A Great Day in Publishing
by Porscha Burke, Associate Publisher of Storehouse Voices
I couldn’t believe it when Milton sent the video. He’d scouted a location, at my request, for a photograph of today’s book publishing professionals, inspired by the work of the greats: Art Kane and Gordon Parks. Those two legends had photographed jazz icons and hip-hop masters (respectively), in front of a quintessential brownstone in Harlem, NY. But Milton hadn’t selected a brownstone. The video he took showed the majestic front of the historic Riverside Church in the City of New York.
And there couldn’t be a better location.
I’d reached out to Milton Washington, the brilliant, Harlem-based photographer who, alongside novelist Connie Briscoe, brought the book Stepping Out to visual life. When I edited Stepping Out, our comparative title was Contact High, " an inside look at the work of hip-hop photographers told through their most intimate diaries—their contact sheets.” That book included shots of the famed Gordon Parks photograph, “A Great Day in Hip-Hop.”
For years I sat with a printout of that photo at my desk. As a child of hip-hop culture—in every sense of the phrase—my ability to hold space in an iconic literary organization such as Penguin Random House was made possible because of that beautiful, powerful, original art form. Inspired by the poets and modern-day griots who soundtracked my life—Q-Tip and Phife, Posdnous and Trugoy the Dove—I accepted early on that being good at words was cool and felt uniquely purposed to help connect new generations of storytellers with the audiences that need their message. My medium would be pages more than stages, but the heart was the same—especially hailing from the streets of NYC.
And now, Milton was suggesting a venue for our re-creation that also held special meaning to me.
Riverside Church was where we memorialized Dr. Maya Angelou in 2014. It was where I encountered the powerful psalms of Dr. James A. Forbes Jr. (its senior minister emeritus) and the beautiful messaging of Rev. Dr. Amy Butler, whose tenure at Riverside informed our work on her book, Beautiful and Terrible Things.
I could think of no more fitting location for this moment.
When Cheryl Magazine invited Tamira Chapman to be photographed for its cover, Tamira asked for our full imprint, Storehouse Voices to be included, stating that her innovation in publishing is more a collective achievement than an individual one. When she shared that idea with me, my mind flashed back to that Gordon Parks photo—thinking that the founding of our new imprint is really a story of generations of publishing successes. Storehouse Voices is here because of the work of so many others—all the Black girls and men and beings who walked publishing house hallways without much representation, or who were welcomed in times when Blackness was in vogue, but not necessarily nurtured once sociopolitical climates changed.
Toni Morrison, an editor before she was a novelist. Marie Brown, an assistant before becoming an agent and mentor to icons. These are just two of the icons whose work paved the path for our new venture. And in this photo, their legacies are elevated by those whose names often go unheralded—our foreign rights and contracts directors, our royalties managers and marketing assistants, our production editors and book designers. What a blessing to see them all cheering, during this Black History Month where we all feel an acute need for community, for respect, for solidarity, for an image inspired by the art forms (both jazz and rap music) that helped give a certain voice to the culture, helped us be heard far beyond the chambers of our local juke joints or pulpits. I could not be more grateful to have participated, to have helped curate, to have carried decades of inspiration with me and share in that light with our beautiful publishing colleagues. We were well-met by writers who also understand the power of that place and of music: Deesha Philyaw, Damon Young, Robert Jones Jr.—not to mention newcomers to the industry. There are so many others whose hard work and extraordinary efforts still don’t get the respect or the praise they have long deserved. But it was a great day in publishing. And it’s more important than ever that we persevere to ensure the great days to come for writers, readers, storytellers, and listeners worldwide.
