We’d like to call your attention to several upcoming public events featuring our authors:

Joan Maloof

• February 10, 3:00 pm—Maui Arts and Culture Center, Maui, HI. With poet W.S. Merwin. Tickets required.
• April 16, 5:30 pm—Juniata Valley (PA) Audubon Society, Hoss’s Steak and Seafood House, Duncansville, PA. Dinner program.

Katie Fallon

• January 31, 5:30 pm—Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, VA.
• February 6, 7:30 pm—New River Valley Bird Club, Karr Activity Center at Warm Hearth, Blacksburg, VA.
• March 19, 7:00 pm—Juniata Valley (PA) Audubon Society, Bellwood, PA.
• April 10, 7:00 pm—Lynchburg Bird Club, Lynchburg, VA.

Please join us.

We’re putting all of our current Ruka Press books on sale for the holidays, but only for a few days. Just go to our website and buy any of our books, print or electronic, and the discount will be taken automatically at checkout. But be quick, because the sale will only run until Monday the 17th (and we want to make sure you get your books before Christmas).

Galleys are now available for our spring book, The Pipeline and the Paradigm by Samuel Avery. If you would like to review the book for publication or interview the author, you can request a printed or PDF galley by emailing us. Electronic galleys are also now available at NetGalley. The book, about the Keystone XL pipeline and the growing movement to stop it, will be officially released in April.

We have a winner in the contest to help us pick a cover for our forthcoming book, The Pipeline and the Paradigm. Although Option 2 had its strong partisans (especially among graphic designers), and some people claimed to like both equally, there was overall a nearly two-to-one preference for Option 1. And because that choice was also strongly favored by the author and the distributor, that’s the way we’ll go.

All the helpful feedback did lead us to make some tweaks to the type and the image which have hopefully made it even better. Thanks to everyone who participated.

Congratulations to Wendy Tiefenbacher, who won a free copy of the book! (The winner was chosen by using a random number generator.) Wendy, we’ll send you a copy as soon as it’s available in the spring.

We’re getting the book into galley and starting the countdown to our official publication date, April 23, 2013. If you’re not on our mailing list, be sure to sign up at upper right to get updates, special offers, and idle chitchat. We don’t sell our list and don’t send out email more than once or maybe twice a month.

Oh, and by the way, our other books make great gifts for nature lovers, birders, and treehuggers. Happy holidays!

There’s an election going on this week that will determine the future of our country. And, on the other hand, there’s this.

We’ve narrowed down the choices for the cover of our next book, The Pipeline and the Paradigm: Keystone XL, Tar Sands, and the Battle to Defuse the Carbon Bomb, to two, but we need your help choosing the final cover.

In The Pipeline and the Paradigm, Sam Avery investigates the economic, ecological, political, and psychological issues behind the Keystone XL—a project so controversial it has inspired the largest expression of civil disobedience since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. In this thoroughly researched, wholly engaging book, Avery takes readers from enormous mines in Alberta to jury-rigged blockades in Texas to meet the people and explore the competing interests that power the environmental issue of our time.

The two covers are below. Please leave your vote and your thoughts in the comments. (Legal disclaimer: results of vote are nonbinding.) And to sweeten the deal, we’ll send a free book to a randomly selected commenter. We’ll let you know who won, and when the book is available, in a future edition of this newsletter (and on Twitter, Facebook…). Thanks!

Option 1

Option 2