National Encourage a Young Writer Day is April 10th!

The crew at Gorham Printing was excited to learn that Encourage a Young Writer Day is a thing, and it’s right around the corner! Monday April 10^th is a day marked to let any young writer in your life know that they should keep up the good work.

We participate in and support many young writers and literacy projects in our community. Last year we sponsored a young writer contest in affiliation with the Roosevelt Elementary Read-a-Thon, and we’re doing it again this year. Last year Arianna’s The Girl Who Saved a Dinosaur was a hit in our shop. A winner has been chosen for this year and we can’t wait see his story (we’ve heard it’s about a ninja pig!).

Last spring we also sponsored the printing of the Olympia High School Literary Press anthology, Attic. This anthology showcases the talents of English classes at Olympia High School and pairs it with submissions from the art department. Students solicit and gather submissions, curate and edit the content, then design and promote their book.

A few of the local colleges hire us print anthologies and other projects, too. South Puget Sound Community College printed their annual literary anthology, The Percival Review, with us last spring. We print The Evergreen State College’s Vanishing Point anthology, too, along with collections of student work from various creative writing courses.

We even have one young author who published Small Stories, an adorable 5×5” collection. Hadley Stanfill’s mom Laura is the editor in chief at Forest Avenue Press and we take great pride in helping her encourage her daughter to write and publish!

Do you know a young writer? Whether they’re a college student studying creative writing in an undergraduate program or a third grader writing stories in their journal, let them know you support and admire their efforts as a growing artist.

And if you happen to know a young writer who has a story they want to turn into a book, let them know Gorham Printing is here to help!

 

 

 

 

Local Fourth-Grader Wins Read-A-Thon Prize

On Friday a very special client picked up her books.

Arianna was the winner of Roosevelt Elementary’s “Make Your Own Book” contest, a part of the Olympia elementary school’s 2016 Read-A-Thon.

The Read-A-Thon was a school-wide fund raiser and contest to encourage more reading at home. Participants read for as many minutes as they could in the month of February and collected pledges for donations from family and friends. There was also a contest for all participants to pitch their idea for a book. The winner was chosen by a committee of teachers and parents.

Arianna’s story, “The Girl Who Saved a Dinosaur” was inspired by her dream of becoming a paleontologist. She tells the tale of Rosie, a baby dinosaur that travels through time and lands in Olympia, and the fourth grader Miah, who helps heal Rosie’s injuries and find the portal to bring her home.

Congratulations, Arianna! We hope all of the students in our community have a great summer reading and writing.

Alison and the winning author, Arianna

 

Q & A with Kurt Gorham

How long has Gorham Printing been in business? Where did we come from and what have we done? Kurt Gorham, the founder and owner of Gorham Printing, knows best. He is in the building every day with his nine-person team and he let Alison ask him some questions. Enjoy!

Where, when, and how did Gorham Printing start?

Gorham Printing started as a general commercial printer called Independence Graphics in my apartment sometime in 1975. The equipment I had was slow and by today’s standards, not very good. With tenacity, the business grew and by 1985 we were printing everything from business cards to calendars, mostly for local businesses. At some point I began to think about specializing in book printing, and by 1987 we were designing and printing books exclusively.

What drove your shift from offset to digital?

I began exploring the idea of printing books on digital toner based printers rather than offset printing in the early 2000s and by 2002 we were printing some of our shorter book runs digitally (500 or less). Setup costs for offset printing are much higher than those for digital printing, so this shift saved our short run customers an immense amount of money. Over time, the digital toner-based equipment became faster and more capable of output that rivaled the quality of our offset equipment. As time passed, most of the quantities we were printing were better suited to digital output and pricing, so in 2012 we sold our last offset press and have been operating an evolving, faithful fleet of digital presses ever since.

What is your favorite aspect of the book printing business?

Over the years, the methods used in book printing have changed radically. I think that is what continues to attract me to this business. The constant change keeps me on my toes and there is something new to consider almost daily. If everything was the same day after day, it would not hold my interest and I would have needed to find a new career. I consider myself lucky to have started a business that has spanned 40 years, and to this day still I am excited to get up and go to work.

 

An Interview with Roy I. Wilson

A retired ordained United Methodist clergyman and Cowlitz Tribal Elder, Roy Wilson has written more than 30 books, many printed by Gorham Printing. His role as a spiritual leader gives him a special insight into both Native and Western spirituality. His special-interest books encompass tribal history, language and Medicine Wheel wisdom. Roy has recently completed Bear Raven longhouse, a retreat and spiritual center for Native and non-Native people to join together and study Native American spiritual teachings.

We had the privilege of chatting with Roy in the shop one day when he stopped by to pick up an order of books.

Gorham Printing: When did you start writing about history?

Roy Wilson: I started writing history back in the early 1980s, thirty to forty years ago, when nobody had written a history on the Cowlitz tribe. I did what I call a simple ‘dateline history.’ It was a little booklet of only twenty-eight pages. It started off 1806 and then simply the statement, “Lewis and Clark land at the mouth of the Cowlitz river,” nothing more. Nothing about it. It was twenty-eight pages of just a date and a line of a few words.

That was my first start [writing history] but I was very busy at that time. I was still pastoring. I was on the Washington State Governor’s advisory council. I had two national offices in the Indian world. One year I made 62 cross country flights. It was a nightmare. I was living out of a suitcase. I didn’t have any time to write and so I’d just write little short things. I wrote a number of little booklets until I retired. I started taking those booklets and using them as a table of contents to write larger books. The twenty-eight page dateline history in the early 80s became a 243 page book on the history of the tribe in the 90s.

GP: How did you find Gorham Printing?

RW: It was a woman from up on Bainbridge Island who had followed my Indian teachings for a long time and she had a book printed by Gorham. And she had copies of my books and she sent me an email. She said I’m going to be down in Centralia in a few days to get my book that’s being printed. Sure would like to see you too! So I came up and met her here while she was getting her and books. Up until then I was having my books printed in Ohio. Prices were basically the same. The difference was shipping cost! I just pick up my books at Gorham now.

GP: What are your thoughts on the purpose of preserving history, particularly in book form?

RW: Several different comments. One. History repeats itself. Quote-unquote. We are creating history with our actions today. Maybe we can do a better job of it if we study what’s happened in the past. History is important to create the dynamics of a powerful future.

The next thing is that we need to realize that history needs to be looked at from many different points of view. I recall an article that quoted, “There is no existing accurate historical record in existence.” Each writer has written history from their vantage point, their point of view.

I gave a lot of thought to that. It makes writing history more important because I need to look at the history of that event through as many different eyes as I can to come up with what might have really happened. The Indian history that’s taught in our schools and our universities is all written from the white man’s perspective. So it’s important for me to write it from an Indian’s point of view. What really happens when the Indian dies? There are several Indian historians now who’ve done this and I have copies of some of their works. It’s just a totally different story.

It’s important we see all the different views and then make up our own mind about what we think really happened.

 

To learn more about Roy Wilson’s work, or to order a copy of his book, visit his website: http://sundancemedicinewheel.com/