Akashic Books Launches New Imprint, Open Lens

Akashic Books Launches New Imprint, Open Lens

Johnny Temple, publisher of Akashic Books, has announced a collaborative partnership with Open Lens, a new imprint specializing in quality fiction and non-fiction that will be launched in September with the publication of MAKEDA, a novel by the bestselling author, Randall Robinson.

The co-founders of Open Lens are Marva Allen, managing partner of Hue-Man Bookstore, Regina Brooks, and Marie Dutton Brown, literary agents and initial guest editor, Janet Hill Talbert, former Random House, vice-president and founding executive editor of the Doubleday imprint, Harlem Moon.

Open Lens, as envisioned by the founders and Temple will offer readers and writers literary options that are vastly limited in today’s book publishing marketplace. The imprint continues in the Akashic tradition of focusing on quality writing by writers of color, whose work in recent years has been consistently limited or ignored by trade publishers. By recognizing this obvious limitation, the founding publishing professionals believe that the imprint will broaden the vision of readers and authors  by adding a layer of insight and a new ways of viewing and gaining a deeper understanding of our ever shrinking world.

Further elaborating on that phenomenon, Marva Allen states that, “Open Lens will provide authors of world literature a literary platform from which they can share their diverse literary vision and rich cultural perspective.  Undoubtedly, we will publish African American and Caribbean authors but we also hope to broaden our reading choices, offering readers a panoramic and an expansive global experience”. While the imprint, which plans to publish three to four books a year will target readers interested in books by or about African Americans, Allen says the Open Lens titles will be “focused on and aimed at the reader who appreciates and applauds quality work from diverse literary voices”.