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Items of interest concerning Hawthorne Books and its authors

Behind the Curtain: Meet the People Who Make the Portland Art World Possible. Who really creates high culture’s high season? The local specialists behind the scenes. By Fiona McCann for Portland Monthly Magazine

24 Aug 2015|

PAGE MAKER


The designer behind every Hawthorne book


Adam McIsaac: CREATIVE DIRECTOR / Hawthorne Books


Forty-one books, on subjects ranging from Portland food to lobotomies: that’s the entire oeuvre of Hawthorne Books since the small independent publisher started in 2001. Adam McIsaac has designed—from cover to cover and each page in between—every single one. “Every letter in those things, I’ve touched, for good or ill,” he says. “I’ve always been fascinated by the shape of language.”

The 47-year-old advertising creative has worked with Cadillac and Comedy Central. But as an avid reader, he finds his work with Hawthorne, which came about through a long acquaintance with publisher Rhonda Hughes, has a particular appeal.

Early on, he made two decisions: he’d read every book at least three times, and he would devise a unifying house style for the imprint, which publishes four to six books a year with an emphasis on literary fiction and nonfiction essays and memoir, including authors such as Tom Spanbauer and Lidia Yuknavitch. He came up with an aesthetic, both graphic and textual, at once arresting and enigmatic. “The books don’t all look the same, but there’s a unifying principle behind them,” he says, citing the iconic Penguin paperbacks of the 1960s as one inspiration. “They were wonderful books, really well executed and inexpensive. Those were the same values that we wanted to put across.”

And for McIsaac, it’s not just about selling books. “I don’t write because I don’t have anything to say,” he says. “Making these books is a way for me to be part of literature.”

To read the entire article, go to Portland Monthly Magazine.