It’s hard to believe that today marks 11 years since the official release of the award-winning BORDER CROSSINGS: Coming Age in the Czech Resistance! The memoir was written by my late husband Charles Novacek and published posthumously by my Ten21 Press in Detroit. I named the publication company and set the publication date as October 21 …
There is cause for CELEBRATION! Today, January 12, 2022, I celebrate the one-year anniversary aka bookiversary of CHARLES’S BRIDGE, the story (based on actual events) of a young artist’s fierce desire to create art and capture beauty during wartime. Thank you to everyone who has read, shared, reviewed, commented, encouraged, and supported CHARLES’S BRIDGE …
I was saddened by the recent death of Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021), American composer and lyricist. He wrote the lyrics for “West Side Story,“ perhaps my favorite musical. Sondheim also wrote and said about art: “Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.” When you read my picture book Charles’s Bridge, you’ll …
TODAY – 10.21.2021 Ten21 Press celebrates its first decade! This small independent book publisher was founded on October 21, 2011 in the heart of Detroit, Michigan, USA. Ten21 Press celebrates 10 years and two titles: the award-winning memoir Border Crossings: Coming of Age in the Czech Resistance in the Czech Resistance published in 2012 and …
Like in his childhood hometown in Czechoslovakia during World War II, Charles treasured the art and architecture in his adopted home of Detroit as an adult. Many of Charles’s engineering projects were downtown so he eyed its buildings and sculptures. The 30’ tall Vermont marble Victory Eagle carved by sculptor Marshall Fredericks on the front …
March is WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH when tribute is paid to the generations of women and their contributions to history, culture and society. One such woman is Charles’s sister Vlasta Jakubová (my sister-in-law). Vlasta was born in Ozdany, Slovakia in 1925 and died in Brno, Czech Republic in 2017. Like her brother, in her youth she …
