Hello Friends, Family, Colleagues, Supporters, and Other Rogues of the Literary World,

It's your Gold Leaf Literary pals Caroline and Lauren, and we are thrilled to announce that we are celebrating THREE YEARS of Gold Leaf in the world!!! We absolutely love the opportunity to always learn and grow (and figure out the Quickbooks) through this venture. We are honored to work with so many of you amazing folks, and perhaps most importantly, we are simply delighted that we get to work with each other every day!
We are also excited to make a few announcements---

First off, we are SUPER PSYCHED to announce that we have invited a third Gold Leafer onto the team! We have just welcomed the AMAZING Joanne O'Sullivan as our new media outreach specialist, and she is an incredible source of information and inspiration. We couldn't be more excited to be working with her!

Also, one of our favorite tasks in our work is author education, so we are thrilled to announce that we just had an opportunity to speak at the really fabulous Writing in Place conference in Spartanburg, SC, hosted at Wofford College by Hub City. Next up is a workshop at the North Carolina Writers Network conference here in Asheville this Fall. We'll be leading two pitch trainings with the Flatiron Writers Room in September, teaching our Literary Ecosystem course with the Great Smokies Writing Program, AND we are sponsors of the wonderful Bookmarks Festival of Books and Authors in Winston-Salem, also in September. Perhaps we'll see some of you at an event out there we hope to have the opportunity to do more teaching as we grow!
Meanwhile, our clients are constantly blowing us away with their talent and verve...

Jo Watson Hackl's award-winning Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe came out in paperback July 30, and Alan Gratz's Allies comes into the world this October. NC author Todd Gallicano is another middle grade book writer to keep an eye out for--his Sam London series is awesome!

Asheville literary luminary Dale Neal's third novel, The Appalachian Book of the Dead, comes out in September from SFK Press, a Southern publishing company with a lot of heart. We've also had the honor of working with SFK's Mickey Dubrow and Evan Williams.

We're also proud to be working with the AMAZING Erica Witsell as she tours bookstores across the country promoting her novel Give (bookseller Angel Schroeder says it, "grabbed me by the heart and wouldn't let go") and Lynne Buchanan, whose nature-on-the-brink photography (Florida's Changing Waters: A Beautiful World in Peril) is breathtaking--and not just because it's beautiful.

We're having a blast working with the amazing documentarist Maryedith Burrell and continue to assist Denise Kiernan and Joe D'Agnese, who are some of the most delightful authors to read, and also to have a glass of wine with.

We're working with poet Karen Sagstetter (who was described thusly by poet Reginald Gibbons, "She has the courage of a faithful guide." Couldn't we all use more of THAT?) and Joseph Snyder (train nerds, take note!). Both spiritual writer Randy Bell and novelist Christopher Brookhouse are coming out with new titles soon.

We've loved working with Mark Paul Smith, promoting his novel Rock and Roll Voodoo (tag line: "life is often a spiritual obstacle course designed to see if you can get over yourself"). And finally, we've been working with Jon Sealy, who we simply adore, and his new press Haywire Books. Jon has chops, people, Haywire is a press to keep on your radar! Jon's second novel, The Edge of America, comes out this September.

We want to express all of our thanks to you, our community. Through the last three years, between the two of us, we've had three parents with cancer while also raising our incredible children--Caroline became a foster mom just after Gold Leaf was founded (and two and a half years later, her foster daughter's case is still up in the air). We couldn't have gone through all of this without the love and support of you, our dear community. So thank you!

Thank you for the last three years, and here's to many more ahead!

All Best, Caroline & Lauren

PS We've added a calendar to our web site and are working on getting all of our appearances and our authors' appearances listed. Come meet up!