APPEAL

As we head towards the end of 2024 and get ready to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the press in 2025, I am delighted to update you on the tremendous progress at Thornwillow over the past year, in the areas of building and capital projects, teaching and fellowships, and publications and outreach.

Our Campus: The Makers Village 

The Thornwillow Institute continues to work hard to renovate and re-energize our neighborhood of historic buildings in Newburgh, NY. Our residence building at 29 Spring Street and the yellow cottage are complete and providing affordable housing for our community of makers.

Construction on the Corner Building is in the home stretch and will provide three additional apartments for visiting artists and fellowship housing and a bookstore cafe both for community gathering and also to support workshops and events. This project was launched by NY Governor Kathy Hochul at a groundbreaking in the summer of 2021 and after considerable delay is finally close to completion. Thanks to support from the New York Council on the Arts and donors like you, we were able to complete the installation of a granite and brick sidewalk required by the city’s new streetscape guidelines. Ahead now is the work of installing the exterior display window and doors and outfitting the interior.

With the corner building close to completion, we are now looking to begin work on the Carriage House, the large red building across the street from the Press. This building will house a gallery and event space as well as several studios for artists, writers, designers, makers, and Thornwilow Institute Fellows. If we are able to raise the additional funding, we plan to house a commissary kitchen for Hudson Valley chefs and a recording studio to support our growing musical programming. It is a fabulous space that we are eager to deploy. The first step in securing the building, though, is the installation of new windows to replace the plywood that currently protects the building from the elements.

The renovation and restoration of these historic structures allows us to house our people and our crafts, and to revive our corner of Newburgh to the beauty and activity of its early days. Thornwillow unites a local and global community of book makers and book readers and our Maker’s Village campus is the nerve center of the entire operation. It is essential that it continue to stabilize and transition from being a site with great potential to an actively contributing asset in support of our mission.

Our Programs: The Work of the Institute

The Thornwillow Institute works to educate artisans of all ages and backgrounds to acquire the skills necessary to engage in the related arts and crafts of the written and printed word. We are pleased to continue a number of publications, awards, fellowships, and internships.

The Thornwillow Dispatch: The Thornwillow Dispatch has made tremendous strides this year thanks to subscribers and Patron subscribers of the series. In addition to bringing out beautiful editions of important texts by celebrated writers like Anthony Doerr, Haruki Murakami, Amor Tolles, and Tom Hanks, the series has also made possible the release of new translations of important texts including John Hargrave’s new translation of Stefan Zweig’s The Invisible Collection and Lowell Liebermann’s translation of the poetry behind Schubert’s iconic Winterreise song cycle. This edition also features original artwork by artist Leon Johnson. In addition to the publication of texts by established authors, the series continues to bring out the work of emerging writers through the Thornwillow Patrons’ Prize in collaboration with the New York Foundation for the Arts. Now in its fifth year, we have published the work of 7 winners of the Patrons’ Prize with the goal of supporting and catalyzing the careers of up-and-coming new voices. Each of these publications is produced in a beautiful, letterpress printed limited edition, designed to spotlight these exceptionally talented writers. Our recent Prize winners include Donna Steiner for Part Horror, Part Magic, Holy Ourselves, Christina Milletti for The Girling Season, and Bette Anne Moskowitz for Seeds.

Newburgh Free Academy Internships: We have expanded our internship program with the Newburgh Free Academy, our local high school. This year, we have another new intern who is working on making handmade pastepaper. One of the interns from last year has become a full-time employee at the press since his graduation.

Summer Fellowships: We were thrilled to host four summer Fellows in 2024: One from Duke University, one from the Maryland Institute of Art, and two from the Collegiate School in New York.

Thornwillow Concerts at Calvary: This November, we launched the second season of monthly concerts committed to bringing world-class music to the community for free. The historic Calvary Church, one of the first buildings in the world to have been electrified by Thomas Edison, has an exceptional and recently restored EM Skinner pipe organ and just acquired a Steinway Model D concert grand piano. To celebrate this incredible musical hardware, the Thornwillow Institute music series under the artistic direction of celebrated composer Lowell Liebermann is off to a second year of producing great music. So far, we have presented two Grammy-winning artists and top musicians from across the world.

Centennial Edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses: 2024 saw considerable progress with the production of our Centennial Edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Due to supply and staffing problems resulting from Covid, we spent the last year rebuilding our base of operations and have a growing network of new and gifted binders who have joined our community of craftspeople. As followers of Thornwillow are aware, we have now completed our two-year marathon reading of Ulysses, which we orchestrated in collaboration with our publication of the novel. The readings are now complete and online for listeners to enjoy for free. This series features over 300 readers, including celebrated literary figures like Salman Rushdie and Stephen Fry, scholars from the Morgan Library and Vassar, and individual readers who recorded their pieces of the book the world over.