Levine Querido Launches new imprint Re-Lit with Virginia Hamilton’s Liberation Literature
Levine Querido Launches new imprint Re-Lit with Virginia Hamilton’s Liberation Literature
HOBOKEN—Thursday, June 25—Award winning independent publisher Levine Querido is launching Re-Lit, a new imprint devoted to re-issuing out-of-print works from creators from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds. The imprint will publish one new title per season. The inaugural title on the list is children’s literature luminary Virginia Hamilton’s collection of essays, speeches, and published conversations, Liberation Literature: Collected Writings of Virginia Hamilton, featuring a foreword from the founder and editor-in-chief of Kweli Journal, Laura Pegram. Jim Grimsley’s Dream Boy, now with a new foreword from National Book Award Winner Justin Torres, and the collected poems of Laguna Pueblo poet and scholar Paula Gunn Allen will follow in Spring 2025 and Fall 2025 respectively.
Virginia Hamilton was the author of over forty books for young people, including The House of Dies Drear, The People Could Fly, M. C. Higgins the Great, Her Stories, and The Planet of Junior Brown. She was the first Black writer to win a Newbery Medal and won many significant other awards including the Newbery Honor, Coretta Scott King Award, National Book Award, Boston Globe / Horn Book Award, Children's Literature Legacy Award, and Hans Christian Andersen Award. She was the first children's book author to be awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant, and in 2010 the ALA established the Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Award in her honor, to recognize an African American author, illustrator, or author/illustrator's significant and lasting contribution to children's literature. Hamilton passed away in 2002 at the age of sixty-six.
Hamilton described her work as ''liberation literature.'' This landmark book — since fallen out of print and now lovingly restored and repackaged a gorgeous, flexibound edition — brings together her essays, speeches, and interviews into one thought-provoking, incisive, inspiring whole.
“When I founded Levine Querido in 2019 it was with a mission to seek out and publish the brilliant work of authors and artists from communities that had been historically overlooked or under-appreciated by the mainstream publishing community,” Levine Querido’s president and editor-in-chief, Arthur A. Levine said.
“I hope that the new work that LQ has helped bring out has brought great pleasure and satisfaction to readers. With ReLit, we hope to address the further reality that even when creators from marginalized communities did break through into publishing (as Nancy Larrick wrote in an article published on September 11, 1965, the “All-White World of Children’s Books”) they often faced problematic assumptions about how big a readership their work would reach, and how its value would be counted. Some of those books never reached the full audience they deserved. Many went out of print too quickly. We will search for these buried treasures and do our very best to cast a new light that will allow them to sparkle once more.”
About Levine Querido
Arthur A. Levine founded the independent publisher Levine Querido on April 1st, 2019. Previously he led an eponymous imprint at Scholastic, and was editor-in-chief of Alfred A. Knopf books for young readers, and G.P.Putnam’s Sons books for young readers. Visit www.levinequerido.com for a full archive of the imprint’s awards, honors, and publications. LQ is distributed by Chronicle Books.
About Chronicle:
Chronicle Books was founded in 1967 and over the years has developed a reputation for award-winning, innovative books. Recognized as one of the 50 best small companies to work for in the U.S., Chronicle Books’ objective is to create and distribute exceptional publishing that’s instantly recognizable for its spirit, creativity, and value. www.chroniclebooks.com