Galpón Press
Galpón Press is the independent book publishing imprint of Filmore Projects LLC founded by Michael Jacobs, long-time trade publishing executive, and Sheridan Hay, editor, novelist and teacher.
Based out of their shed (galpón in Spanish) on Filmore Farm in Washington County, New York, Galpón’s list strives to produce projects of passion—regional, seasonal, and literary—with detailed attention and national distribution.
f o r t h c o m i n g
by Antonio Romani
The Patient Wait of the Stones: Time and Memory in Lunigiana
- coming June 2, 2026 -
First published in Italy, The Patient Wait of the Stones is an evocative literary narrative, both personal and historical, by teacher, translator and writer, Antonio Romani. It is a memorable meditation on the phenomena of place and the compelling force of history and tradition. Galpón Press will publish the English collaborative translation by Romani and novelist Martha Cooley (The Archivist, and the forthcoming, My Little Donkey.)
The Patient Wait of the Stones chronicles Romani’s late-in-life move to a tiny medieval borgo in Lunigiana, a little-known territory in northwest Tuscany, a mountainous region that runs from the Apennines to the Mediterranean Sea.
In beautifully lucid prose he describes his encounters with local eccentrics, including an old bibliophile who has spent his life and fortune on the reconstruction of the village’s ancient castle and on a collection of rare books and manuscripts.
The strange and intriguing past of his new environs prompts Romani to undertake a dual investigation. As he explores the rich history of the village and the Magra River valley – for centuries a zone of transit for pilgrims, merchants, itinerant booksellers and armies – Romani probes as well his own past. Finding himself something of a stranger in his own country, he reorients his relationship to his native land and to the awe-inspiring natural world that surrounds him.
The dry stone walls that patiently wait, witness and sustain the surrounding hillsides are fundamental elements of Romani’s inner as well as outer landscape. For him, the stones are a treasure chest of memory and, too, a challenge to meditate on time, history, and the quietly thrilling peculiarities of place. The walls he painstakingly restores reveal the secret nature of Lunigiana and spur a compelling journey of personal reckoning.
Please contact Victoria Larson at VK Larson Communications for Advanced Reader Copies (ARCs), media, author event inquiries.
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A former teacher and bookseller, Antonio Romani is an essayist and co-translator of Time Ages in a Hurry by Antonio Tabacchi (Archipelago Books, 2015). His essay on Elena Ferrante was a Notable in Best American Essays 2016.
Martha Cooley, co-translator, is the author of three novels (The Archivist, Thirty-Three Swoons, and Buy Me Love), a memoir (Guesswork), and a recently published collection of essays, My Little Donkey (Catapult, 2025).
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ISBN 979-8-9924687-4-8
e-ISBN 979-8-9924687-5-5
Publication Date: June 2, 2026
Published by Galpón Press (galponpress.com)
Distributed by The Stable Book Group
$19.95 -
“In Castiglione ... everything is made of stones... They seem of little value. Yet from them I’ve learned to listen to the true history of the human beings who built with their own hands their homes here, and the castle too.”
Advance Praise
“A marvelous piece of work, historical, descriptive, intimate, and most of all beautifully written.”
—-Lynne Sharon Schwartz, author of A Stranger Comes to Town and Leaving Brooklyn
“The Patient Wait of the Stones invents a whole new genre of writing about Italy. The smell of dust on a stone terrace after a rainstorm, a medieval castle with an obsessive bibliophile owner, a community of expats and locals speaking different languages and yet still understanding one another—The Patient Wait of the Stones is a beautifully modest proposal for creating a better world.”
— Benjamin Anastas, author of the memoir Too Good to be True
“... A personal and deeply researched chronicle of an ancient Tuscan hill town that becomes a paean to the notions of Italy and belonging, of freedom and commitment. Romani meditates on Ligurian stones and the enduring power of artists and scholars, booksellers and adventurers ...The power is here, in this centuries-spanning, moral and unforgettable tale of romance, tragedy, and recovery, one that will stand alongside the works of Paul Theroux and Bruce Chatwin.”
— John Oakes, author of The Fast: the History, Science, Philosophy and Promise of Doing Without
p a s t r e l e a s e s
The Woodcutter’s Christmas
by Brad Kessler
with photography by Dona Ann McAdams
- Available wherever books are sold (or directly from Galpón Press) -
This holiday season, give a treasure that truly matters.
“A modern holiday story set apart from the sentimental pack by Brad Kessler’s fine prose and Dona Ann McAdams’s beautiful black-and-white photos.”
— Publisher’s Weekly
Unwrap the deluxe edition of one of the most heartwarming Christmas stories of our time. Each year a New York family looks forward to the day in early December when the Woodcutter arrives from Vermont with his Christmas trees on the sidewalk below their apartment…until he doesn’t show up. And the touching backstory behind this holiday fable.
Featuring elegant black-and-white photographs by award-winning photographer Dona Ann McAdams, The Woodcutter's Christmas takes readers on a reflective journey, blending the serene beauty of Vermont winters with the bustling streets of Manhattan.
Seen through the eyes of a man who nurtures Christmas trees, this story explores the contrast between nature's slow, steady rhythms and the fleeting, disposable culture of modern society.
When the Woodcutter sees the trees he lovingly raised discarded on city curbs after the holiday season, his perspective shifts. After a chance meeting in Manhattan with a kindred spirit, the lessons, spirit, and meaning of Christmas is beautifully reinforced in Brad Kessler's lovely text.
Individual copies available from:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Bookshop.org
Available wherever books are sold
All photos copyright © Dona Ann McAdams. All rights reserved. Not for use without permission.
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Brad Kessler is a critically acclaimed novelist whose work has been translated into several languages. He won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in Fiction for his novel Birds in Fall (2006), A Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as a Whiting Writer’s Award.
He is an educator and farmer and author of the literary non-fiction Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese. His other books include: North, a novel (2021) a finalist for 2022 Dayton Literary Peace Prize in fiction and the 2022 Vermont Book Award; Lick Creek (2001), a novel, and The Woodcutter’s Christmas (2001). He is the editor and co-creator of Deep North: Stories of Somali Resettlement in Vermont (2023). His work has appeared in many publications including the New York Times Magazine, The Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, and Lit Hub. He’s received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Lange-Taylor Prize from Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies.
He teaches creative writing at the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles, and has lectured at, among other places, Northwestern University, Smith College, the New School University, and the Kenyan Writer’s Workshop. He is a graduate of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma and runs a small goat dairy in Southwestern Vermont alongside the photographer and activist, Dona Ann McAdams. -
Dona Ann McAdams has been making photographs for over fifty years, her work exhibited at venues such as the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The International Center for Photography, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, among other places.
Her books include Black Box: A Photographic Memoir (Saint Lucy Books, 2024) and Caught in the Act (Aperture, 1996). She is the recipient of a Dorothea Lange—Paul Taylor Prize from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, an Obie Award and a Bessie Award for her performance photography, and grants from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and the Vermont Arts Council.
Since 1983, she has been committed to bringing cameras and photography into small, underserved communities, setting up community darkrooms and teaching people how to shoot, process, and develop their own film and document their own lives. She has worked in places as diverse as adult homes for people living with mental illness, homeless shelters, small mountain communities in Appalachia, dairy farms in New England, and on the backstretch of thoroughbred racetracks.
Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The London Times, Art Forum, Doubletake, and Aperture. She has taught and lectured at, among other places, Rutgers University, New York University, The International Center for Photography, The American Center in Barcelona, Spain, and Hostos Community College, New York City.She lives on a goat farm in Vermont.
For more information, visit https://www.donaannmcadams.com
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Publisher: Galpón Press (October 14, 2025)
Distributor: The Stable Book Group through Simon & Schuster
Length: 60 pages
Price: $19.95
ISBN: 9798992468700
ebook ISBN: 979-8-3372-0384-3
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Each year the woodcutter came to our corner. He'd arrive on the first of December, a songbird out of season, in his old Ford truck filled with Christmas trees. He'd set up his stock beneath our window, angling firs and spruces against a wooden staging. He'd unload a netting barrel, an aluminum lawn chair, his hand saw and axe. Then he'd snake electric lights over his trees to make a kind of arcade over the sidewalk. Overnight the air on Avenue A became scented with balsam and spruce so it seemed by morning a forest had sprung up spontaneously on our street...
about us
Michael Jacobs has spent over 45 years in trade and consumer publishing in the United States, the UK and France. Newly retired, he spent almost 20 years as President and CEO of ABRAMS Books. Michael started his career at Penguin where he became President in 1990. After 15 years at Penguin, he held senior leadership positions at Simon and Schuster and Scholastic where he oversaw the sales, marketing and distribution for the first five Harry Potter books. He has served as Chair on the boards of the Academy of American Poets and the National Coalition Against Censorship and is currently on the board of governors of Yale University Press as well as the Corporation of Yaddo and the Bookselling Industry Charitable Foundation (BINC). Michael was an Eli Whitney scholar at Yale.
Sheridan Hay is a writer, editor and teacher. She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her first novel, The Secret of Lost Things (Doubleday/Anchor), which features a lost manuscript by Herman Melville, was a Booksense Pick, a Barnes and Noble Discover selection, shortlisted for the Border’s Original Voices Fiction Prize, and nominated for the International Impac Award. A San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and a New York Times Editor’s Choice, it was published in fourteen countries. Sheridan has led the Center for Fiction’s popular Moby-Dick reading group many times, as well as leading a long-standing Henry James group, among others. Early in her career, Sheridan was an editor at Simon and Schuster and worked at Harper Collins and Penguin Books in New York and Sydney, Australia where she was born.
