Capra Press

Evan Karp, Special to The Chronicle

Thursday, December 1, 2011
“If you don’t go to an independent bookstore for this book, you won’t be able to buy it,” publisher Phil Brodey says of Jennifer Futernick’s “I Never Expected This Good Life.” The collection of poems, essays and stories about Futernick’s life is the re-launch title of Capra Press, founded by Noel Young in 1969, sold for health reasons in 2001 and reacquired this year by Young’s oldest daughter, Hilary Young Brodey, her husband and John and Diana Harrington. Their focus is to continue the Capra tradition – which includes subjects as diverse as fashion, ecology and architecture, and a backlog of notable authors that includes Henry Miller, Raymond Carver and Anaïs Nin – while maintaining a DIY, community-minded operation. They do not plan to sell their books from their website.

“We want people to go to independent bookstores,” Phil Brodey said. “We think they’re vital to the community. We think they’re a central focus for people getting together, and we think they need our support.” Operating out of their house, and distributing the books themselves, the Brodeys say they hope to publish four or five titles per year. “We’re content driven. … We don’t really have a hard focus,” he said. “We’re not limiting ourselves.” They are currently accepting submissions of fiction, nonfiction and poetry – both full-length editions and chapbooks.

Capra Press will celebrate its re-launch, and the publication of “I Never Expected This Good Life,” with a reading by Futernick on Wednesday at the Booksmith (7:30 p.m. Free. 1644 Haight St., S.F. www.caprapress.net).

CAPRA PRESS

I Never Expected This Good Life: Poems and Stories by Jennifer Futernick will be published next month by Capra Press, an independent press with a long tradition of publishing quality works by established and emerging authors including Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell, Anais Nin, Ray Bradbury, Ursula Le Guin, Charles Bukowski, Gretel Ehrlich, and Raymond Carver. This book is the re-launch title of Capra Press, established in 1969 by Noel Young and now owned once again by the family.

Not really a memoir, this book is a collection of poems, essays, and stories about Jennifer’s life. Divided into seven sections — family (parents and siblings), marriage, children, body, faith, the outside world, and work — each focuses on such diverse subjects as loss, kinship, trust, and how we choose to remember and tell our personal stories. Above all, I Never Expected This Good Life is about love—its sorrows and elusiveness, incomparable joys, and the surprise one feels when love eventually shows up and is mutually sustained. Jennifer notes the myriad ways that the heart extends its influence into every touch, look, thought, and reply, something that has surprised this exuberant and zestful author, especially because she was certain at age seventeen that she would never have a good life. Her joy at being proved wrong finds expression in the thankfulness that infuses this volume.

Kate Abbe, author of Joy Riding and Nothing Curved, writes, “The author’s spirit vibrates through these refreshingly honest and open pages. Jennifer Futernick does not shy away from the joy and pain of ordinary life, but reveals in surprising and delicate detail the connections and transitions that make up ‘the good life.’”

Theatre director Susan Finque compares Jennifer’s richly detailed journey through life to “Everywoman—struggling through an unpredictable and at times harrowing childhood and finding a way to a deeply meaningful life of marriage, children, family and work. This memoir unfolds to become a joyful shout out to the strength, power and enduring complexity of love.”

Jennifer will be reading from her upcoming book on Dec 7 2011 7:30 pm at The Booksmith 1644 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA 94117 http://www.booksmith.com

The book will be available December 2011. For more information, please see https://caprapress.net

I Never Expected This Good Life:  poems and stories by Jennifer Futernick is about to go to print!

We are scheduled for our first author event at The Booksmith on December 7 at 7:30 pm! Hope to see you all there for our re-launch of Capra Press and publication of our first title!

Capra Press will soon re-launch with its first release since it was purchased back to the family earlier this year (details on website: https://caprapress.net/ )

I Never Expected This Good Life: Poems and Stories by San Francisco author Jennifer Futernick will be released early December and will be available for purchase in several Bay Area indie bookstores.

“An enduring aspect of this book is the author’s intimacy with the biology of kinship. She establishes the metaphorical heart at the center of a complex ecosystem—in which love is water, light, and oxygen—by weaving together the body and spirit so viscerally and so well that at times it will leave you wanting to forget where you end and someone else begins.”

Please check back to the Capra Press blog, https://caprapress.net/blog/ in late November for a list and link to the booksellers who will be carrying the book and hosting author events for this title.

Jennifer Futernick’s reading from her upcoming book, I Never Expected This Good Life: Poems and Stories (due to be published by Capra Press, December, 2011) held at the Catharine Clark Gallery on Saturday, September 10, was a stunning success! It was held in conjunction with the reception for artist, Julie Heffernan’s spectacular exhibition. A standing room only audience was spellbound by both the reading and the paintings.