Raise your glass with your favorite sparkling wine to a New Decade, a New Year, and to Passion!

During the holidays, I gave some of my friends a bottle of my favorite champagne, Clicquot. This bottle is very special to me, as I feel a kinship to the founder’s widow, Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin, and her story. Like me, Madame Clicquot also became a widow after seven years of marriage, and she also took over her husband’s business (hers was champagne, mine is publishing). Through hard work and perseverance, she made her champagne house into a true success story.

I feel the same way with my drive and passion for Telos Press (www.telospress.com), and with my work as publisher of my late husband’s journal, Telos. In 2011, we will be making 30 years of back issues (from 1968 to 1998) available online, in time for 2012 institutional subscription renewals. It will be our global mission to get Telos in every library across the globe. Our smart and dedicated team of interns will be writing about these newly accessible back issues in the TELOSthreads feature on the Telos Press blog. Stay tuned for more!

Likewise, Food and Fate Publishing (www.foodandfate.com) will continue its objective to promote great food and food-related stories and to help with the restoration efforts following the L’Aquila earthquake of April 6th, 2009. All net profits from the sale of my cookbook, Breaking Bread in L’Aquila, go to the rebuilding process, and our marketing campaign, “We have not forgotten,” will be reaffirmed each year on the anniversary of that devastating event. Keep reading to hear more about our plans, including a new cookbook in 2012.

Buon Anno,

maria !