Dede Cummings

Dede Cummings is the founder of the 2013 startup, Green Writers Press. She started her publishing career as a book designer at Little Brown & Company. Prior to working at Little Brown, she worked at David R. Godine in Boston as a designer and production editor. Design is something she loves to do, and she still designs covers and interiors of books; most notably, she is a six-time winner of the New England Book Award for a number of authors’ works, including Slow Learner by Thomas Pynchon, Voices From The Moon by Andre Dubus, a reissue of Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan, along with four books of poetry by Mary Oliver. She is also a publicist and literary agent for emerging writers. She’s been coined as one of the most accessible and yet well-connected agents starting out in the business. Because she is an author herself, she understands both sides of the publishing process. Dede is a 2010 graduate of the Harvard Medical School’s Department of Continuing Education course “Publishing Books, Memoirs and Other Creative Non-Fiction,” under the direction of Julie Silver, M.D. Her first book, Living With Crohn’s & Colitis: A Comprehensive Naturopathic Guide for Complete Digestive Wellness, was published in 2010 by Hatherleigh Press and distributed by Random House. Dede holds a BA from Middlebury College in Literature where she was also a poetry contributor at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and was the recipient of the Mary Dunning Thwing Award. In 1991, she received an award to study with Hayden Carruth at the Bennington Writers’ Workshop. Dede has had her poetry published in Mademoiselle magazine and ConnotationPress; she was a Discovery/The Nation poetry semi-finalist. She is excited to work with writers — from Children’s picture books, YA fiction and non-fiction, to adult trade books, from all aspects of publishing from pitch to publicity, and even self-publishing. The Dede Cummings Literary Agency has sold a number of books to the trade, most notably, “Brave Parenting,” by Krissy Pozatek to Wisdom Publications, and Shannon Galpin’s sports-adventure memoir to St. Martin’s Press.