November 5, 2024

A former EBX Best Bartender conjures up an encyclopedic guide to spirits.

In 2012, Nat Harry won the East Bay Express award for “Best Bartender in the East Bay.” At the time an EBX article described Harry’s presence at Berkeley’s Revival Bar + Kitchen as, “Relentlessly adventurous, well-studied but never pretentious about it, and personable even at the bar’s busiest moments.” Twelve years later, Harry has long since stepped out from behind the bar.

September 4, 2024

Eve Driver is joined by Kayla Thompson to celebrating the release of her book, What We Can't Burn: Friendship and Friction in the Fight for Our Energy Future, co-authored with Tom Osborn.

September 1, 2024

Eve Driver and author, activist, and educator Bill McKibben discuss What We Can’t Burn, nature poetry, and where the climate movement is at today as the hard work of deploying new energy technologies ramps up alongside ongoing efforts to unseat the old ones.

August 29, 2024

For generations, consumers didn’t put much thought or concern into the ingredients of food and beverage. It’s only been relatively recently that consumers have taken a real interest in what makes up our culinary experiences. In generations past, imbibers didn’t care to know every minute detail of how their favorite brandy or whiskey was produced. Nat Harry’s Spirits Distilled: A Guide to the Ingredients Behind a Better Bottle is the book that modern consumers want. Harry takes readers on a deep-dive into the plants and fruits that go into our favorite spirits, far deeper than most have ever considered.

September / October 2024

Eve Driver and Tom Osborn’s spirited, conversational book What We Can’t Burn concerns how activism and entrepreneurship might interact in the struggle to mitigate the climate crisis.

July 21, 2024

Westwood Press author Nat Harry will joins the judging panel of the prestigious USA Spirits Ratings festival in San Francisco for the third time. During the event, expert judges evaluate entries based on quality, value, and packages to determine the best of the best in spirits.

May 14, 2024

n the past two decades, American-made saké has undergone a further cultural shift. Now, with more than twenty producers scattered across the country (up from a mere five about a decade ago) it is a category born from the seeds—both metaphorical and literal—planted by immigrants eager to hold on to part of their heritage and by intrepid farmers like the Isbells who continue to act as stewards of the rice. “

April 18, 2024

Often, the energy transition is discussed in one of two ways: as a technological problem for engineers, financiers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers to solve through innovation, or a symptom of a far deeper brokenness within our systems of capitalism and colonialism, one that requires us to radically reimagine our relationships to each other and to the “more than human world”. Think Bill Gates vs. Robin Wall Kimmerer. In their book, What We Can’t Burn, Eve Driver and co-author Tom Osborn, suggest that both of these frameworks are right and important, and the way they are so often pitted against one another is itself a major impediment to the movement. This lecture will be a discussion of both the way these dual perspectives must stand together and the power of the liberal arts campus as a forum for collapsing the silos of technocracy and justice movements.

April 9–12, 2024

“In March 2023, Tom Osborn of Shamiri Institute, Dixon Chibanda of Friendship Bench Zimbabwe, Sean Mayberry of StrongMinds and Jean Bosco Niyonzima of Ubuntu Center for Peace, met in Nairobi, convened and sponsored by Kevin Starr of Mulago. The four initiated a Coalition for Scaling Mental Health that champions for mental health and well-being for all through task-shifting of evidence-based practices to well trained, managed and compensated lay-providers in the community, integrated with the existing healthcare system. The Mental Health coalition was launched in Oxford on April 12, 2024, at the Skoll World Forum. “ (From the Ubuntu Center for Peace)

July 6, 2023

Nat Harry delves into the story of how some of today’s distillers are exploring what heirloom corn varietals can do when used to make whiskies with a distinctive sense of character.

May 8, 2023

Author, bartender, amazing human Nat Harry joins Chris and Drew on this episode of The Good Bottle Podcast. Drew drills Nat with some of the most difficult questions of their life, and yet everyone gets along over stories of inebriation and travel.

March 1, 2023

Westwood Press author Nat Harry will once again serve as a judge at the prestigious San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

“The reputation of a spirits competition is often defined by the quality of its judges. At the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, our judging panels consist of the most respected, experienced experts in the spirits industry.” — San Francisco World Spirits Competition, April 13–15, 2023

January 2022, PEN America

We are pleased to announce our membership to PEN America and proud to be listed on their Translator's Database. PEN is a storied organization devoted to defending free speech and promoting literary culture around the world. Check out their page to find out about their advocacy, resources, upcoming events, and more.

November 19, 2021, Hillsdale News

Written by Valeurie Friedman

A new publishing house now calls Hillsdale home. Westwood Press founders Jessica Kaplan and Edward Zegarra are jumping into the Portland literary scene with both feet from their home base in Hillsdale.

Both PhD's in anthropology, Kaplan and Zegarra plan to focus their wide-ranging interests on nonfiction and literary fiction with a positive take on the future of culture and society. Now accepting original submissions to inaugurate their book publishing program, they are also on the lookout for translation projects (Spanish to English and vice versa) and offer services to independent authors looking for help to bring their manuscripts to publication.

October 2021, SW Community Connection

New to the Hillsdale business landscape is Westwood Press. Founders Jessica Kaplan and Edward Zegarra have launched an independent publishing house dedicated to publishing works from the humanities and social sciences, narrative and creative nonfiction, as well as select literary fiction for trade and academia. Drawing upon their backgrounds as university lecturers and researchers, Kaplan and Zegarra are excited to bring a multi-disciplinary focus to Westwood Press.

September 29, 2021

The Nonconformist magazine’s Big, Big List of Indie Publishers and Small Presses is proof that indie is beautiful.