Did you catch Hub City Writer’s Project on Whad’ya Know? this weekend? Host Michael Feldman spoke with Hub City executive editor Betsy Teter and Deno Trakas about the project and its mission on the show. If you were listening, you probably heard her shout-out to her distributor, John F. Blair, Publisher! If you missed the show, you can listen to it online (Betsy and Deno chat with the host around minute marker 11 in part 3 of the Feb. 12, 2011, show).
Modeled after Roosevelt’s federal writers’ project, Hub City works to support and promote emerging authors and preserving the collective memory of Spartanburg, S.C., where the organization is based. Hub City covers everything–the staff train writers through workshops, publish writers through the Hub City Press, and then sell the books in their bookshop. In 15 years, Hub City has published more than 300 writers, sold some 70,000 books, renovated two historic downtown buildings, and given away more than $15,000 in scholarships to emerging writers. It has won South Carolina’s Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Award for the Arts, the SC Governor’s Award for the Humanities, and three first-place IPPY (Independent Publisher) Awards.
Want to learn more about the kind of work the press publishes? Check out their two spring titles: Brian Ray’s Through the Pale Door (now available in paperback), and Matt Matthews’s Mercy Creek.
John F. Blair, Publisher 
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