24.February

A week or so ago I get an email from a professor from New York who teaches creative writing at ITHACA University, apart from that he also does publishing and that being the reason for him contacting me. Here’s his email to me:  

Dear Dieter, 

I recently came across your 3-panel baobab on your website. It is quite beautiful, to say the least. 

I am preparing to publish a San Quentin death row friend's memoir, entitled "From Dead to Deliverance: a Death Row Memoir." 

You can hear my friend, Steve Champion, reading some of his poems (not included in the memoir) on my website, http://faculty.ithaca.edu/tkerr/adisareadings/. 

He was convicted in 1982 of a gang-related double homicide and sentenced to death at 20. He's been on death row for 28 years. 

I am struck by the fact that his journey back is similar in some regards to your journey back, and because Steve embraces his African ancestry, folklore, and mythology, I believe your painting would make the perfect image for the cover his 200-plus page memoir. 

So I am writing to see if you might allow us to use the 3-panel Baobab on the cover of his book. We are initially publishing with a small press, Split Oak press, and do not anticipate much commercial success initially, but we do have the endorsement of Barbara Becnel, the journalist/activist who edited Stanley Tookie Williams' memoir, Blue Rage, Black Redemption. She's very close to the project, in fact, and has a lot of connections . . .  so we look forward to good publicity down the road. 

Steve and Tookie were very good friends and study partners, by the way.  

In fact I published a small book coauthored by them and Anthony Ross, which you can preview at http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-sacred-eye-of-the-falcon-lessons-in-life-from-death-row/2197090 

We could not pay much for the rights to use the image now, but we could pay something. 

What do you think? I could send you the manuscript or an article on my work with Steve or an essay by him about his writing, if that would help you make a decision. 

Thank you for considering my request. I know it comes out of the blue. 

Tom Kerr 

I immediately contacted the Association of Mouth and Footing Painting Artists (AMFPA) because they have copyright on all my artworks, I gave them a motivational letter, expected some red tape and a long delay but was surprised to receive a very positive response and no cost to the publisher, fantastic!  

So, in a couple of months I’ll be on my first book cover is that not cool?  

Some have asked why I didn’t charge?  

If I can give I do, that’s maybe the reason why I’m so “Lucky”.