Presenting “I Gave Her a Name” and “A New Constellation”

We have a different version of the pride cycle here at BCC Press: we publish something great and feel proud of it, and then we publish something even better and feel proud about that too. And then we remember all of the other great stuff we published and become so justifiably proud that we have to stay in our rooms for a few days so we don’t go into stores and other random places and start sounding like Robert Goulet in Camelot.

So, it is with great pride (duh!) that we announce, on the second anniversary of the founding of BCC Press, the publication of two new and highly anticipated books by two of our most beloved authors.

First, we present I Gave Her A Name, the sequel to the phenomenal, bestselling, paradigm-busting, AML-Award Winning Mother’s Milk, with poems by Rachel Hunt Steenblik and illustrations by Ashley Mae Hoiland. Rachel wrote nearly 350 new poems for this book, and Ashmae kicked her work up a notch from black-and-white drawings to color paintings–more than a hundred of them. Here are a few samples.

Now, color printing is not cheap, which put BCC Press on the horns of a dilemma: do we put out an affordable, high-quality, black-and-white version of this book–the sort of book that made us famous? Or do we keep the color in the full-color paintings and price the book accordingly.

Well, we actually don’t approve of dilemmas, so we did both. I Gave Her a Name is now available in a standard version with grey-scale renderings of Ashmae’s amazing drawings. And it is available in a special, full-color deluxe edition that presents the paintings as God and Ashmae originally intended. You get to choose.

In our second book, A New Constellation, Ashley Mae Hoiland turns from amazing illustrator to brilliant author–and the author of her own emotionally laden story, which she describes on the back cover better than we ever could:

On December 19, 2018, I went in for an eye appointment. By the end of the day I had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. As this unexpected world intruded into my life, I started to write. I got up that night when everyone else was asleep and wrote and then kept going. An experiment writing in real time. The chronology is not perfect, but when the earth shifts the fault rupture is rarely linear. This is a beginning, nothing more. Above all, it is simply my experience, which I hope can reach out in some way and hold hands with what is hard and unexpected in your life, however small or large.

A New Constellation is an important, remarkable, beautiful, tragic, and hopeful book–and a deeply personal account of an illness by one of Mormonism’s most powerful minds and creative spirits. You will not be disappointed by the emotional and spiritual adventure it makes you a part of.

And, in case you have missed the announcements this week, both Rachel and Ashmae will be reading and signing their books this weekend on Friday and Saturday. Joining them will be Mette Harrison, the author of three BCC Press books, including The Book of Abish, which was published last month. Rounding out the Fantastic Four of BCC Press will be Keira Shae, the author of the AML-Award nominated memoir How the Light Gets In, which was profiled, along with Keira, in a feature story in the Deseret News this week.

Not only can you buy books and get them signed, but ALL OF THE PAINTINGS FEATURED IN I GAVE HER A NAME will be on display and for sale at Writ & Vision on Saturday night.