“Owl” on the cover of “This Is What America Looks Like” (2020)

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WASHINGTON WRITERS' PUBLISHING HOUSE · 50TH ANNIVERSARY ANTHOLOGY · 2025
Capital Crow

A painting from 2023 became the cover of America's Future — the 526-page anthology marking fifty years of an independent cooperative literary press in the District.

The painting.
Capital Crow, 16 × 24 in., 2023.
The cover.
Design by Andrew S. Klein.
THE PAINTING
Capital Crow · acrylic on board · 16 × 24 in. · September 2023
THE BOOK
America's Future: poetry & prose in response to tomorrow
PUBLISHER
Washington Writers' Publishing House, Washington, DC
EDITORS
Caroline Bock and Jona Colson
COVER DESIGN
Andrew S. Klein
PUBLISHED
September 2025 · 526 pages · 164 writers, 179 works
LAUNCH
WWPH 50th anniversary celebration, The Writer's Center, Bethesda, MD · Sunday, September 14, 2025
The painting came first
SEPTEMBER 2023

Capital Crow was painted in September 2023 and was two years old before it became a book. Caroline Bock asked to use it. Nothing was commissioned and nothing was made to order — the press took a painting that already existed and put it on the front of its fiftieth anniversary anthology.

It wasn't the first time. This was the third WWPH book to carry her work: a scratchboard etching on a 2016 story collection, an Ellyn/Sesow collaboration on the 2020 anthology, and now this.

The bird is painted against a burnt orange, beak open, with the Capitol dome ghosted in behind it. On the finished cover the type crops in close, so the eye and the open beak carry the whole front.

The publisher's cover reveal.
The book
AMERICA'S FUTURE

Washington Writers' Publishing House is an independent, nonprofit, cooperative literary press founded in 1975 and based in the District. America's Future is its fiftieth anniversary anthology: 526 pages, 164 writers, 179 works of poetry, fiction, essays and visual language, drawn from DC, Maryland and Virginia and edited by the press's co-presidents, Caroline Bock and Jona Colson.

The Washington Independent Review of Books called it “a heartfelt affirmation of a powerful spirit.” Washington Unbound called it “massive, comprehensive, and timely.”

The launch
THE WRITER'S CENTER, BETHESDA · SEPTEMBER 14, 2025

The book launched inside the press's fiftieth anniversary celebration. The celebration opened with a reading in the theater — WWPH founder Grace Cavalieri, E. Ethelbert Miller, Erika Raskin, Kathleen Wheaton and JB Aris — and carried on into a reception with jazz from The Toucan Club, out of George Mason University.

Arriving at The Writer's Center.
Caroline Bock and Jona Colson, editors and co-presidents of WWPH.
The reception.
The Toucan Club, from George Mason University.
Two of the three covers, five years apart.
Signing at the book table.
With Caroline Bock.
With Matt Sesow and the 2020 cover.
Matt Sesow with photographer Bruce Guthrie.
The programs.
Fifty years.
The press, in its own words.
Also: two earlier covers
2016 AND 2020

America's Future was the third Washington Writers' Publishing House book to carry Dana Ellyn's work on its cover.

Pullman Porter — an original scratchboard etching, 9 × 12 in., 2014 — became the cover of Strivers and Other Stories by Robert Williams, winner of the WWPH Fiction Prize, published November 1, 2016. Fifteen stories set between the 1920s and the present day, moving across African-American and Southern voices; train porters are among the characters.

The etching comes from Ellyn's Heritage Trail series, painted in response to the Greater H Street trail. Its source is the first stop on that trail, at 1st Street and Massachusetts Avenue NE: Union Station, and the Pullman Company porter's job that was among the best work available to African American men when the terminal opened in 1907.

Owl — a 2018 collaboration by Dana Ellyn and Matt Sesow, oil, acrylic and mixed media on paper, 8 × 8 in. — became the cover of This Is What America Looks Like, an anthology of one hundred writers and poets from DC, Maryland and Virginia, again edited by Caroline Bock and Jona Colson, with a foreword by Kathleen Wheaton. Published December 31, 2020.

Fuller pages on both books is to come.

Elsewhere
SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
America's Future at WWPH →
This Is What America Looks Like →
Washington Writers' Publishing House →
Dana Ellyn — life & work →
Press archive by year →
New paintings →
Dana Ellyn · Mather Studios, 916 G St NW, Washington, DC
dana@danaellyn.com · danaellyn.com
Paintings © Dana Ellyn & Matt Sesow · Event photographs of the podium, reception and programs © Bruce Guthrie