Open Book Program, 10/25/1995

This event is hosted by PEN's Open Book Committee. Walter Mosley, who oversees PEN's Open Book Committee, gives opening remarks. He talks about the Committee and what its purposes are, namely to broaden the range of the publishing world, and deepen its reserves. As Mosley says, "We want to come into this world, this world of publishing, which is so awfully white, and change it. And make it so that it reaches a bigger audience, and so that it has a greater sensibility about itself and its work, which effects both white and non-white publishers." John F. Baker (Editorial Director of Publishers Weekly) is the moderator. Panelists discuss issues pertaining to the need for multiculturalism in publishing. Speakers include Gerald Howard (editor in the trade department of W. W. Norton & Co.), Emmanuel Joseph Barron (the African American specialist at Random House; and the only sales representative regularly selling to African American bookstores), Tracy Sherrod (editor at Henry Holt & Co.), and Yoji Yamaguchi (editor at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich).