BIBR spotlight: Patrik Henry Bass.

Players in the black literary game know that all roads leading to Essence magazine's coveted book pages meet at a crossroads--Patrik Henry Bass. As the books editor at Essence, he has the overwhelming task of deciding what titles to feature each month. Authors, agents, editors and publicists are all too familiar with the drill, having tried just about everything to get to Bass in hopes of coverage for their book. But if you hope to attract his attention, don't get discouraged. His telephone seems to automatically roll into voice mail, and email isn't much better.

One thing's for sure, patience and an original voice will get his attention, and it may even earn you a blip on his radar. After all, with a monthly circulation of 1.1 million, a mention in the pages of Essence can make an author a household name. That said, why is Bass so hard to reach about his own book?

Besides editing the books section for Essence, Bass is an established journalist and author in his own right. In 2001, he coauthored, along with Karen Pugh, In Our Own Image a scrapbook of African-American life, and this past October, he released his first solo effort, Like a Mighty Stream: The March on Washington August 28, 1963. Recently, I caught up with Bass to talk to him about his career as an editor and writer.

Literary legacy

With so many books to consider and so few pages, each month presents a unique challenge for Bass. He credits Essence with having established what he refers to as "a great literary legacy" with its books section. "My main challenge is to ensure that we are building on our legacy and serving the reader," says Bass. "What I try to do is offer a window on the world of black books each month, what's new and noteworthy, what are the trends, and what's selling in bookstores," he says. "I also try to champion black bookstores. It is important for us to see the bookstore owner on our bestseller lists and for readers to see who's reporting to us."

In October the Essence Book Club was launched--something that Bass says puts the power in reader's hands.

Journey to the Big Apple

Oddly enough, Bass' writing career almost didn't happen. The Laurinburg, North Carolina, native refers to his journalistic career as "a study in perseverance." During his first three years in high school, he was rejected from the school newspaper, the literary magazine and the yearbook staff. Upon graduation Bass received a Randall Jarrell Scholarship and attended Wingate College, a private, liberal arts school near Charlotte, North Carolina. "I graduated [from Wingate] in 1987 and headed to New York on a Greyhound bus with one hundred and eighty dollars and a photo album filled with clips. I had one good navy blue jacket, a pair of khakis and zero contacts," says Bass.

After failing to land a job as a journalist, and brief stints as an office temp and clerk typist, Bass was demoralized and returned to North Carolina. It was there that he landed his first writing gig. "My first writing appeared in The Carolina Peacemaker, a black newspaper in Greensboro, where I covered everything from city politics to the culture beat," he says. After a year, Bass returned to New York to give it another shot.

Upon his return, Bass worked as an editorial assistant for a corporate magazine. To keep up his own writing, Bass wrote for several start-ups and community weeklies, which landed him a job with the now defunct BET Weekend. In 1999, he joined Essence.

Although Bass fell in love with books at an early age, he never dreamed he could be a writer. But at 17, he penned a juvenile novel, Geek Week Is Over, which he never sent to anyone. After that experience, though, he was hooked on writing. But it wasn't quite that easy. His 1998 novel, Song of a Second April, was rejected by all of the major houses.

"I was devastated. I told my agent, Marie Brown, that I wanted to do a book called "Black People for Dummies," because it seemed like mainstream editors only focused on a limited view of black life," says Bass.

If at first you don't succeed ...

It was around the same time that Bass hooked up with Karen Pugh, who was interested in creating an "elegant scrapbook" of black life. When Bass mentioned the idea for In Our Own Image to author Diane McKinney-Whetstone, she suggested Running Press. Bass' main attraction was that the publisher was willing to make In Our Own Image one of their lead rifles. "That was important, since very few nonfiction projects for new authors are chosen as lead titles," Bass says.

Shortly before the book was released, Running Press approached Bass about a book on the Civil Rights Movement. In the introduction to his new book, Like a Mighty Stream, Bass writes that when he was initially approached about the book, he declined. "I didn't think that we needed another book on the Civil Rights Movement. And then I thought I was being shortsighted. You can never have enough books on history."

Even after convincing himself to do the project, Bass was still apprehensive. "I was concerned that people were going to think, `Oh no, not one of those `We Shall Overcome' books.'" He says he was interested not only in history, but also its impact on everyday people. After approximately five months of research and countless interviews, Like a Mighty Stream was born.