John Graham and Ann Medlock Receive Recognition at the Paris Book Festival

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John Graham and Ann Medlock[/caption]

Two of Blooming Twig Books’ authors, John Graham and Ann Medlock, have been chosen as a winner and an honorable mention in the Paris Book Festival. Hosted by JM Northern Media LLC, the Paris Book Festival is an annual event that awards authors in genres that include non-fiction, fiction, biography/autobiography, children’s books, cookbooks, compilations/anthologies, young adult, how-to, photography/art, unpublished stories, business, poetry, spiritual/religious, travel, and the wild card.

This event focuses on those that are “making things happen in the world of digital media and beyond,” according the Paris Book Festival website. A panel of publishing industry experts judge works that have been submitted to the festival’s website. The works are judged based on the excellence of the author’s storytelling, passion for the subject, and the potential that the work has and its ability to gain a wider audience.

The winner of the Biography/Autobiography category in this year’s Paris Book Festival was John Graham’s book, On the Edge. On the Edge tracks a life of adventure and, for the last thirty-three years, of work on the Giraffe Heroes Project (www.giraffe.org), a global nonprofit moving people to stick their necks out to help solve significant public problems, and giving them tools to succeed.

Graham hitchhiked through the war in Algeria the summer of his sophomore year; the next summer, he was part of a Harvard team that made the first direct ascent of Mount McKinley’s north wall, a climb so dangerous it’s never been repeated (see http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/08/climbing-the-wickersham-wall). In 1964–65, he hitchhiked around the world reporting for the Boston Globe on every war he could find along the way. Then came Foreign Service assignments in Libya and Vietnam.

But a life focused on adventure and (by then) power seemed increasingly empty until three years at the UN fighting apartheid helped reorient him to helping people solve tough public problems. A near-death experience on a burning cruise ship in a typhoon in the North Pacific sharpened that focus on service — a focus that guides him still. The adventures haven’t stopped: training activists in Egypt for the Giraffe Heroes Project, two years ago he escaped arrest by hours.

The honorable mention for the General Fiction category in this year’s Paris Book Festival was Ann Medlock’s book, Outing the Mermaid. Outing the Mermaid takes place in the sixties and seventies during the civil rights and feminist movements. The main character, Lee Palmer, tries to find her place in the world, but makes some unfortunate decisions along the way. Lee is introduced as a divorced, working mom, and known as an “outsider” to others because of how rare it is to be a single working mom during that time. Lee strives to prove the world wrong when it comes to being a successful single mom, but has to overcome many obstacles to break down the barriers of misogyny exhibited by those around her.

Blooming Twig Books represents a company that invests our time and effort into “Books that Matter,” which is the motto we follow when choosing books to publish. Founded in 2005, Blooming Twig is a different publishing company in which we steer away from the new trends and fads in literature and, instead, strives for books that are new and original, have depth, and powerfully influence the world of literature. John Graham’s On the Edge and Ann Medlock’s Outing the Mermaid are examples of these “Books that Matter.” They are a source of refreshing literature for any reader that is open to reading from a different voice.

These “Books that Matter” give readers the ability to witness John Graham’s dramatic and inspiring life story and read about Ann Medlock’s strong female protagonist that overcame a world of misogyny. Because of their difference in the world of literature, Blooming Twig is proud of these authors’ achievements in the Paris Book Festival.