BENJAMIN LEROY
It’s my birthday today.
At the risk of sounding sappy, I want to thank you for the present. I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you (even those of you who may be discovering this weeks later) for caring about the written word, for loving books, for not having fled the joy of reading. I’m looking at you, readers, authors, librarians, agents, publishers. Bless your hearts reviewers! For keeping the discussion going.
I travel a lot for work.
Sometimes by car. Sometimes by plane. Big cities, little towns, sometimes no town at all in the middle of nowhere. I am most at peace in the throes of movement. All of those miles are grist for the experience mill—everything I hear, see, taste, experience is part of a never ending quest to understand everything about everybody, everywhere. At the heart of that is a desire to understand myself and my place in the universe.
I’ve been blessed to meet many wonderful people along the road. Endlessly generous and warm people who reaffirm my faith in all of us. I have been invited into the homes of strangers to have dinner with families that have become extensions of my own. I have slept on the couches of people with beliefs very much unlike my own in matters of politics, music, sports, and any number of other superficial subjects that sometimes distract us from the greatness we can cause.
My own life is immeasurably richer for having been a part of the publishing industry, for having spent so much time with people who care so severely about what it means to be human and alive and everything that goes with it.
When I started Bleak House Books more than ten years ago, I had big dreams about what the future held. I could never have known just how lucky I’d be. The dreams may have morphed a bit, evolved as I have along the way, but they have never been any less fantastic than they were way back then.
For that and everything else you all have given me, I thank you. It’s the best present ever, every day.
At about this time each year I release a video made up of footage from my life during the previous year. Here is my 2011. My love to everybody in here.
Happy Birthday.
