FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                  September 08, 2016

Media Contact

Kara Murphy

Marketing Coordinator

619-258-4911 ext. 114

sunbeltbook@sunbeltpub.com

CELEBRATE THE OUTDOOR BEAUTY OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY WITH ADVENTURE 16

Public release of Coast to Cactus trail and field guide spans two nights and two locations at Adventure 16

SAN DIEGO, CA—In a stunning display of community partnership, Adventure 16 Outfitters will host the celebration and public presentation of a new hiking and field guide published by Sunbelt Publications, authored by volunteers for the San Diego Natural History Museum, and developed through weekly “Roam-O-Rama” columns in the San Diego Reader. 

Coast to Cactus: The Canyoneer Trail Guide to San Diego Outdoors is the latest release from El Cajon-based publisher Sunbelt Publications and is written by a group of Natural History Museum volunteers—highly trained citizen science trail guides—known as the Canyoneers.

The public presentations at Adventure 16—recently rated one of the 25 best outdoor stores in America—will include an overview of the book’s features and highlights with Managing Editor and Sunbelt Publications President, Diana Lindsay, Q&A’s with Canyoneers, and raffles sponsored by the publisher and the San Diego Natural History Museum.  Both events kick off with a meet-and-greet reception at 6:30 pm.

The programs at Adventure 16 come right on the heels of the opening weekend of the Canyoneer hiking season, which kicks off with a guided hike at Marian R. Bear Memorial Park on Saturday, September 17 at 8:30 am and another at Cleveland National Forest (Woodland Hill Extended) on Sunday, September 18 at 9:00 am.   On these public walks, Canyoneers encourage participants to look at the surroundings to see what makes it special—to stop, look, listen, touch, smell, and examine—to understand the interactions in nature.  This is the same message readers will find in Coast to Cactus.  The book was written to serve as a “virtual Canyoneer,” inviting readers to enjoy an experience akin to a Canyoneer-led foray into nature.

Event details are available at www.adventure16.com and www.sunbeltpublications.com. For more information on public walks with the Canyoneers, visit http://sdnhm.org/.

Sunbelt Publications publishes and distributes books that fulfill its mission to celebrate the land and its people through natural science, outdoor guides, cultural histories, and regional references that encourage readers to conserve the wonders of our southwest deserts, California, and Baja California.

June 15, 2016 – San Diego, CA – This month PubWest, an esteemed trade association of small- and medium-sized businesses in the field of book design, announced their annual PubWest Book Design Award winners, including a gold medal for Sunbelt Publications’ Old Magic: Lives of the Desert Shamans, authored by Nicholas Clapp and designed by Lydia D’moch with production management by Deborah Young, in the category of Historical or Biographical Book.

Announced June 8, 2016 the PubWest Design Awards winners were judged on typography, jacket and cover design, interior design, format, selection of materials used, and printing and binding production quality. Medals were awarded in twenty-two categories.

Old Magic draws on the lore of a dozen western Native American tribes to conjure the year-to-year lives of the desert shamans—the men who sought order in the stars and in the grand, if unforgiving landscape.  The men who doctored the stricken and conjured rains, sometimes taking leave of reality, riding whirlwinds and soaring in magical flight.

The book is rich in voice, story, and appreciation for native tradition. Every image is captivating; the design choices by Lydia D’moch and production expertise of Deborah Young make flipping through the pages a rewarding visual and tactile experience.  As PubWest president, Zoe Katherine Burke put it in a June 8 press release, “Through appropriate binding and paper choices, graceful layout, and elegant, appropriate typography, words and images impact the reader in subtle but significant ways. Reading becomes pleasurable to the eye as well as the mind; photographs and artworks become places for sustained reflection.”

Needless to say, this special announcement stirred up excitement for all those involved in the book’s production.  “All of us who worked on Old Magic are honored by the award — with a special thanks to Lydia D’Moch for bringing alive the look and world of the shamans of our far western deserts,” said author Nicholas Clapp.

Publications manager, Deborah Young added, “I am very honored to have worked on this project with such a talented author and book designer. It was a pleasure selecting the best materials for this project, and acting as Nick’s “traffic cop” throughout the production process.”

April 13, 2016 – San Diego, CA – Continuing its tradition of producing quality works on the natural and cultural histories of the southwest deserts, Sunbelt Publications is pleased to share several new accolades with author and retired Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Superintendent Mark C. Jorgensen, photographer Jeff Young, and designer Kathleen Wise. Two of the most reputable agency awards in the independent publishing community, Independent Book Publishers Association’s Benjamin Franklin Awards, and Jenkins Group’s Independent Publisher (IPPY) Book Awards have recognized the immensely popular Desert Bighorn Sheep: Wilderness Icon with gold medal awards for cover design. Additionally, the book was awarded a Benjamin Franklin silver medal in the category of nature and environment and an IPPY silver for best regional nonfiction.

Diana Lindsay, president of Sunbelt Publications, was thrilled to hear about the multiple awards and said, “It is an achievement on several levels that recognizes the outstanding photography of Jeff Young, the design skills of Kathleen Wise, and the dedication and expertise of Mark Jorgensen who is a resounding spokesman for the desert bighorn sheep.”

Mark Jorgensen has spent a lifetime studying and tracking desert bighorns throughout their range. Following his 36-year career in California State Parks, he continues to be a leading authority on bighorn sheep and is currently on the technical staff of the Desert Bighorn Council and is an advisor to the Bighorn Institute. In his efforts to protect this iconic species, Jorgensen frequently advocates on their behalf through public presentations and media outlets, the book serving as an invaluable tool in this endeavor, as Desert Bighorn Sheep: Wilderness Icon is the most comprehensive photographic work ever published on this iconic symbol of the deserts of the southwest US and northern Mexico.

Jorgensen says of the awards, “What an honor simply to be considered in such esteemed award programs and what a thrill to win gold medals for cover design in both the Independent Publishers and the Benjamin Franklin Awards.  [Jeff Young and I] are also very honored with the silver medals. We have gratitude to the organizations, the judges, Sunbelt Publications and its staff, as well as our fellow authors and photographers who were among the superb field of competition.”

To request an interview or speaking engagement with the author, or to propose a book review, please contact Sunbelt Publications marketing coordinator, Kara Murphy.

May 4, 2016 – San Diego – Travel through time and the Devil’s Gate with the new book from acclaimed author and filmmaker Nicholas Clapp. Virginia City: To Dance with the Devil was published by Sunbelt Publications in January of this year and continues to gain recognition as the ever-popular speaker, Nicholas Clapp, visits audiences across the state, inviting readers to share the origins of infamy in the beloved weekend destination of Virginia City.

Virginia City: To Dance with the Devil is an amazing account of the history of Virginia City, told through colorful stories, amusing anecdotes, and over 300 images. It recollects a penniless Irish miner, who in a few short years amassed a fortune greater than any of America’s robber barons, simply by dint of hard work and intuition. It depicts to-be-famous writer Mark Twain discovering and honing his comic voice, and notorious “badman” Sam Brown lined with lead, with a coroner’s jury concluding, “It served him right.” It remembers the Virginia City mines, where men plunged into the scalding, hazardous heart of the earth, tantamount to partnering with hell’s dread demon, so that they could enjoy five Shakespeare companies performing at once, food rivaling Delmonico’s in New York, and frocks ordered directly from Paris to be worn in the barren, windswept, middle of nowhere. The twenty turbulent Bonanza years of Virginia City are celebrated in this book by a man renowned for his keen ability to conjure a vivid story from abstract history.

Documentary filmmaker and award-winning author Nicholas Clapp has explored, filmed, and written about deserts throughout the world. In Arabia, he led an expedition that discovered and unearthed the lost city of Ubar, celebrated in both The Bible and Arabian Nights. Closer to home, he has written about and roamed the deserts of the American West, with particular interest in the history of mining camps. His grandfather Daniel was a miner and when Clapp was 12, he tagged along on a shift working at the 800-foot level in the same mine where his grandfather later died in an underground accident. His great uncle George was the proprietor of a minstrel show touring mining camps, and Hannah Clapp was an 1850s Nevada schoolmarm. It was only natural then, that Clapp, along with his wife Bonnie, was drawn to Virginia City and a quest to recount and graphically illustrate the day-in, day-out story—and excitement—of a ramshackle desert settlement destined in its boom years to become the richest place on earth.

The month of May will see Clapp presenting in various Nevada locations, including:

For further event details, visit www.SunbeltPublications.com/events.  To arrange for a book review, event announcement, or author interview, please contact Sunbelt Publication’s Kara Murphy.

April 4, 2016—San Diego, CA—The third week in May marks the arrival in San Diego of a distinguished scholar on Mexico’s Sea of Cortéz region.  Dr. Markes E. Johnson, Professor Emeritus at Williams College, will visit our city from Monday, May 16, to Friday, May 20, 2016, in promotion of his recently published book, Gulf of California Coastal Ecology: Insights from the Present and Patterns from the Past.

Gulf of California Coastal Ecology was published by Sunbelt Publications this January.  The book serves as a handbook for students, scholars, and outdoor enthusiasts and takes an oft forgotten natural history approach to the ecology of this south-of-the-border region.  Rather than presenting fossil records and existing ecological features in isolation, Johnson draws on more than 12 million years of fossil record to make connections between multiple, interlocking ecosystems that exist today, providing a holistic overview on geography, ecology, and geology.

A current nominee for the prestigious James H. Shea Award for the writing of earth science materials, Johnson has published several books as well as scientific papers and articles on the geology of the Sea of Cortéz region.   While in San Diego, Dr. Johnson will deliver several lectures on topics introduced in the book. These include a lecture on tectonic decapitation of a Pliocene delta for the San Diego Association of Geologists, a lecture on the journey of Ed Ricketts and John Steinbeck to the Sea of Cortez for the President’s Council at the San Elijo Lagoon Conservancy, a seminar on ecological succession recorded in fossil Pleistocene reefs for students and faculty at Scripps’ Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation, and a public presentation on Isla Monserrat at San Diego’s Adventure 16.  Gulf of California Coastal Ecology will be available for sale through Adventure 16.  Event details are as follows:

Date: Monday, May 16, 2016

Time: 7:00 pm (Happy half-hour begins at 6:30)

Host: Adventure 16

Lecture topic: “To the Roof of Monserrat: Climbing for Science in Baja California.”

Location: Adventure 16 –4620 Alvarado Canyon Rd. San Diego, CA 9212

Phone: (619) 283-2374

Cost: Free and Open to the Public

To inquire about one of these lectures, about scheduling a lecture with Dr. Johnson, or for media inquiries, contact Kara Murphy of Sunbelt Publications at (619) 258-4911 ext. 114.

There is a screenplay in the works for Marshal South and the Ghost Mountain Chronicles. Read the news here: Ghost Mountain Chronicles

Ricardo Breceda, Anza-Borrego’s most famous sculptor has moved his studio and found new homes for his whimsical metal sculptures. His work is iconic work is featured throughout Anza-Borrego State Park and surrounding areas, and now can be found in local cities from San Diego to Joshua Tree, California. Click here to read about his new locations! Breceda’s Art Finds New Home