Sonya: Master Wings Publishing – Books that inspire, educate and last.  

Hi! Welcome to the Master Wings Publishing Podcast. I'm Sonya, associate publisher here with Jeff, our business manager.

Jeff: Hey Sonya, great to be here with you. Really excited to introduce listeners to our publishing program.  

Sonya: Glad to have you here too! I think there’s a lot of fun things for us to say about Master Wings. So, let’s get into it!  

Master Wings is an organization that was founded in 2012 by Jennifer Pritzker. It’s an extension of her desire, her intent to protect and connect communities through history. To have storytelling be a tool and an asset to the community around us. Over the years we’ve published many different titles from a wonderful collection of authors that have really inspiring stories to share about overcoming obstacles, about empowerment, about things that we haven’t really paid much attention to in the past, but are worth a second look. In today’s world, publishers like us play a really vital role. We can take risks, we can highlight all voices, we can bring readers books that matter, ones with depth, accuracy, staying power. 

Jeff: So true! I really like that we champion what’s important while also nurturing authors with purpose and passion.  

Sonya: Yea, that’s what drives us here at Master Wings. We believe in books that connect people to bigger stories and lasting ideas. If you love learning, questioning and discovering voices that might otherwise go unheard, this is the place for you! 

Jeffrey, do you want to know, I don’t think we’ve gone over specifically in the past where the name Master Wings comes from.  

Jeff: Oh yea, I would love to know that! 

Sonya: You and everybody listening, right? Master Wings it’s actually related to the parachutist military badge, which is a badge you can receive in the United States armed forces. You get it after you do 65 jumps and there’s all sorts of criteria involved, but generally you have to be excellent in character. In efficiency, you have to be qualified, you have to be in charged and that is the sort of energy that we try to put forward here at Master Wings. 

 Jeff: You’re saying it’s important that we land on our feet, if dropped? 

Sonya: Yea, exactly. To entertain, to add to the historical record, to be qualified, communicative. I thought maybe it would be a neat idea to start by sort of talking about some of our favorite titles in the Master Wings catalog. Do you have a particular favorite? Not to ask you to choose favorites. Maybe one of your favorites from the Master Wings catalog?

Jeff: Just like children, all books are good, but some books you just resonate more with. Well, my first exposure was with the Monroe Building book. And I just thought as a coffee table book, it excels, it’s just a beautiful book, the photographs are amazing. But then when you read the story intertwined within, you see it’s so much more than just a coffee table book. The history of Chicago is evident through the pages, in the pictures of people originally when they built the building and then later on when it was restored. And then having the opportunity to visit that building since it’s our office and just seeing it in person, it made the images in the book that much more impactful.  

Sonya: Yea, you can hold it up and say that’s that tile! Right, it’s really a book that only Master Wings could have published because we have all that insider information about the restoration process and all the details that went into it. It’s a really important piece of Chicago legacy and insider information. I also really adore that book too. 

We have another architecture book in our catalog, too. Do you like that one, Jeff? 

Jeff: Yea, I do! 

Sonya: You can say no! 

Jeff: I’m reaching for it. Well, I’m going to like all these books, I feel like that’s my job. Of course I’m talking of Frank Lloyd Wright’s $10,000 Home, The Emil Bach House. 

I know as a student of US history, I should know more about Frank Lloyd Wright; I really don’t. Am I going to find that when I read this book, you’d say? 

Sonya: Oh, for sure. And i think you get a good dose of US history, but the interesting thing about Frank Lloyd Wright, which I'm sure many people know is that he draws a lot of his inspiration from places outside of the US as well. And so, I think one of the things that this book does really nicely is pull all those threads together to how wright reached this sort of iconic American architecture through all those international influences as well. There's some photos and maps and details that aren’t present anywhere else, and I think that makes it a real treasure. 

Jeff: So true. How about you? Do you have a favorite or one that comes to mind immediately? 

Sonya: It’s hard, it’s very mean of you to ask me to pick a favorite even though I asked you to pick a favorite. 

Jeff: I’m sorry, I won’t let it happen again. 

Sonya: We’re just doing this for one episode, right? I think if I were to pick a title that was maybe the most personally impactful for me it would be Lita and Jean: Memoris of Two Generations of Military Women. It’s a book it’s written by a mother and daughter duo they are both military women. It talks about service and survival and it’s funny, very funny family stories. It was impactful for me in that the lessons they tried to impart – I mean it worked! They impacted them on me. I think Lita and Jean have gone through a lot in their life, and they’ve overcome so many things through self-advocacy by speaking up for themselves and each other and for other people that need it. It’s a lesson that I have personally taken to heart. You know there’s one part in the book where Lita, who’s Jean’s mother, at a medical appointment. They're talking about this procedure that they want to do to Jean, and Lita sort of interrupts the. Sort of [in the] swell of just like pushing everybody along and it's be like, so are you, have you done this procedure before? Are you an expert in it? What are your qualifications? And the guy's like, oh, I, you know, I haven't actually done this before. I don't, you know, this will be my first time. She's like, OK, all right, well, we're going to look somewhere else and do something else. Just sort of being willing to speak up and ask questions and take things in other directions in that manner, I think is really important and valuable. And so, I really enjoy Lita and Jean and I think other people would as well. 

We do a lot of different genres here, right? But what's, what would you say is consistent across all of them? 

Jeff: There’s definitely an air of authenticity when you look at each and every one of these books the people that come forward and tell these stories have a truth to be told and that’s evident. Even when we transition to some of the fiction. You can see that the facts help define the story as much as the characters themselves.  

Sonya: We have some historical fiction in our catalog like you said, one of which is Harold Coyle’s Other Side of the Wire and at that back of that book it’s historical fiction, but there’s a whole section of reference of here’s all the actual historical information that you can you know learn about or dig deeper into that’s present in this book. I think that you’re very right to say that there’s a commitment to accuracy to telling a story that adds to the record in a way that is entertaining but is also correct.  

Jeff: Again, two new titles coming from Harold Coyle the author of Other Side of the Wire. And those are set in the early days of the country that we live in. And they’re just fascinating and conveniently about the around the time here of our 250th anniversary as a country.

Sonya: Yeah, No Small Thing: A Novel of the American Revolution and A Savage War of Empire: A Novel of the French and Indian War.
Well, we'll dig into those a little bit further and um, some of the other titles in the catalog in episodes to come.

Jeff: Sounds good to me. 

Sonya: And yeah, and we hope that you guys found this elucidating, interesting. You're excited to be a part of this ongoing conversation that we're having about the storytelling, history and inspiration that we've got going on here at Master Wings. And until then, you can follow, you can subscribe, you can rate, you can share, and even more than that, you can keep learning, keep exploring, and keep the spirit of storytelling alive.