December Greetings from Empty Bowl Press
December 1, 2025
Dear Empty Bowl friends,
As we enter the last month of the year, we want to offer gratitude to our authors, readers, and booksellers for their support of the books we published in 2025, fill you in on recent events, and let you know about our special offer for the holidays ahead!
In mid-November, we published My Heart Is Good: Treaty Rights and the Rise of a S’Klallam Fishing Community, by Ron Charles and Josh Wisniewski, our last book for 2025. We celebrated the book’s release with four readings, beginning with a memorable evening at the Little Boston Longhouse with a beautiful honoring of Ron, a Port Gamble S’Klallam elder and former tribal chair, who worked with the Point No Point Treaty Council following the landmark Boldt Decision to ensure healthy salmon runs for all. Thanks to Josh for bringing this project to us and working steadily with Ron over the last decade to record, transcribe, and offer historical context for Ron’s story. We’re honored to have played a role in bringing this largely untold story to the page and are delighted by the coverage in the local press. Links to three recent articles are available on our Home page.
Also in November, we enjoyed participating in the second annual Fall Book Fair at Finnriver Farm & Cidery—a great chance to hang out with other small presses and visit with the steady flow of folks who love books and who showed up to check out our offerings. Thanks to Conner Bouchard-Roberts of Winter Texts for rounding us all up again.
And here’s an unexpected reason for gratitude: We were surprised and deeply grateful to have received one of fifty awards given by Humanities WA this year in celebration of their fiftieth anniversary, acknowledging Empty Bowl’s five-decade-long contribution to the humanities. We were especially moved by the words of our nominators: “The people of Washington State are fortunate to have a publisher like this, which originated as a quixotic idea from a bunch of muddy tree planters, but which has become a literary press of unique and diverse voices connecting the Pacific Northwest to the world, and vice versa.”
We’re honored to be in good company with forty-nine others, including two of our Empty Bowl authors, Shin Yu Pai and Kate Reavey! A virtual award ceremony is planned for December 10—we hope you’ll join us to support all who are being honored for keeping humanities alive when we need them more than ever. For more details, visit the Humanities WA website.
In the meantime, if you’re feeling overwhelmed by Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the prospect of holiday shopping crowds, a gentle reminder that books make great gifts—and are an easy way to help our books find their readers. To get a start on our upcoming fiftieth anniversary in 2026, we’ll be offering free shipping (domestic only) until December 18 on orders over $50. Enter the discount code DECEMBERSALE at checkout.
Finally, we’re grateful for you, our loyal readers, who order our books and write lovely notes in response; to Asterism, our local distributor; and to the whole ecosystem of small independent bookstores that we work with to get our books out into the world. In the independent publishing world, it’s true that it takes a village—and we’re so grateful you’re part of ours. Wishing you peace and many hours with good books in the winter months ahead; may their words illuminate the darkness until the light returns.
John & Holly