Dear Writers,
The time has come for a pause in new queries and submissions until after New Year’s 2023. Wishing you time to enjoy the holidays and recharge your batteries as we focus on end of year business before closing our offices mid-December. Thank you.
–Joelle Delbourgo and Jacqueline Flynn
Nicola Nice is a sociologist and brand strategist who has advised alcohol and consumer companies on how better to connect with their audiences for over 20 years.
Originally from London, she came to New York City in 2007 to start a successful consumer insights agency. Her love of cocktails and cocktail culture led her to experiment with home infusions, taking inspiration from drink recipes that were
popular back when our great great grandmothers were hosts. She felt that the mixology world would surely benefit from hearing the untold stories of these women. Two more years of research led Nice to launch Pomp & Whimsy Gin Liqueur.
Her book, THE COCKTAIL PARLOR: A Modern Hostess’s Guide to Serving Drinks at Home, will restore the role of women to the history of the cocktail. Esteemed wine connoisseur and author Robert Simonson will pen the Foreword. It will be published by Countryman Press in 2024.
For more about Nicola Nice, go to https://www.pompandwhimsy.com/kindredspiritssociety-posts/2021/founder-story
Essayist and author of A Vindication of Love Nehring’s remarkable tribute to her chromosomally-challenged little girl, Eurydice, who awakens a fiercely maternal love and teaches her–and us–about joy. (North American rights/Heliotrope
Books/Fall 2023)
A riveting and illuminating exploration of the transatlantic slave trade by an intrepid team of divers seeking to reclaim the stories of their ancestors
“For me, Enslaved is an attempt to give a voice to the millions whose voices were silenced.”—Samuel L. Jackson, human rights activist and actor
From the writers behind the acclaimed documentary series Enslaved, starring Samuel L. Jackson, comes a rich and revealing narrative of the true global and human scope of the transatlantic slave trade. The trade existed for 400 years, during which twelve million people were trafficked and two million would die en route.
In ENSLAVED: The Sunken History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, by Simcha Jacobovici and Sean Kingsley, with a
foreword by Brenda Jackson (Pegasus October 2022), we meet the remarkable group Diving with a Purpose (DWP) as they dive for sunken slave ships all around the world. They search for remains and artifacts testifying to the millions of kidnapped Africans that were transported to Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean. From manilla bracelets to shackles, cargo, and other possessions, the finds from these wrecks bring the stories of lost lives back to the surface.
As we follow the men and women of DWP across eleven countries, Jacobovici and Kingsley’s rich research puts into vivid context the archaeology and history of these vessels that were lost between 1670 and 1858.
From the ports of Gold Coast Africa to the corporate hubs of trading companies of England, Portugal, and the Netherlands and the final destinations in the New World, Jacobovici and Kingsley show how the slave trade touched every nation and every society on earth.
Though global in scope, Enslaved makes history personal as we experience the divers’ sadness, anger, reverence, and awe as they hold in their hands tangible pieces of their ancestors’ world. What those people suffered on board those ships can never be forgiven. Enslaved works to ensure that it will always be remembered and understood and is the first book to tell the story of the transatlantic slave trade from the bottom of the sea.
For an excerpt of ENSLAVED:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-a-spanish-shipwreck-reveals-about-the-final-years-of-the-slave-trade-180980938/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/03/slavery-traders-tried-to-cheat-africans-with-impure-cornish-copper-says-study
A couple’s guide to fifteen of the common fights couples have, what they really mean, and how they can bring you closer. (Blackstone Audio, early 2024 release).
Sharing some photos from the launch for Charity Elder’s POWER: The Rise of Black Women in America (Skyhorse, October 2022). I’m so proud of Charity and her important book with its positive but also very realistic look at why it is a the right moment for Black women to assert their power. 
Sociologist, spirits entrepreneur, founder and CEO of the Pomp & Whimsy gin Nicola Nice’s alternative history of cocktails that returns women to a central role in propelling the cocktail out of the bar into the home and mainstream culture, with simplified adaptations of classic recipes. (Countryman Press/Norton, World English, Spring 2024)
regular at the Hollywood Improv and lives in Los Angeles.Korean American stand-up comedian, author and podcaster Grace Jung wields her PhD in Cinema and Media Studies to write an irreverent history of serialized Korean TV dramas like Squid Game and Extraordinary Attorney Woo—a pop culture phenomenon contributing to Korea’s multibillion-dollar entertainment industry now linked to media conglomerates such as Disney, Netflix and Apple TV+, analyzing everything from why K-dramas have so many Subway sandwiches all the way to the shows’ queer feminist visibility. (Running Press/Hachette, World rights, Spring 2024)
“Black women are dope because they rise and are yet rising. This dopeness is not hyperbolic or symbolic—rather, it is borne of persecution that has failed to frustrate a perseverant persistence to prevail.”
Before sea to shining sea. Before spacious skies were pierced by purple mountains. Before the uniting of one nation. Black
women learned to rise. In POWER: THE RISE OF BLACK WOMEN IN AMERICA, award-winning journalist and digital media executive Charity C. Elder posits that there has never been a better time to be a Black woman in the United States.
POWER is an incisive disquisition on Black womanhood weaving theoretical frameworks of history and sociology with poignant interviews, ethnographic observation, and anecdotes gleaned from history, social media, pop culture, and the author’s lived experiences.
Using data, the author substantiates the triumph of Black women. Original analysis of eighty years of US census data, prepared by the University of Minnesota and analyzed by Dr. Constance F. Citro, documents the remarkable ascension of Black women since the early twentieth century. An exclusive national survey conducted in partnership with the Marist Poll in 2021 not only reveals that 70 percent of Black women say they have been successful in life, but also that most believe they have the power to succeed.
POWER does not shy away from the realities of structural oppression identified by the late Black feminist scholar bell hooks; rather it illuminates how Black women exercise agency to create meaningful lives. Success is not an anomaly, but a defining characteristic. Black women have amassed power—now, Elder posits, they need to acknowledge it and then wield the hell out of it.
Charity C. Elder is an award-winning journalist and media executive with twenty-plus years working and leading in broadcast and digital newsrooms, as well as an adjunct at Fordham University’s Communication and Media Studies Department. Selected in 2017 and profiled for NYC Media’s Vanguard: Women in Media, in 2016, she was named on Folio magazine’s list of top women in media. In 2020, she served as a senior adviser to the Mike Bloomberg presidential campaign. Prior to joining the Bloomberg campaign, Elder was the Head of Video and Podcasts for Yahoo News at Verizon Media, leading a team of innovative producers redefining news in the era of immersive journalism. She also worked as a television news producer at both CBS News and NBC News.