released Point of Direction by Rachel Weaver, which was named an Indie Next selection. Ig has had multiple titles reviewed by prestigious publications including The New York Times, NPR, Publishers Weekly, Oprah Magazine, Kirkus Reviews and Booklist. Damn Love, a short story collection by Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, received a PEN/Hemingway Honorable Mention in 2014. In 2015, Tracy O'Neill's The Hopeful was named a 5 Under 35 pick by the National Book Foundation.[14] The press's fiction list has won several more awards since then, including the CLMP Firecracker Award in Fiction in 2022 for Celeste Mohammed's Pleasantview, a novel-in-stories set in Trinidad.

## Bookmarked

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In 2016, Ig launched its Bookmarked series, where an author writes on a book that had a profound impact on their writing and life.[15] Kirby Gann authored the first book in the series, on John Knowles' A Separate Peace. Other titles that first year included Curtis Smith on Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, and Hobart editor Aaron Burch on Stephen King's The Body. Titles in the series since then include Jaime Clarke on Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, David Ryan on Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, Steve Yarbrough on Larry McMurtry's The Last Picture Show, Michael Seidlinger on Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves, Brian Evenson on Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Charles Holdefer on George Saunders' Pastoralia, Steve Almond on John Williams's Stoner, Kim McLarin on James Baldwin's Another Country, Sven Birkerts on Nabokov's Speak, Memory, Pamela Erens on George Eliot's Middlemarch, and Robin Black on Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.[16]

## References

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1. ^ "Publishers Representatives | Publishers Distributors". Turnaround Publisher Services. Archived from the original on 2017-07-01. Retrieved 2018-01-12.
2. ^ "Ig Publishing Marks a Decade". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 1 February 2015.
3. ^ "PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction". PEN New England. Archived from the original on 24 December 2013. Retrieved 1 February 2015.
4. ^ "An Indies Introduce Debut Author Q&A With Rachel Weaver - American Booksellers Association". bookweb.org. 14 May 2014. Retrieved 1 February 2015.
5. ^ Rauchwerger, Diane (January 20, 2015). "MEDIA RELEASE: 2015 Sydney Taylor Book Awards Announced by AJL" (PDF). Sydney Taylor Book Award Committee. Association of Jewish Libraries. Retrieved June 18, 2019.[permanent dead link]
6. ^ "Here Are the 2015 National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honorees". BuzzFeed.
7. ^ "Readers' advisory experts announce 2017 Notable Books List: Year's best in literary fiction, nonfiction and poetry for adults". 21 January 2017.
8. ^ "2016". Archived from the original on 2017-09-15.
9. ^ "Center for Fiction Announces 2017 First Novel Prize Shortlist".
10. ^ "National Reading Group Month -- Great Group Reads Selections 2019".
11. ^ "Turning Activist Blogs Into Books". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 16 June 2019.
12. ^ "Stopping Suicides: Mental Health Challenges within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs | House Committee on Veterans' Affairs". Archived from the original on 2015-04-02. Retrieved 2015-03-28.
13. ^ "FBI sting operations: Fair or entrapment? - Videos - CBS News". CBS News. Archived from the original on 2015-02-19.
14. ^ "Tracy O'Neill, author of The Hopeful, 5 Under 35, 2015, National Book Foundation". Archived from the original on 2015-11-08.
15. ^ "Ig Plans Series on Books That Inspired Writers to Write". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 16 June 2019.
16. ^ Salvatore, Joseph (11 July 2016). "The Writers' Writers: Bookmarked Series by Ig Publishing AARON BURCH, KIRBY GANN, CURTIS SMITH, and ROBERT LASNER with Joseph Salvatore". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 16 June 2019.

## Further reading

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* Villarosa, Linda. "Tiny Fort Greene Publisher Celebrates 10 Surprisingly Successful Years". The Local - Fort-Greene. Archived from the original on September 20, 2015. Retrieved February 1, 2015.
* Zipp, Yvonne (September 24, 2013). "Lizzie Skurnick Books Brings Back YA Classics". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 13, 2018.