Glenn Thompson (publisher)
| Glenn Thompson | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 24, 1940 Harlem, New York City, New York, United States of America |
| Died | September 7, 2001 (aged 60) London, UK |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Editor, Publisher |
Notable works | Centerprise Writers and Readers Cooperative Writers and Readers', Inc. |
| Spouse(s) | Margaret Gosley Sian Williams |
| Children | Shoshannah, Benjamin, Elisha |
Glenn Thompson (24 September 1940 - 7 September 2001) was an American book publisher and activist, best known as publisher of the ... For Beginners series of documentary graphic nonfiction books.
Biography
Glenn Thompson was born on 24 September 1940 to Clara Belle and George Joseph Thompson, in Harlem, New York. Glenn was raised in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Glenn's mother died when he was thirteen and shortly thereafter his truck driver father left the family. Glenn and his younger brother Dennis Thompson (born 1942) were picked up by the welfare department and sent to a children's shelter. After only a couple of weeks Glenn was moved to another location and the brothers were separated.
Thompson didn't learn to read until age twelve, and left school when he was just turning fourteen, but he continued to educate himself by reading voraciously. He signed on to work on a freighter when he was twenty, thus buying passage to North Africa. For the next few years, Thompson travelled around North Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia. He worked for two years on an Israeli kibbutz.[1]
Arriving in England in 1968, Thompson leveraged his street kid background to get legal employment as a social worker in the East London borough of Hackney. In 1970, he began a community-based bookshop, with his first wife Margaret Gosley, and a publishing cooperative called Centerprise, which is still in operation. The first publication by Centerprise was a book of poetry by a twelve-year-old boy named Vivian Usherwood.[citation needed]
In 1976, with his second wife Sian Williams, and like-minded friends John Berger, Lisa Appignanesi, Richard Appignanesi, Arnold Wesker and Chris Searle, Thompson founded the Writers and Readers Cooperative to publish books. Until the mid-1980s, the Cooperative also operated a London bookshop at 144 Camden High Street. Writers and Readers' most successful and long-lived publishing venture was the ... For Beginners series of documentary comic books on complex topics, starting with the first title, Cuba for Beginners and covering subjects from Freud and Marx to Elvis Presley and DNA. A rift in the Cooperative led to one of the members issuing the U.S. rights to several of the Beginners series to Pantheon Books. The series continues in the UK as the Introducing... series of books, published by Icon Books.
Thompson moved back to New York City in the early 1980s to establish a legal foothold and prevent any further pirating of titles; the U.S. imprint was known as Writers and Readers Publishing, Inc. For the balance of his life, Thompson moved back and forth between New York City and London. In New York, he expanded his company's list, publishing young poets (Harlem River Press) and children's books (Black Butterfly Children's Books).
Thompson died of cancer in London on 7 September 2001, leaving three children and two grandchildren.
References
- ^ John Berger and Margaret Busby. "Glenn Thompson: A pioneering black publisher, he saw books as a window for opening the minds of the oppressed", The Guardian, 12 September 2001.