The Open Road Blog

Jewish American Heritage Month celebrates "generations of Jewish Americans who have helped form the fabric of American history, culture and society." It’s supported by the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration (from which the image at left came), the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Gallery of Art, the National Park Service, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Open Road is proud to participate in the tribute by offering new videos, essays, and excerpts on Fridays throughout the month of May. Join us on Twitter by using the hashtag #JAHM.

As our first contribution, ...

Happy National Teacher Day! In honor, Open Road Media is proud to feature several moving videos, which explore the tremendous dedication and influence of teachers. Enjoy, and share with those special teachers who have impacted you.

Watch Michael Chabon, Mary Glickman, and Pat Conroy speak fondly about particular teachers who supported them. "As a student, I had a lot of encouragement at crucial moments from teachers," says Chabon. Remembering her Catholic education, Glickman talks about a nun who would take her to museums in Boston and Conroy, who attended a military college, reminisces about a teacher, named ...

Fans of fantasy far and wide can appreciate Adam Gopnik's New Yorker piece entitled "The Dragon's Egg: High fantasy for young adults." J.R.R. Tolkien, an apparently "boring" professor at Oxford in the 1940s, had a bit more to say than his briefs on Beowulf. Little did his students at school know what magic he had up his sleeve that was pouring onto paper at home. Tolkien's fantasy empire began an entire revolution of fantasy fiction, enjoyed by young adults and adults alike. Gopnik's article traces the evolution of fantasy across the decades, marrying its importance with our understanding of ...

One More River, Mary Glickman’s captivating follow-up to her bestselling debut, Home in the Morning, tells the epic tale of ordinary men caught in the grip of calamity, and inspired to extraordinary acts in the name of love.

It’s 1962 in Guilford, Mississippi, and Mickey Moe Levy must prove his pedigree to the disapproving parents of his girlfriend, Laura Anne Needleman, to win her hand in marriage. With only a few decades-old leads to go on, Mickey Moe sets out to uncover his father’s murky past, from his travels up and down the length of the Mississippi River ...

Editor's note: Today for Banned Books Week, some of Open Road's fiction writers weigh in on their favorite banned or challenged books.

"When I was twelve, I memorized a poem for English class:  Walt Whitman’s “This Dust Was Once The Man.”  I chose it because Whitman was the “good gray poet” and I a good green girl, because he wrote it when Lincoln was shot and it was a hundred years later and Kennedy was shot. I chose it because it was four lines.

When I was sixteen, I was a pent-up aching river with a body electric that wanted ...

No need to be entering the classroom yourself to stock up on great literature! Here's our back to school sale for grown-ups. These titles are $3.99 and up through September 13. Whether you like short stories, memoirs, suspense, experimental fiction, or more, we've got a title for you! (And if you are looking for our children's sale, here it is!)

Georgia Boy by Erskine Caldwell

Fourteen stories that follow a young boy coming of age in a dysfunctional family in the rural South. Meet William Stroop, a young son of the South whose charming voice and mordant observations of family and culture ...

Ever wondered what your favorite authors did to pay the bills before they made it big? In honor of Labor Day, we asked several Open Road authors about the odd jobs they took to make ends meet as they struggled to learn their craft. So which crime writer got fired from a movie theater? Who worked for the railroads? And who who sold blood every month to earn extra cash? The answers will definitely surprise you!

We are pleased to celebrate the beginning of Jewish American Heritage Month with this special archival photo of acclaimed novelist Mary Glickman. The photo shows Glickman (far right) with her brother Robert and her sister Jeanne in front of their childhood home in Boston. Although Glickman was born into an Irish-Polish Catholic family, she converted to Judaism in her twenties and later worked as treasurer/secretary of her synagogue. She has also worked for the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center, and she has done campaigns for United Jewish Appeal and World Jewish Congress.

Glickman's novel Home in the Morning explores ...

This month Open Road will be joining folks around the country celebrating Jewish American Heritage. We'll be posting and distributing brand-new articles, photos, and videos about many of your favorite authors. Here's a sneak peek at what's in the works:

• A post honoring Mary Glickman, author of Home in the Morning, which explores the Jewish Southern experience 
• An Open Road Albert Einstein Ebook Sweepstakes
• A piece about  Ruth Gruber, author of Haven, and  Lucy Dawidowicz, author of The War Against The Jews, on the Museum of Jewish Heritage Blog
• New video featuring Raphael Yglesias...

Selected as Sundance Film Festival Opening Night Film, Kohlberg’s THE MUSIC NEVER STOPPED Will Open in Theaters March 18^th

 HOME IN THE MORNING by Debut Novelist Mary Glickman is Open Road’s First E-Riginal to Head to Big Screen

(New York, NY – March 8, 2011) Jane Friedman, CEO and co-founder of Open Road Integrated Media, today announced that director/producer Jim Kohlberg (THE MUSIC NEVER STOPPED) has optioned Mary Glickman’s debut novel HOME IN THE MORNING, for feature film adaptation.   Open Road president and co-founder Jeffrey Sharp (BOYS DON’T CRY, YOU CAN COUNT ON ME, PROOF and EVENING) will executive ...

In this stunning literary debut, a Jewish family in Mississippi tries to survive the tumultuous ‘60s and the secrets that will bind them together—and keep them apart.

Jackson Sassaport is a man who often finds himself in the middle. Whether torn between Stella, his beloved and opinionated Yankee wife, and Katherine Marie, the African American girl who first stole his teenage heart; or between standing up for his beliefs and acquiescing to his prominent Jewish family’s imperative to not stand out in the segregated South, Jackson learns to balance the secrets and deceptions of those around him. But one fateful ...