New Publishing House!

For Elenvia: Publications and Productions

Introducing For Elenvia: Publications and Productions!

Hello my friends!

I have some very exciting news. For a long time, I have had the dream of building a non-profit organization that was both literary publication house and theatrical production company. We’d publish new novels and non-fiction works, produce new plays, publish the scripts of those plays, and overall work to lift up the voices of unknown, up and coming, and ever so important artists who are working to make the world a better place.

That organization now exists. It is called For Elenvia: Publications and Productions, and you can read all about us at forelenvia.org.

I’m reaching out to you today to ask for your help.

The work we are going to do at For Elenvia is not going to be easy. For one thing, we are charging into a commercial arena with a specifically non-commercial philosophy. We want to support all readers by offering them books and performances they can afford, and we want to help artists support themselves financially with their art. Put that all together and it means we - as an organization - are not expecting to see much income from the projects we invest our energy into.

That’s where the community comes into play. In order to serve our art-loving community as best we can, we need support from any of you - or anyone who’s ear you have access to - who is in a position to give. Just to get started with a debut publication, we’ll need to hire a copy editor and a cover artist, we’ll need to pay for some initial printing as well as a sales tax calculating software that will help us sell online, and of course the more funds we have to push towards publicity the more reach the publication can have. (None of that is counting all the currently-volunteer labor from myself and our other staff and board members who are working to put all the puzzle pieces in place.)

Aside from the logistical challenges, the current political climate in the United States is actively going to make our mission more difficult to fulfill. Both myself (the Artistic Director) and our Executive Director, Theo Neeno, are queer, trans, and non-binary. We are - of course - very interested in uplifting voices from the LGBTQ+ community, but we aren’t stopping there. We want to focus our work on all the voices and stories that are most silenced, the ones those in power least want to be heard - whether that be due to the color of their skin, their land of origin, or a facet of their inner identity. The power that will take over the U.S. government on January 20th is planning to use its pen to legally silence, in any way it can, precisely those voices to whom, at For Elenvia, we want to hand a loudspeaker. Unfortunately, the volume of that loudspeaker will be directly proportional to how much money we have to throw at it.

If you can help us, please do.

If you know someone or are connected to an organization who could help us, please ask them to do so.

You can offer a tax-exempt donation to us online at our Give Butter campaign - https://givebutter.com/forelenvia or if you’d like to send a check made out to ‘For Elenvia: Publications and Productions’ you can tell me so in an email and I’ll gladly give you the mailing address.

But money is not the only way to help!

Money is important, of course, but volunteered skills are also immensely valuable donations. Copy editors, cover artists, tax professionals, legal professionals, grant writers, etc… If any of you are excited by our mission and would be willing to offer your services pro bono, we would be thrilled and immeasurably grateful to have you join us. If that’s you, please send me an email at addam@forelenvia.org so we can start a conversation.

To Artists:

Do you think your work might be a perfect fit for our organization? Send me an email (addam@forelenvia.org) and tell me about you and your projects. I’d love to start a conversation.

Our community is our biggest strength. Let’s make good use of it.

For us, for Elenvia,

Addam Ledamyen