Make Noise and Do Good with Angela Engel

“Books change lives. Books can create a movement in people. And when people are moved, they are able to change the world.” – Angela Engel

There is power in sharing your story. What your story will be, and how to best share it, is different for everyone. Angela Engel founded The Collective Book Studio to bring those stories to life while disrupting one of the most slow-moving industries in the world, book publishing.

Angela Engel doesn’t let anyone tell her no. When she didn’t have the right job for her, she convinced a publisher to make a position for her. When everyone in the publishing industry told her “this is just how it’s done,” she founded The Collective Book Studio to shake up timelines, nurture talent, and give stories to the audiences that need them. In 2020, Angela used those same skills and mindset to create and distribute PPE for communities across the country.

As the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, Angela feels called to make noise and do good. Listen to this week’s episode of Find Your Fierce & Loving to hear what that means to her and how she’s taken her principles and made them a reality.

• (02:32) – Expertise
• (11:34) – Disruption
• (20:35) – Call to serve
• (39:30) – Collective Book Studio

When Angela Engel launched The Collective Book Studio she wanted to build a different kind of publishing business, one that adhered to the author’s vision every step of the way. Her experience in traditional publishing allows her to introduce beautiful books into the world, and she brings her passion for reading and sharing new ideas into every new project she undertakes. Angela grew up in Minneapolis, MN, and now calls Oakland, CA, home. For many years she worked in sales and marketing for nationally known category leaders in publishing, including Chronicle Books, Ten Speed Press, Cameron + Company, Dwell Studio, and Moleskine. She has sold to key national and international retailers such as Amazon, Costco, Nordstrom, and Target and became a sought-after expert in the industry. Now, with The Collective Book Studio, she has the opportunity to provide authors the support they need to get a book out into the world, from start to finish. During the quarantine Angela established a fund to create and distribute 10,000 PPE face shields nationwide, and has raised more than $35,000. You can see more at The Collective Book Studio on Instagram.

Do you want to unleash your inherent love and goodness, liberate yourself, and free humanity from the oppressive systems and structures we have created? We are here to support you in finding your fierce and loving life. Join us in Our Circle, a vibrant membership community rich in opportunities for engagement and transformation. Find out more at lolawright.com/our-circle.

You can follow Lola Wright, on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter and learn more about my work at lolawright.com.

Chicago born and built, Lola grew up in wealth and privilege, yet always sensed something was missing. She sought out aliveness and freedom in music, immersing herself in the hip hop and house music scenes of 90s Chicago. After finding herself on her own at 23, as the mother of two young children, she became determined to create a new experience.

Lola is an ordained minister with a gift for weaving together the mystical and material, she served for many years as the CEO of Bodhi Center, an organization committed to personal transformation, collective awakening, conscious activism, and community-building. 

This podcast is produced by Quinn Rose with theme music by independent producer Trey Royal.

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Lola Wright (00:01): Something is stirring. Maybe you’ve felt it. We are reckoning with the reality of injustice and binary thinking that feeds the political machine. Humanity is in the midst of a heartbreaking and painful paradigm shift. That is a good thing. My name is Lola Wright, and this is Find Your Fierce & Loving. This podcast is intended to help you disrupt, untangle and free your mind of personal and collective agreements, patterns and beliefs that are holding you back and weighing you down. We desperately need your fierce and loving purpose now more than ever. I am so excited to have today’s guest on Find Your Fierce & Loving. Let me tell you a little bit about this human being. When Angela Engel launched The Collective Book Studio, she wanted to build a different kind of publishing business. One that adhered to the author’s vision every step of the way. Her experience in traditional publishing has allowed her to introduce beautiful books into the world, and she really brings her passion for reading and sharing new ideas into every new project she undertakes. Angela grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota and now calls Oakland, California her home. For many years she worked in sales and marketing for nationally known category leaders in publishing, including Chronicle Books, Ten Speed Press, Cameron + Company, Dwell Studio, and Moleskine. She has sold to key national and international retailers such as Amazon, Costco, Nordstrom, and Target and became a sought after expert in the industry. Now with The Collective Book Studio, she has the opportunity to provide authors the support they need to get a book out into the world from start to finish. During the most recent COVID-19 quarantine, Angela established a fund to create and distribute 10,000 PPE face shields nationwide and has raised more than $35,000. In her very little spare time, she loves running and cooking. She has three extraordinary daughters and an equally wonderful husband named Dan. So, let me tell you what I know about Angela. Quite honestly, it’s not much more than that because we met on Clubhouse, and that’s sort of embarrassing to be totally frank, as a 42 year old woman who has young adult children who are like, “What are you doing with your life?” But, this could be a very bad idea quite frankly. This podcast could be a disaster. We actually don’t know each other almost at all, except that Angela arrived in my life in a perfect moment of what I would call sort of like my own crisis. Many of you know, I have a forthcoming book, and there have been aspects of this project that have gone like remarkably easefully. And then, I hit a few bumps in the road, and I really felt alone, and I felt sort of… A lot of self-doubt was coming up. And, really through the grace of this extraordinary universe, this human being showed up in the same room as me at the right and perfect time on Clubhouse and said exactly what I needed to hear. And, it really is a demonstration and a testament of the influence we each have and when we are living our own purpose, how we can impact other people’s lives in unexpected ways. So Angela, I am really excited to have you on the podcast. And really, I want you to know that… First of all, what I have experienced of you in the very short time that we’ve known each other is this enthusiasm and this zest and this conviction for other people living their bigness. And, I will tell you, it really was divinely timed for me because when I met you I was feeling… And, this was only a couple weeks ago, but it was like you know when you meet someone, and they say just the right thing at just the right moment? That’s what you provided me. So, I just appreciate you so much.

Angela Engel (04:29): Okay, I’m going to just dive in here with you, Lola. I just met you on Clubhouse, like you said, and you can see me… I’m teary eyed because just even you reading out loud my bio and the PPE, and it’s been almost a year we’ve been shelter in place, and we have been dealing with this pandemic. And, you’re right. It was like I just happened to be in that room, and I listened. We were both active listeners, and I just think that that’s where we’re going to come from today is let’s just dive in. So, I’m so excited to be here. I’m so excited to support you in your publishing journey. And, I think that authenticity and that this find to me, I don’t know where it’s going to take us, but I’m 43, 1977. So, I only got 1 year on you. So, let’s just do this thing.

Lola Wright (05:36): Yeah, I so appreciate that. I think that for people who know me, I move on the planet with an incredible amount of confidence. And, some of that has been out of necessity. As an 18 year old mom, I really lived as fake it til you make it. I had to act older. I had to be more mature. I had to sort of… I guess what I’m remembering is in my career, to hire an 18 year old pregnant girl is like… Most people aren’t like “That’s a winner.” So, I had to really perform above where I was in life, above my age and that sort of thing. I guess I’m just feeling like my confidence and my conviction has been of such great value to me, but I showed up to you really like beginner’s mind. I don’t know how to do this publishing thing. I feel stuck. I don’t have 100,000 Instagram followers, which is what you need these days and for good reason. I get it. It’s a big investment for a publisher, et cetera, et cetera. But, to show up to another person… I guess for me as someone who’s very confident, very clear on how I see the world, and then to be like “I have no idea Angela. What do I do next?” It really speaks to the value of expertise, and you are an expert in your space.

Angela Engel (07:13): Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I think that that is the key. Especially for me, living in this space of 20 plus years in sales, marketing, business development and really in the book world, in the publishing world. And, I think a book is a product, I really do. Now, it’s time to really talk about our industry with others and give others access. I’m hearing that. I’m hearing that from you. I’m hearing that from a cacophony. It’s like so loud. It’s as though I’m in a concert hall, and I’m listening to these voices of people saying “We want to be published. We want to tell our stories. We’ve tried self-publishing. We know about it. But, that’s not how I want to go. So, how can we get access into this industry?” And, I think that that’s why I am so driven to talk about it. I am so driven to give access. As you saw, for me, it’s like my journey in publishing was a gift. I was in my early 20s. I just graduated college, comparative lit and creative writing, and I got a job in publishing. And, when you get that opportunity to do that and to be the girl at the copy machine and work your way up and all the sudden be giving sales presentations to Costco or a Target or an Amazon, I feel that now it’s my role, especially because the industry has changed so much, the Big Five have gotten bigger, and Amazon self-publishing has gotten ginormous. It is time to think about how we give access to people like you because you deserve to write your story in confidence when you’re on stage. So, that’s what I saw in you, this fierce and loving individual. If I can say “Hey, let’s get you to a place where you’ve got a book and can move other young women.” That’s what I want for you.

Lola Wright (09:44): Yeah. It’s interesting because every human being has a story. Every human being has a story that is unique to them. And, I guess my question for you would be does that mean that every story is worthy of a book? Should we all just write books?

Angela Engel (10:03): No, sorry to be so frank. No. Everyone should journal. Everyone should write. It’s an amazing exercise. Look, we teach writing to our children. Writing is so important. I have three girls of my own. I’m a creative writer. But, I don’t have a published book. I write a lot on my own blog and journaling. I do exercising for myself. I actually write lists completely. I do post its. I love that act. But, writing a book is actually extremely difficult, and it takes a team, I think. So, if you’re ready to do the work and a book is something that you know in your heart is something that is going to propel you forward as well as your community and your audience, then yes, let’s do it. But, you also need to kind of be aware that everybody needs an editor. You need a designer, a typographer, and most likely, people who have been in that space doing that work. So, that’s why I formed The Collective Book Studio because honestly, there’s a lot out there that people just think “I’m going to write a book and slap it in a PDF and put it up on Amazon and sell it.” And, that is actually not what it takes to make a great book, in my belief.

Lola Wright (11:32): Yeah. Well, one of the things that I think we resonated with one another around is this idea of seeing ourselves as a disruptive presence in an industry. So, I oftentimes refer to this idea of holy disruption. So, not disruption just for the sake of disruption, but disruption in service of expanding a paradigm, growing, evolving. So, you relate to yourself as a disrupter in the publishing world. What does that mean for you and why is that important?

Angela Engel (12:06): I love everything you just said. So for me, when you talk about, and you’ve emailed me and DMed me this question over and over, and we’ve got to move away from it. I need 100,000 followers on Instagram to write a book. The answer is absolutely you do not. When I’m called the disruptor in the industry, I’m called that because I’m asking my industry to stop focusing on what they’re publishing based on platform and start talking about content. Because if I think about why I’m a comparative lit major, it is because I read Alberto Manguel’s History of Reading, which is about content and the idea of reading and why we love to read. In order for us to move the needle, to compete with a self-publishing industry… I’m an insider. I’m a disrupter. I’m from the industry. I’m asking my industry to rethink our model. IP is a huge issue. If we are asking entrepreneurs and creators to give up all their intellectual property, acquire it for the lifetime of that concept, we are not going to be able to compete with the self-publishing model. We just won’t. So, that is partly why I’m called a disrupter in the paradigm. I’m talking about it within our space. I still talk about integrity. A book needs to be beautifully written. It needs to have an arc. It needs to have typography. It needs to have structure, cover design. So, I still am in a very rigid belief that a book has to have quality control. So, I honestly, not every book is for us at The Collective and not every book honestly should be published without that quality control. I think that is really important as a publishing entity, to really focus on things, to hold people to high standards in their work.

Lola Wright (14:35): What I hear when you say that is sort of like we run the risk in our society of just producing so much that it’s just about volume or quantity. And, I have to watch this for myself because I can tend to be like throw as much paint on the wall as possible and something will stick. And, what I hear you saying is let’s be discerning. Let’s be mindful. Let’s be thoughtful. Let’s measure twice and cut once. It’s not just about quantity and volume and beast, bigger, bigger, more, better which is such a metaphor for our entire reality right now. If it’s just about bigger is better, we have sacrificed something very sacred.

Angela Engel (15:21): With people like you, it is a creative process, meaning no interface, no program. You can’t put your words into a… I don’t know, what are those sites called? It’s like Snapfish. You want to just upload something and put it up? That is not what it takes to make a book. It’s a creative process. You need people. Minds will make it better. I think that’s what we’ve been talking about for you. A writing coach, an agent. How are you digging into that material? How are they stretching you? That’s the exciting thing that I find in book making. That’s what’s going to make your book great.

Lola Wright (16:04): Yeah, it’s like as cliché as it sounds, it’s the journey not the destination. It’s like who do I become in the process of writing this book, such that by the time the book is offered up to human beings to read it, it really is an offering and not just like a fast food meal.

Angela Engel (16:23): Exactly. And, I think that for me, disruption is something that I’m totally comfortable with. You’ve talked about 18 having your first baby. So, for me, my career has not been like okay, here I am staying in one place, and I’m going to be like the good girl and keep at it. I always ask the why or why didn’t we do differently. So for example, when I was already in my 20s, I was at this company that was called Publishers Group West, and they are now bought by Ingram, but they were a conglomerate of a lot of small, independent presses. And, they happened to have all of these books in Spanish, and they weren’t getting any attention. And, we were in California. So, I said “Hey, what if I create a Spanish language catalog?” I’m a comparative lit major, I know Spanish. I was in my early 20s, and I said to this company, I said “What if we got to the show in Guadalajara, this big huge book show, and we just display all of our books?” The librarians love that show. And, we create a specialized catalog. And, they were like “Okay, we’ll send you.” Just by asking, I was like great. That was the best trip of my life. I’m like 25 years old, and I’m getting to go to Guadalajara with the head of sales. And, it opened up a whole new world. So, that’s why I say I think for me to get to The Collective Book Studio at 43 was just how I always saw my career. Have you ever read What Color is Your Parachute by Rick Bolles?

Lola Wright (18:07): I’m familiar with it, but I haven’t read it.

Angela Engel (18:09): Okay. So Ten Speed Press published that. They’re part of Random House now. I read that book because I was kind of like I don’t know what I want to be doing, where do I want to go next in publishing. And, it’s about what color is your parachute. Like some people have green. Some people have purple. I don’t know. I can’t remember what my color is. That’s not the point. The point is I looked at the spine, and I said “Who published this thing?” And, it was Ten Speed Press. And, in the book he says that the job or the career for you may not be posted, may not be written, so you need to create it. So, he said that in the book. So, I wrote a letter to the publishing house about how even though they don’t have a job for me, they have a job for me.

Lola Wright (18:56): I love it.

Angela Engel (18:58): And, I talked about this book. And, the owner called me. Phil Wood. He’s no longer with us. But anyways, we had a great meeting in his office, and he said “We’re going to find a job for you here.” And, they found a job in special sales, and I sold Target and Costco and everything else. And then, I actually got headhunted to go to Chronicle Books. I was sad to leave Ten Speed, but Chronicle Books was a great opportunity for me in the Bay Area. It’s a pioneer in gift and in lifestyle and pop culture, in books outside of the book trade. Really, they’ve just been a pioneer. So, I took that job, and that’s where I met a lot of my colleagues today that are with me at The Collective Studio.

Lola Wright (19:51): You want to be more alive. You want to unleash your inherent love and goodness, liberate yourself, and free humanity from the oppressive systems and structures we have created. We are here to support you in finding your fierce and loving life. Join us in Our Circle. This is an affirming and radical space that will gather weekly, on-demand or live, whatever works best for your life. For more information on how you can engage in Our Circle, visit lolawright.com/our-circle. I’d love to have you with us. So, I want to just underscore a part of the story that you just told because you’re an expert in the publishing world, and I would say I’m an expert in seeing beyond the literal. Like, what’s the metaphor in existence or what’s really happening beneath the surface? And, one of the qualities that you talked about that I would refer to as living a life of expectancy. So, you read this book somewhat innocently, not with any real, like I’m going to read this and get after something in this book. It’s like, I’ll read this book. And, you got something from it, and it moved something in you. And then, you wrote a letter to a company that did not know you from Jane. But, you expected a particular outcome because you were trusting your intuitive sensibility. And, I just want to underscore that because we all have an intuitive faculty. Each one of us has something that’s stirring in us, that’s informing us, and when you align with it and then move in the direction of it and expect your desires to be made manifest, there is something very potent. You actually transcend the limitations of this finite reality. This is where people start playing in dimensions of reality. They don’t just get limited or bogged down or weighed down by the probability. It’s the distinction between living inside probable contexts versus possible contexts. Like you were living inside of what was possible, not what was probable.

Angela Engel (22:25): Correct. I love that and just thinking over and over again of optimism and of change. If we really believe that we can create change, that we can do good, that we can move a needle, we have to have an optimistic mindset. We have to just believe. And, that is what you’re talking about. And, I like when you say I just kind of read this book, and it changed my life. I actually believe that about books. So, when you came to me and you’re like “Angela, this book is in me, I can’t help it.” I’m like “Let’s get it out there. You’re going to succeed.” Because of this reason, books change lives. Books can create a movement in people. And, when people are moved, they are able to change the world. I was on another Clubhouse room and someone wanted to argue with me about that, just doing books is not a real movement. I’m like actually, I believe it is because when I read Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison in college, I knew that this person, Toni Morrison, could change my paradigm, could change the way that I saw the world. So, I started reading everything she did, Sula and The Bluest Eyes. And, I have to give her a lot of credit for who I am today. Thank God we have writers like that.

Lola Wright (24:09): Yeah, and what you just said, because I just want to keep sort of underscoring. You said, “Lola, this will succeed.” And here again, it’s like oftentimes we have a vision, we have a dream, we have a thing that we want to bring to the world, and we’ll get wobbly. It’s hard to hold that big vision alone. And, oftentimes we can lean into someone else’s belief in us when we forget for ourselves. So, in that moment, you were holding a conviction that I was getting a little wobbly around. So, I just say for all of us, may we pay attention to the people who we run across who are here to hold a bigger idea for us than we can necessarily hold for ourselves. And, I imagine as an entrepreneur, as a female entrepreneur, as a disruptive presence in a pretty fixed industry, you have had to navigate some lonely hours of really… That’s my own experience. Whenever we step outside of a paradigm, you’re in the unknown, and it is uncomfortable. How have you navigated stepping into a new venture that is breaking through on something? How do you deal with those lonely hours when you’re like have I made a terrible decision? Because we’ve all been there.

Angela Engel (25:42): Yeah. I mean, how many times I have been told no and am continually told no. I can’t even count anymore. And, it is draining. It is hard. I mean, I can tell you… I got teary eyed when you were reading about my PPP journey, my journey in this pandemic. When COVID first hit, I had already been in this entrepreneurial space hearing no so much. I thought this was going to be easy to get distribution. I come from distribution. I am in sales, I’m actually doing sales consulting with a company called Tra Publishing that is working with Simon & Schuster, so I’m talking to Simon & Schuster all the time. I’m doing a package deal. I’m already in the space. I have great friends at Cameron and Company, which is part of Abrams and Chronicle and lots of people back at Ingram. And yet, I was still over and over again, “No Angela, this isn’t going to work. Why are you doing this? Either be just a packager, work within our timelines of publishing. This is the timeline.” This is what everyone keeps saying to me. Three years, two years, this is how it is. And, I was like, this is not how it is. You guys, this can not be the way it is. And then, the pandemic hit and I was like shit, obviously this is not the world we imagined. My best friend since five years old, he’s an ER ICU doc in Oakland, at Kaiser. He was one of the first doctors to treat a patient off the Princess Cruise. So, when the pandemic hit and my friends and family are in New York and my best friend is working like crazy, he took everybody’s shift. He’s gay with no children, an amazing man. But, he had women doctors or male doctors with children or a good colleague that was pregnant working those hours in COVID, so he took overnight shifts, and he was exhausted. And, he came over one evening, and we went on a walk, and I just saw in him that he was not going to make it. He wasn’t going to pull through for us because he didn’t have enough PPE. He was putting his N95 in an oven. And, he’s an ICU ER doc. And, I said “Something’s got to change.” And, I said “I’m doing it in publishing. I’m doing it in the most archaic, slowest industry possible. So, something’s got to change.” I had another great friend who’s an anesthesiologist. My brother-in-law is an anesthesiologist. Also, I’m Jewish, and I stereotype, but it’s actually true. The head of ER at Oakland Summit, Ron Barrels, bless his heart, he is a member of our shul, was asking for help. I had way too many people asking for help. So, I got a video out of China, and we got a prototype out of a large hospital system, I can’t say who, and we were able, with Rosie the Riveter here and Makers and Burning Man and people, we were able to make PPE shields that were exactly, disposable face shields. I wired, with my husband, because we have businesses, to Dupont in Wisconsin, $6000 to buy the Mylar before anyone was even thinking to buy it. Because people were like, “I don’t know what’s happening. It’s March.” I was lucky. I was able to see this man who has already treated a patient well before it kind of hit the whole country. So, we secured that Mylar before we started the GoFundMe. I had to call my husband who’s in the restaurant business and go “Hey honey, I know we’re both small business owners, and I know you’re in the restaurant business. And, it’s COVID and you guys don’t know what is going on with all the restaurants, but can we take $6000 out of our business account?” I said, “Todd needs it. We need it.” And, my husband just was like, “I trust you.” And, we just wired the money and set a GoFundMe, and I connected with organizations, like SS Labor, and they donated to the fund. And, it just grew because of the goodness of people, and honestly because of what I kept repeating to myself. When I’m told no, when I’m that low, like what you’re saying, I don’t know where to go, I make myself go for a very long run or a walk or exercise. And, I actually start chanting to myself. I start chanting to myself, change starts with you, change starts with you, change starts with you. And then, I actually started using this hashtag, change starts with you. I’m 43 years old and kind of crazy, and I’m not really on social media. But, I’m like using it. I’m like hashtag here, I’m in. I can do this. Hashtag. It’s March and April. And honestly, I just started getting letters and e-mails from the Navajo Nation. So, we started manufacturing for the Navajo Nation. And, the GoFundMe was going to be $6000, $10000 just serve it. And, it just kept growing. Small clinics all over the Bay Area, New York, Tennessee. People were asking for it. So, we just started doing it, and it was pretty incredible. And then, George Floyd was murdered, and I’m from Minneapolis, and that’s where my family and friends are. So, I got phone calls for face shields there and we started sending them to Abbott Northwestern, I think it is called and Children’s of Minnesota. I’ve got the letter here. It was just an incredible opportunity to serve. When you’re on the road of entrepreneurship, and you’re being told no all the time as a woman, in an industry that does not want disruption, they want the status quo, I think that just allowed me to sit back and go “Wait a second. If we are going to wait for large companies or at the time, the government and the administration, to save our communities, we are going to not make it. Our doctors and our frontline workers are not going to make it.” So, I felt compelled to just do the work.

Lola Wright (33:17): So, there are two thoughts that I’m having as you share that. I’m so grateful you shared that story. What strikes me is early on in my career I worked for a man and in the interviewing process he’s like, “I don’t know what you’d actually do here, and I don’t know why we would hire you, but you have a fire in your belly that is so magnetic, I have to have it in my life.” It reminds me of… I can feel the fire in your belly. I oftentimes talk about the world love and in Aramaic, the word love is hooba, and it comes from the Semitic root ha or hav, which means to set on fire. So, the context that I use for love is not this kind of like puritanical, polite presence, but it’s actually like a cosmic force, and that’s what you exemplified. You exemplified love as a fire. It’s like when we talk about that mama bear energy. It’s like oh no, oh no no no no no no no no no. So, I love that context for love because I think it is needed on the planet now more than ever. I’m also thinking about, because I didn’t realize that you were Jewish, the moral mandate that exists in Judaism to really understand the fragility of the human experience and of the world and feel compelled to be in service of its restoration. So, I’m curious, were you raised with that, and do you feel like that has informed you?

Angela Engel (35:01): Yes, thank you for this. Absolutely. So, I’m a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. My mother actually was born in Palestine before Israel became a state. Her parents met there. My grandfather actually left very early. He killed a Gestapo and fled. My grandfather, his whole family perished in the Holocaust. He was the only survivor. And then, my grandmother was from wealthier German Jews, and they, the Kristallnacht story, they owned stores. Remember Woolworths? They had sort of similar stores like Woolworths. She was a junior olympian, actually on the swim team in Germany, very athletic. So, she had quite a few non-Jewish friends luckily, who helped her and got her a job at a rutabaga farm that was kind of in disguise. It was interesting. They were sympathizers. They were non-Jews that had set up this farm for the Nazis, saying “Okay yeah, we’re going to make these young people work.” And blah blah blah, and she was there for about a year and a half. But, they were also smuggling the Jews out of there and getting them on boats. She ended up trying to get on a boat to the United States, and the United States at that time was not letting anybody in. Her brothers, they all, eventually did escape. They got to London. My uncles, they have different stories. But, she ended up getting to Palestine, and that’s where she met my grandfather. My mother was born there. When my mother came over she was seven and didn’t speak a word of English. She actually came over a year after her father came. He saved up enough money in New York. He didn’t want his children to fight anymore. He was done. My mother met my father in Manhattan. He’s Italian. The classic five foot, tiny little… it’s the 1970s. Tiny, little Jewish lady and the six foot Roman Catholic, Italian. They only meet in New York City. The wedding was at a courthouse, and my mother is extremely pregnant, and I’m born in 1970. She’s six months pregnant, and she’s having a wedding. So, Judaism for me is all about doing the work, repairing the world, tikkun olam. There’s shattered glass everywhere, and we have to pick up the pieces. And, I think for me, when George Floyd was murdered and the Black Lives Matter really was at the forefront of our existence, and I’m already doing the work here with the PPP, it is my job as a grandchild of Holocaust survivors, where my great grandparents perished. My grandfather’s family is no longer with us. It is my absolute job in this world to make noise and to do good and to say to people that it is not about this versus that. It is about really, humanity. This is about saving humanity.

Lola Wright (39:03): Wow, I have chills all over my body. Make noise and do good. I feel like that is oftentimes, I ask people on the podcast if there’s one prayer or invocation or invitation that you would extend to humanity, what would it be? And, you can certainly answer that, but I’m like a little bit of a mic drop on make noise and do good. If someone wants to know more about The Collective Book Studio, Angela, and what it means to work with you, how do they find that, and how do they know if they’re a right fit?

Angela Engel (39:41): So okay, thank you. Well, we’re really easy. The website’s just thecollectivebook.studio or Instagram @thecollectivebookstudio. We check our DMs. But, e-mail us and look at our website. But, we are lifestyle and children’s publishing house. What does lifestyle mean? Think of anything that you take into your life, from your cookbooks to your self-help to parenting, non-fiction. We really don’t do memoir or novels. That is not what we do. No YA fiction. Even poetry, we wouldn’t touch that unless it was part of a self-help journey. Women’s issues, women’s health we definitely do. Pop culture, humor, gift, ancillary. I stay in my lane. This is what I know how to sell. This is what I know how to create. I’m really about IP and talking about that. So, the difference between The Collective Book Studio, just so everyone understands, we are very similar to actually what a lot of publishing houses do, they just don’t want to tie that. It’s called a hybrid contract. I call myself a partnership publisher, not a hybrid publisher. But, we have hybrid contracts. Meaning, you pay us a creative fee to create the project, but you own the IP. We don’t acquire it. And, we can do custom work, which we do for travel agencies. Right now we’re doing actually an awesome, beautiful travel guide for a company that really wanted to pivot in COVID. They don’t need sales at Barnes and Noble. But then, we also have a trade line, and I guide clients there. So, it’s a really exciting, new opportunity in publishing. It’s about coming on the journey with me, being a partner with me in the business, and creating a book that’s going to be meaningful. And, I actually, can I coin this? I would think the book should make noise and do good.

Lola Wright (41:51): Yeah, I’m like, if you write a book, it should be titled that.

Angela Engel (41:56): Maybe I should write a book. Shouldn’t I?

Lola Wright (41:59): Yeah. By the way I want to just also say, I have these moments with people with some level of regularity where I’m like, “Do you hear what you just said? It was so brilliant. Go write that down somewhere.”

Angela Engel (42:11): Okay, I’m writing it down. I actually have this really funny post-it board that says, “What’s stuck with you?” And then, I put post-its on it because “stuck.” So, I’m going to say… Repeat to me what I exactly said because you were so brilliant. I’m going to write it on this post-it.

Lola Wright (42:27): Yeah. Make noise and do good. I think that is the most important and little instruction manual for all of us. Because the staying quiet and the staying small is the collusion that maintains oppression. I mean, that is what suppression is. So, make noise. Make your big, bold, beautiful, magical noise that only you can bring to the planet, and do it in service of good. There is enough noise on the planet that is designed to tear people down and pull us apart. But to make noise and do good, that is a holy disruption.

Angela Engel (43:13): I thank you for that. You bring me back to my grandparents, my great grandparents who did not make it out of Germany. Is that they didn’t make noise. My grandmother luckily was young and 17 and an athlete, and she was able to say to her parents “We’re not going to be able to live here.” And, they could not understand that. They stayed quiet. They saw all their stores shatter on Kristallnacht, destroyed, and they did not leave. It gives me chills. They did not leave. And, it was the young people. These young people we’re seeing right now talk about climate change, my own daughter who’s 13 years old in 7th grade, challenging us to change. And, I’m telling my daughters, “Make noise. Make noise because my great grandparents did not.” And, when we talk about immigration issues, girl we can go there too. That’s why I’m so proud of the change in 2021. I am so proud of our young people for voting. I am so proud of Georgia because they fought. Thank God for Stacey Abrams and for the black women in Georgia. They moved the needle. And, forever we need to be indebted and in gratitude because this is what it took for 2021 and for the change that we have to create for our young people and for our daughters and our sons. So thank you, Lola.

Lola Wright (45:02): Angela Engel, owner, founder, brilliant creator of The Collective Book Studio. Thank you for joining us on Find Your Fierce & Loving.  If you enjoyed this show and would like to receive new episodes as they’re published, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and consider leaving a review in Apple Podcasts. Your review helps others find this show. You can follow me at Lola P. Wright on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and learn more about my work at lolawright.com. This episode was produced by Quinn Rose with theme music from independent music producer, Trey Royal. Hamilton, it’s not like Hamilton just went up in six months.