A great deal has happened with Untangling the Knot in the past several weeks. The project team received and sent out galleys, and we were thrilled to receive blurbs from Andrew Solomon, Amy Hoffman, Abigail Garner, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, and Ryan Sallans; we are so grateful for their time and that they have lent their voices to help spread the word about this exciting title.

Untangling the Knot is an Open Book title, which means that it represents Ooligan Press’s desire to pursue more sustainable printing practices. The design lead, Erika Schnatz, and Untangling the Knot team member Dory Athey worked together to run an audit on the printing options for this book. A full detailing of that audit will be included in the first pages of the final book. We are proud to be working on a title that is a part of this important initiative.

While Erika and Dory were hard at work on the Open Book audit, other members of the project team and the editorial staff of Ooligan Press worked together to proofread the collection. This was a lesson in both patience and humility; although we had all worked to edit the book, and several of us had worked on different stages of the copyedit process and the assembling of the collection, once we put our proofreading eyes to work, there were definitely errors in need of correction.

Those changes were sent to the interior designer, and once she implemented them, the manuscript was off to the printer. This stage of the process took place over the holiday break, so a big thank you to our publisher and fearless leader, Abbey Gaterud, for dealing with the proofs and making sure that the book was ready to go. After approval of the final proofs, the manuscript is now with the printer, and here we sit–waiting for books!

In the meantime, Untangling the Knot team member Melissa Gifford is working with the Ooligan digital department to complete the ebook version of the manuscript. There are some unique challenges for this title since it includes footnotes and an index, and Melissa is working to design a cohesive digital copy that will be reader friendly.

In other news, the official launch event has been set for March 5, 2015 at 6:00pm in the Smith Student Union building on the Portland State University Campus. This event will include readings from at least five of the contributors to the collection, but will also be an open discussion between the authors and the community about the important issues that are raised in the book. We are looking forward to a night of celebration about the book and the work of those who have worked so hard to bring it to fruition.

With only five weeks until the book is officially published, the team will be hard at work setting up events and publicity opportunities. More than anything, we are looking forward to finally seeing the finished project and watching as word begins to spread about Untangling the Knot: Queer Voices on Marriage, Relationships & Identity.