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At The Mother of All Things, we’re interested in exploring both the nitty-gritty and sublime aspects of writing, editing, and publishing books—the joys and triumphs, the trials and tribulations.

Jessica (J.L.) Powers is publisher at Catalyst Press (www.catalystpress.org), a company with both traditional and hybrid imprints—Catalyst, Flare Books, and PowersSquared. She is also founder of Maverick Independent Book Review (www.maverickindependentreview.com), author of multiple award-winning books for children and young adults (www.jlpowers.net), and a freelance editor through both her website, word-of-mouth, and over at Reedsy (https://reedsy.com/jessica-powers). If it sounds like she works all the time, that’s sort of true, but she’s also a single mom to a teenage boy obsesed with skating, so she spends a lot of time at skate parks. She lives in Texas.

Matt Powers, Jessica’s brother, is the metadata and website expert for Catalyst Press, and the editor of PowersSquared, our science-based imprint. (He has a PhD in the oncological sciences.) Also a writer and a stay-at-home homeschooling dad of three, Matt lives in Maine with his family.

We’re total book geeks. We’re in the trenches every day doing this work. These essays are about that. And maybe occasionally other things.

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