Ford Street At Bologna

This morning, my lovely publisher, Paul Collins of Ford Street Publishing, got the email below and shared it with his writers:

"Dear Paul,

Here in Munich, the spring is on hold as winter seems to be returning again but, as every year, the White Ravens are ready to "soar into the sky". My colleagues and I are delighted to inform you that we have selected the short story anthology

            Trust Me Too edited by yourself with an introduction by Judith Ridge  

as one of the titles for The White Ravens 2013, our annual selection of outstanding international books for children and young adults, which will be presented at our stand at the Bologna Children's Book Fair. The books for this year's exhibition, 250 titles from more than 40 countries, have been selected from the thousands of books that our library received as review copies from publishers, authors, illustrators, and organisations from all over the world within the last year.

The exhibition is accompanied by a printed catalogue containing bibliographical data and short reviews for each of the selected books. You will receive a copy of the catalogue (which is also available at www.ijb.de) either in Bologna or by mail after the fair.

With best wishes,

Claudia(Soeffner)"

Trust Me Too is the second of two anthologies put out by Ford Street Publishing over the last few years - this one came out only last year. I'm in both. Actually, the first one, Trust Me!, could be said to be the book that started Ford Street Publishing. Paul Collins takes on freelance editing work as well as writing himself. At one point he was commissioned to do an anthology for an education publisher which made things difficult for him. Finally, he returned the fee and decided to publish this himself. It was so very successful that last year he did a follow-up anthology. I have stories in both - historical fiction, both times set in the 1960s.

I'm in the top row, left of Isobelle Carmody

These guys are taking our anthology to Bologna, where, every year around this time, publishers from around the world gather to show off the children's books they have published in the last year, in hopes of selling foreign, or foreign language, rights. Ford Street is really too small a publishing company to be able to do this, but with luck, White Ravens will let other countries know that we have some wonderful writers here in Australia, and who knows? There may be overseas editions of Trust Me Too. Fingers crossed - and congratulations, Paul! You deserve all the good things that might flow from this.