Glenn Thompson (publisher)

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Glenn Thompson
Born(1940-09-24)September 24, 1940
Writers and Readers Cooperative
Spouse(s)Margaret Gosley
Sian Williams
ChildrenShoshannah, Benjamin, Elisha[1]

Glenn Thompson (September 24, 1940 – September 7, 2001) was an American book publisher and activist. Born in

graphic nonfiction
books.

Biography

Glenn Thompson was born on September 24, 1940, to Clara Belle and George Joseph Thompson, in

welfare department
and sent to a children's shelter. After only a couple of weeks Glenn was moved to another location and the brothers were separated.

Thompson did not learn to read until the age of 12, and left school when he was just turning 14, but he continued to educate himself by reading voraciously. He signed on to work on a

freighter when he was 20, thus buying passage to North Africa. For the next few years, he travelled around North Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia.[1] He worked for two years on an Israeli kibbutz.[2]

Arriving in

social worker in the East London borough of Hackney. In 1970, he began a community-based bookshop, with his first wife Margaret Gosley, and a publishing and social services cooperative called Centerprise,[1] which operated until 2012.[3] The first publication by Centerprise was a book of poetry by a 12-year-old boy named Vivian Usherwood,[4] which sold 18,000 copies.[5]

Thompson worked for

Marx to Elvis Presley and DNA. A rift in the Cooperative[1] resulted from one of the members issuing the U.S. rights to several of the Beginners series to Pantheon Books, and the cooperative disbanded in 1984.[citation needed
]

Following this rift, in 1987 Thompson took over as sole publisher and moved back to his hometown of New York City to establish a legal foothold and prevent any further copyright infringement of titles; the U.S. imprint was known as Writers and Readers Publishing, Inc., and was based in Harlem. In moving the company to Harlem, his goal was to stimulate a new Harlem Renaissance by creating an international publishing house there.[citation needed] He started two new imprints: Harlem River Press, publishing children's poetry, and Black Butterfly Children's Books, books for the inner-city child.[1] Thompson's London-based company, formally established in 1992, was known as Writers and Readers Limited.[8] For the balance of his life, Thompson moved back and forth between New York City and London.[6]

For years, Thompson spent his time traveling between England and New York to manage the two companies.

Death

Thompson died of cancer in London[6] on September 7, 2001, leaving three children and two grandchildren.

Legacy

In 2007, a consortium of investors revived the For Beginners series under the name

For Beginners, LLC
; the new company has reprinted previous books in the series, and has promised to publish between six and nine new issues each year.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Coates, W. Paul, and Kamili Anderson, "Remembering Glenn Thompson", African American Literature Book Club website (September 19, 2001).
  2. ^ Berger, John, and Margaret Busby, "Glenn Thompson: A pioneering black publisher, he saw books as a window for opening the minds of the oppressed" (obituary), The Guardian, September 12, 2001.
  3. ^ Simpson, Dominic. "Centerprise – the radical past of a much missed Hackney institution: Iconic bookshop and cultural centre closed its doors last year but had a remarkable history", Hackney Citizen (September 12, 2013).
  4. ^ Vivian Usherwood: Poems (Centerprise, 1972).
  5. ^ Mathieu, Paula; Steve Parks; Tiffany Rousculp (eds). Circulating Communities: The Tactics and Strategies of Community Publishing (Lexington Books, 2012), p. 7.
  6. ^ a b c d Staff. "Glenn Thompson", Publishers Weekly (September 17, 2001).
  7. ^ Brown, Lesley-Ann, "In the Beginning", Decolonial Daughter: Letters from a Black Woman to her European Son, Repeater, 2018.
  8. ^ "Writers and Readers Limited", DueDil.com. Accessed January 12, 2015.

External links

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