News

Scholarly Publishing: Role, Mission, and Necessity – Online Discussion August 26 2022

Date and Time: Wednesday, 31 August 2022, 11:00-12:30 hrs. Bangkok Time

Registration: bit.ly/3SK9qzn 

Speakers:

Peter Berkery, CEO, Association of University Presses, USA
Lisa Quinn, Director, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Canada
Trasvin Jittidecharak, Publisher and Founder, Silkworm Books, Thailand
Michael Duckworth, Publisher, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong
Micah Fisher, Fellow, The East-West Center, USA

Moderator:

Noah Perales-Estoesta, Luce Scholar, USA

Organize and hosted by

Silkworm Books and Mekong Press Foundation 

Speakers

  • Peter Berkery has been Executive Director of the Association of University Presses since early 2013. Berkery came to AUPresses (then AAUP) from Oxford University Press, where he served for the previous five years as Vice President and Publisher for the US Law Division. Prior to that he worked for Wolters Kluwer for 11 years in a series of positions, publishing works on securities licensing examination training, securities law, taxation, and financial planning. He began his publishing career at a division of Thomson Reuters.
  • Lisa Quinn is the Director of Wilfrid Laurier University Press, in Waterloo, Ontario, where she previously built a decade of experience as an acquisitions editor. She has lectured in the graduate LIS program in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario on media theory, publishing, and the organization of information. She is currently past president of the Association of Canadian University Presses, a member of the board of directors of the Ontario Book Publisher’s Organization and Livres Canada Books. She currently chairs the Association of University Presses' Advocacy Committee.
  • Trasvin Jittidecharak is from Chiang Mai, Thailand. She began learning the art of the book trade from a very young age when her parents founded the Suriwong Book Center, the first bookstore in Thailand outside of Bangkok. In 1991 Trasvin founded Silkworm Books, a general, independent publisher of English-language books on Thailand and Southeast Asia. In 2005, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, Trasvin founded Mekong Press, later Mekong Press Foundation, in 2008 to support publishing activities in the Greater Mekong Sub-region and to establish a network of publishers in the region.
  • Micah Fisher is a Fellow in the Research Program at the East-West Center. He researches deforestation, land rights, and tenure policies in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. An Indonesianist by training, he and his Indonesian colleagues have spent much of the last three years engaged in a range of professional capacity-building activities that involve publication, including launching a new OA peer-reviewed journal (Forestry and Society), running research design and publication training programs for Southeast Asia-based colleagues in-region, and—more recently—holding virtual courses on related topics.
  • Michael Duckworth has worked in bilingual/multilingual university presses since 1995, prior to which he was an editor and reporter at The Wall Street Journal. Before returning this summer to Hong Kong University Press (where he served as Publisher 2009-13), he worked as Director of the American University in Cairo Press, Director of University of Hawaii Press, and Executive Editor at University of Washington Press. 

Moderator

  • Noah Perales-Estoesta received a fellowship from the Henry Luce Foundation to live and work in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where he is being hosted by Silkworm Books. His nearly decade-long publishing career encompasses various roles in editing, project management, the digital sphere, and grant writing. He is the former Associate Editor ofMānoa: A Pacific Journal of international Writing and the former Development and Digital Projects Specialist at University of Hawai’i Press. He previously received a Fulbright fellowship to Brazil. 

Discussion Points

  • The need across the region for more and more rigorously developed local perspectives to be included in the scholarly conversation
  • The role of scholarly inquiry and critical thought in decolonization and democratic participation
  • Censorship in the region
  • Current needs and trends in regional scholarship and the decreasing investment in the humanities/social sciences generally
  • How current social transformations locally are influencing knowledge production and raising new needs for scholarly progress
  • The imposition of theoretical frameworks from the west and need for research parity
  • The role played by academic presses in credentialing/validating/advancing research
  • Peer review
  • Preservation, dissemination, and exchange of knowledge
  • These presses as a necessary venue for commercially unviable work
  • Networks among presses and other stakeholders (press associations, scholarly circles, think tanks, funding agencies, etc.)
  • Trickle down impact on students, education, and broader civil society
  • How university presses are established and administered
  • What kind of financing models do university presses typically follow?
  • Where do presses sit within administrative structures of universities?
  • What kinds of scholarly-publishing activities are already taking place in/about the region?
  • What benefits do scholarly presses provide to universities?

Happy Holidays! December 25 2020

Thank you for your kind support throughout the year. We hope you enjoyed our books. We are running an end-of-year sale, 15-30% off, today until 3 January 2020.

Special 5% on-top discount for our subscribers. Simply apply code NEWYEAR21 at check-out for purchase of THB 500 or more. 

  • Discount code can be used once per customer.
  • New DHL Express rates will be applied from 30 Dec 2020 onwards. To enjoy our current rate, please place your order by 29 Dec 2020. 
  • Thai citizen can request tax invoice for government's "ช้อปดีมีคืน" campaign, ending on 31 Dec 2020. 
  • Orders placed on 30 Dec 2020 and after will be shipped from 4 Jan 2021 onwards.
Wishing everyone a happy and healthy holiday celebrations and a very Happy New Year 2021! 

ช้อปหนังสือดีมีคืน! November 08 2020

จากมาตรการกระตุ้นเศรษฐกิจ "ช้อปดีมีคืน" ของรัฐบาล หนังสือเป็นหนึ่งในสินค้าที่สามารถนำมาลดหย่อนภาษีได้ตามจำนวนที่จ่ายจริงแต่ไม่เกิน 30,000 บาท เริ่มตั้งแต่วันที่ 23 ตุลาคม ถึง 31 ธันวาคม 2563

สำนักพิมพ์ซิลค์เวอร์มสามารถออกใบกำกับภาษีเต็มรูปแบบให้ได้ทุกการสั่งซื้อ เพียงกรอกข้อมูลในแบบฟอร์มนี้ Tax invoice request

Shopdee 63

First time at Book Expo Thailand! September 29 2020

As this year we cannot visit Frankfurt Book Fair as we usually do every October, it's a chance to finally participate Book Expo Thailand, a.k.a. the "October Book Fair".

It has been too long since we last met in April 2019. This time, at the new venue, we cannot wait to meet our readers again!   

Find us at Booth X03, Challenger 2, IMPACT Muang Thong Thani
30 September to 11 October 2020, 10.00–21.00

 


EDITORIAL POSITION AT SILKWORM BOOKS February 11 2019

Silkworm Books in Chiang Mai, Thailand, is seeking an in-house English-language editor and proofreader for a full-time position beginning by May 1, 2019. This editorial position requires careful reading, revising, and correcting of manuscripts according to the Chicago Manual of Style in addition to a variety of other editorial tasks, with a minimum time commitment of one year. A visa and work permit will be provided. The salary will be in keeping with Thai rates for foreign employees and will take into consideration previous editing experience. The term of employment may be extended, upon mutual agreement.

Potential candidates should be native English speakers and very experienced in editing both on computer and on paper. Some familiarity with Southeast Asian languages and cultures is highly advisable. Working at home is not an option.

Applicants should submit the following by February 25, 2019, to editor@silkwormbooks.com:

  1. A resumé specifying nationality, educational background, and past employment experience.
  2. A cover letter detailing all previous copyediting and proofreading experience and any other experience that seems relevant. Please explain why you wish to apply for the position.

Editing and proofreading ability will be assessed in the second phase of the application process.


Silkworm Books authors win the 2017 Fukuoka Grand Prize! June 09 2017

Prof. Pasuk Phongpaichit and Dr. Chris Baker are the worthy recipients of the Grand Prize of the Fukuoka Prize, because of their multidisciplinary and comprehensive analysis of the social changes which Thailand has experienced since the period of rapid economic growth in the 1980s, an analysis based on a combination of Western and Eastern intellectual approaches, and of methodologies from the social sciences and the humanities, which has added breadth and depth to academic research, in both subject-matter and methodology, in a fresh and distinctively Asian way; and also because of their active contributions to society.


Congratulations to Ma Thida on winning the Disturbing the Peace Award! October 06 2016

On September 28, 2016, Ma Thida, the author of Prisoner of Conscience (2016) and The Roadmap (2011) was awarded the 2016 Disturbing the Peace Award from the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation in New York.

For further reading, please visit http://www.irrawaddy.com/burma/ma-thida-receives-disturbing-the-peace-award.html


Obituary: Gordon Young August 10 2016

We would like to express our sympathy to the family and friends of Gordon Young, one of our early authors, who passed away on August 8, 2016, in the United States. Gordon Young was born to missionary parents in China and spent his childhood among the Lahu in Burma, and in North India. Over his lifetime he spent some forty years in South and Southeast Asia and was known as a naturalist, hunter, and ethnologist, in addition to being an accomplished writer. With his father, Harold Young, he founded the Chiang Mai Zoo and completed a significant ethnographic study of the highland peoples of northern Thailand. His publications include: Tracks of an Intruder (1967), The Hill Tribes of Northern Thailand (1974), The Wind Will Yet Sing (2010), Journey from Banna (2011), and Run for the Mountains (2011).

Award July 21 2015

We are proud to announce that Sazigyo, Burmese Manuscript Binding Tapes: Woven Miniatures of Buddhist Art by Ralph Isaacs has been selected to receive the R. L. Shep Ethnic Textiles Book Award for 2014 from the Textile Society of America.

Thank you! April 10 2015

Silkworm Books thanks our readers for their support at the Bangkok International Book Fair and online. 
Wishing everyone a happy Songkran!

สำนักพิมพ์ซิลค์เวอร์มขอขอบพระคุณนักอ่านทุกๆ ท่านที่ให้การสนับสนุนสำนักพิมพ์ฯ ในงานสัปดาห์หนังสือแห่งชาติและบนร้านหนังสือออนไลน์ของเรา 
สวัสดีปีใหม่ และขอให้ทุกท่านมีความสุขมากๆ ในเทศกาลสงกรานต์นี้!


Silkworm titles are now available at Kindle and iBook stores May 16 2014

Good news! Most of our recent titles now are available at Kindle and iBook stores for a reader who resides outside Thailand.