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View from our new office in Morningside Heights!
We are thrilled to be unpacking this month and enjoying this fabulous view of Riverside Church and the Hudson River. The Interchurch Center, where we are now based, hosts more than 60 mission-driven nonprofits. Everyone is greeting us with Welcome to the neighborhood!
New Village Press
475 Riverside Dr., Suite 1375
New York, NY 10115
| | Announcing NEW VILLAGE VIEWS | | New Village Press is excited to announce our new periodical, New Village Views, now on Substack! | | New Village Views will host articles, essays, opinion pieces, poetry, art, and excerpts from New Village Press authors and friends. Our weekly posts will extend the press's mission of engaging with questions of social justice and community-building. Look for great reading this month from authors Yahia Lababidi, Chellis Glendinning, Mayumi Oda, and Alice Rothchild. | |
Early Reviews of If You Cannot Say GENOCIDE Roll In!
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Forthcoming October 6, 2026
256 Pages, 5.50 × 8.50 in, 1 b/w image
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If You Cannot Say GENOCIDE
Essays on Conscience and Witness
by Yahia Lababidi
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The New Arab has published an early review of If You Cannot Say GENOCIDE
The review situates the work not as history, legal argument, or reportage, but as an examination of the moral injury of watching from a distance while language is shaped to conceal what images reveal. Written between 2023 and 2026, the essays trace Lababidi's conviction that euphemism and passive voice do not merely misrepresent violence, but create the conditions for it to continue unchallenged.
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"For Lababidi, showing solidarity isn’t just a political stance; it's a spiritual practice, reminding us that every stranger might be one of the quiet righteous keeping the world going.”
—Hossam el-Hamalawy, The New Arab
Read the full New Arab review HERE.
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On her Substack Writing Without Paper, Maureen Doallas reviews Yahia Lababidi's forthcoming If You Cannot Say GENOCIDE. Doallas considers what's at stake in naming atrocity plainly, and how Lababidi's insistence on the word genocide coexists, without contradiction, with his refusal of hatred.
Read Doallas's full review HERE.
| | | | | New PalCast Podcast Episode Features Yahia Lababidi discussing If You Cannot Say GENOCIDE | |
The discussion covers poetry as a tool for moral witness, shifting American attitudes toward Palestine, and Lababidi's experience with censorship in publishing.
Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
| | Bazaar Kuwait Reviews If You Cannot Say GENOCIDE in "The Weight of Words" | |
The piece explores how Lababidi's 47 essays confront the language used, and avoided, when describing Gaza, and how his identity as an Arab American writer shaped his sense of moral responsibility from afar.
Read the full Bazaar review HERE.
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"[If You Cannot Say GENOCIDE] asks readers to consider the relationship between language and responsibility, and whether bearing witness begins with something as simple, and as difficult, as refusing silence."
—Bazaar Staff
| | Lily Yeh Named 2026 Goi Peace Award Laureate | | |
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Congratulations, Lily Yeh!
Artist and social innovator Lily Yeh has been named the 2026 Laureate of the Goi Peace Award from the Goi Peace Foundation. The founder of Barefoot Artists was recognized for her work transforming despair into hope through the power of art, particularly in communities marked by poverty, conflict, and trauma.
Lily Yeh is the author of New Village Press books Awakening Creativity: Dandelion School Blossoms and co-author with Susan Viguers of Healing from Genocide in Rwanda: Rugerero Survivors Village, An Artist Book.
Lily will receive the award at the Goi Peace Foundation Forum in Tokyo on November 28th.
Learn more HERE
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328 pages, 6 x 9 in, 38 color images
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Claudia Bernardi Presents Art Against Brutality at Clio’s Books
Thursday, September 10, 2026
7:00-9:00 pm PT
Clio’s Books
353 Grand Avenue, Oakland, CA 94610
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Claudia Bernardi and Mark Danner will join for a conversation on Art Against Brutality, examining how murals process collective memory in the aftermath of state terror across El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, and the United States. Drawing on decades of community arts and social practice work, the discussion will explore how participatory projects involving children, youth, and adults forge shared intention and allow communities to collectively process historical trauma.
Find more information and reserve tickets HERE.
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Coffee & Conversation with Judy Karofsky
Tuesday, September 22, 2026
10:00 am CT
Eloura Cafe´
10 W Mifflin St, Madison, WI 53703
| Join eldercare rights activist Judy Karofsky for meaningful conversation about the growing crisis in care for the elderly and what can be done about it. Karofsky is the author of DisElderly Conduct: The Flawed Business of Assisted Living and Hospice. | | | |
Judy Karofsky Gifts Bryn Mawr's Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research $1 Million to Support Elder Care Research
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Alumna of Bryn Mawr and author of DisElderly Conduct, Judy Karofsky, '63, made her generous donation to Bryn Mawr's Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research to fund practicums, curriculum development, and research on elder care and death-and-dying fields.
Read the full article HERE.
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| 360 pages, 6 x 9 in, 40 b/w images | |
Review of Groundbreaking by Clare Cooper Marcus featured in Berkeleyside monthly reading list | |
Berkeleyside's book column, Between the Lines, spotlighted Groundbreaking: My Unmapped Path as an Academic, Mother and Gardener, the New Village Press autobiography from pioneering UC Berkeley professor and design researcher, Clare Cooper Marcus.
The piece traces Marcus's decades of work studying the psychological impact of design on housing, urban spaces, and healthcare settings, alongside candid reflections from her life in 1960s and '70s California.
"Although that might seem incredibly obvious today, when she was doing this in the 1960s and '70s, it was very radical."
—Wendy Sarkissian, colleague and author of the forthcoming The Wild Edge of Planning (New Village Press, 2027).
Read the Berkeleyside review HERE.
| | My Deepest Desire translator featured in Berkeleyside reading list | |
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Berkeleyside's book column also featured My Deepest Desire, a new translation by Berkeley anthropologist Liza Dalby of the final meditations by Japanese writer Tamiki Hara. Dalby renders Hara's non-linear "Zuihitsu" style to capture his voice's original force for Western readers. Dalby noted that My Deepest Desire stands as “...the best illustration of post-traumatic stress syndrome she’s ever read.”
This edition features full-page ink drawings by Oakland-California-based artist Sandy Walker.
| Read the Berkeleyside review HERE. | | 40 Pages, 7 × 10 in, 16 b/w images | |
“...I concentrated on trying to make it how the Japanese would feel so that a Western audience would feel it in the same way…”
—Liza Dalby, Translator of My Deepest Desire
| | | | Ann Ferguson Reviews Letters From the Edge | |
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Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies has published an exceptionally informative review by revered feminist scholar Ann Ferguson of Letters from the Edge: Outrider Conversations by Margaret Randall.
Ferguson praises Randall as one of the "outspoken inspiring women" whose life of solidarity work within the Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions gives her hope for feminist, egalitarian social change, and traces how this memoir of letters frames Randall's revolutionary and feminist commitments through correspondence with fellow "outriders."
The review recommends the book as a way to understand "the experiential aspects of the revolutionary, leftist and feminist histories" Randall has lived through.
Read the review via Digital Commons HERE.
| | New Village Press director Lynne Elizabeth featured on At Home, On Air podcast | |
New Village Press director, Lynne Elizabeth, joined Susi Stadler for the At Home, On Air podcast to remember the late Clare Cooper Marcus and her May 2026 autobiography, Groundbreaking: My Unmapped Path as an Academic, Mother, and Gardener. The conversation touched on Marcus's life and work, including her deep connection to gardening as both a grounding practice and a source of insight.
Listen to the full podcast episode HERE.
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"Working in her garden was how she centered herself during all different phases of her life. She learned so much because she had such an appreciation and awareness of everything that grew."
—Lynne Elizabeth on Clare Cooper Marcus's love of nature and gardening.
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Claudia Bernardi, author of Art Against Brutality: Community and Collaborative Art Projects with Survivors of Political Violence, will return to Notre Dame for a weeklong residency as part of the university's 2027 Arts Biennial, a six-month festival running January through June 2027.
Through the Cafecitos: Motherhood and Migration research project, Bernardi will lead a two-day community workshop with Latina women at La Casa de Amistad.
| | Claudia Bernardi Announced as Featured Guest of Notre Dame's 2027 Arts Biennial | | ROB SHETTERLY EXHIBIT & EVENT | | |
Twelve Maine Women: Portraits of Change
Through September 25th
10 am–2 pm Wednesdays; 3–6 pm Fridays
10 am–2 pm Saturdays
Heart of Ellsworth
16 State St, Ellsworth, ME 04605
The Frances Perkins Center and Heart of Ellsworth are co-hosting Twelve Maine Women, an Americans Who Tell the Truth portrait exhibit running August 6 through September 25, 2026, at the Heart of Ellsworth Makerspace. The collection features portraits of notable Maine women including Frances Perkins, the first female U.S. Cabinet member; child peacemaker Samantha Smith; historian Heather Cox Richardson; indigenous leader Sherri Mitchell; state legislator Deqa Dhalac; and U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith.
More details HERE.
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Voices & Visions: An Art-Making & Song Gathering for All Ages
Saturday, September 19th 2026
1:00 pm-3:00 pm EDT
Heart of Ellsworth
16 State St, Ellsworth, ME 04605
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Americans Who Tell the Truth portrait artist Robert Shetterly will facilitate an intergenerational art-making session on Saturday, September 19th, at the Heart of Ellsworth Maker Space. Participants will create self-portraits paired with a quotation expressing hope, personal conviction, or a call to action, with willing artists invited to display their work around the greater Ellsworth area.
More details HERE.
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Stories from Alternate ROOTS Authors at Decatur Book Festival
Saturday, October 3rd, 2026
4:00-5:00pm ET
500 S. Columbia Dr., Decatur, GA 30030
Atlanta-area authors Kathie deNobriga, Patton White, and Shannon Turner will be featured on a panel at the Decatur Book Festival in Decatur.
More about the Decatur Book Festival HERE.
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Ancestral Ground Virtual Launch Featuring Louise Dunlap
Sunday, October 4th, 2026
7:00-9:00 pm EDT
Virtual
Join a virtual launch celebration for the inaugural edition of Ancestral Ground: Healing Whiteness and Cultivating Regenerative Futures. Rooted in the premise that much of the ancestral wisdom of people with European roots has been distorted or erased by colonization and white supremacy, the free online event will bring together movement elders, practitioners, and contributors including Susan Raffo, Hilary Giovale, Louise Dunlap, Ariel Luckey, Chris Crass, and Jen Willsea to explore how ancestral reconnection can support racial justice, cultural healing, and more regenerative ways of living.
Louise Dunlap is the author of Inherited Silence: Listening to the Land, Healing the Colonizer Mind.
Register for the free online event HERE.
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Sandy Walker at Book Passage
Sunday, October 18th, 2026
1:00 pm PT
51 Tamal Vista Blvd
Corte Madera, CA 94925
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Join Sandy Walker, the artist behind the ink drawings accompanying Liza Dalby's new translation of Tamiki Hara's My Deepest Desire, for a discussion, meet-and-greet, and book signing at Book Passage.
Further event details available HERE.
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If You Cannot Say GENOCIDE
Essays on Conscience and Witness
by Yahia Lababidi
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This is a book of conscience under pressure, written
from an Arab American perspective shaped by exile and
moral inquiry. It is the work of a poet who could no
longer write poems and who feared for his soul if he
remained silent. Urgent, searching, and unflinching, If
You Cannot Say GENOCIDE asks what fidelity to truth
demands when language itself is under siege. Moving
between personal narrative, literary reflection, and
cultural critique, the essays consider what it means to
speak honestly when the language needed to name
violence is contested or constrained.
Hardcover, 256 pages, 5.50" × 8.50"
Dustjacket cover art by Palestinian artist Malak Mattar
“In a time of genocide, dehumanization, and willful blindness, Yahia Lababidi's voice is one of
grace, empathy, and perception.”
—Josh Paul
Coming October 6th!
| | Don't miss the book trailer HERE! | | | | |
