Magic Hill Press

Magic Hill Publishing LLC is the imprint of novelist, short story and op-ed writer Bill Schubart

Born in New York City in 1945, I grew up in Morrisville, Vermont from the age of two. I attended Public School and then went on to Phillips Exeter Academy, Kenyon College and the University of Vermont where I got a degree in French language and culture, which I then taught until I entered communications as an entrepreneur.

I co-founded Philo Records http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo_Records_(folk) and in 1982, Resolution, a fully integrated e-commerce services company, offering web commerce design & integration, customer care, on-demand media manufacturing, fulfillment, distribution and information & revenue management to broadcasters, print & electronic publishers and direct marketers.

I write and speak extensively on the media, book publishing, and civic issues and have long been a commentator on Vermont Public Radio. I have spoken at many industry and media events including Book Expo.

My interests include poetry, photography, stone gardening, classical, traditional, and primitive music. I live in Hinesburg, Vermont, with my wife Katherine, a writer and have three sons, Bill, Peter and Steven and a daughter Anna, as well as a stepson Guy and a stepdaughter Phoebe. My full CV is at www.Schubart.com.
Please also visit my Amazon author's page.

Current Publications:

The Lamoille Stories: Uncle Benoit’s Wake (short stories)

PB ISBN 978-0-9897121-0-1
EB ISBN 978-0-9834852-0-9
Audio book (AB) on CD (5 stories)

I grew up in a small town in Lamoille County in Northern Vermont. In our largely French Canadian family, I heard countless stories. TV came late to our home so family and community entertainments often took the form of well-told stories. The characters, eccentrics and misadventures that made up these stories have always lived in me. Stories are a uniquely human aspect of humankind. We are defined by our stories, and so as a writer I felt obliged not only to retell them to my children and grandchildren but to write them down.

Fat People (short stories)

PB ISBN 978-0-615-39751-1

Why did I write Fat People? I am one. In my adult life, I’ve weighed between 240 lbs and 490 lbs. The publishing trade is bulging with remainders about how to lose weight. The diet industry is a $60B a year business with a 94% failure rate. Even hard drug and alcohol recoveries fare better. Yet little is written about how it feels to eat compulsively or what it’s like to be fat – the place where food is at once a pleasure, friend, and virulent enemy. Medical and psychological professionals opine intellectually and scientifically about the disorder, but rarely ask the fat person how they feel, how feelings trigger their addictive behavior? Fat People is simply this fat person’s effort to instill understanding and perhaps empathy for those who struggle constantly with food.

Panhead: A Journey Home (novel)

PB ISBN 978-0-9834852-6-1
EB ISBN 978-0-9834852-7-8

Panhead is a glossary of this author’s innate fears … a fear of motorcycles, which I have always ridden; of chainsaws, which I have used since I was fifteen; of being immobilized, which I have been, of academic failure, which I have experienced; of bottomless bodies of water in which I have swum; of initial sexual contacts, which have turned into love in some cases; and of surviving in a life no longer worth living. Somehow, the expression of these fears allays them. Is this not the great value of writing?

I am Baybie: Based on the true Story of the Rev. Baybie Hoover and her friend Virginia Brown (novel)

PB ISBN: 978-0-9834852-9-2
EB ISBN: 978-0-9834852-9-2

In 1976, I met a blind New York City street singer named Reverend Baybie Hoover. Her early life was marked by a succession of tragedies. She was blinded at birth by an inebriated doctor, molested by a foster father and later sterilized as a young woman by a doctor who thought he was doing her a favor. When I knew her Baybie lived in a single-room-occupancy in midtown and every day, rain or shine, she made the subway trip to the Upper East Side to spend the whole day singing on the sidewalk.

I eventually produced an album (Philo 1019) of Baybie and Virginia Brown, her friend and singing partner, during which time I came to know her and was captivated by her extraordinary personality. Baybie was a woman who had few, if any, reasons to be grateful. Yet she lived in a state of perpetual gratitude for the little she had. She rarely indulged in any judgment of those visiting misery on her I had never met anyone who saw life and the people she encountered with such generosity of spirit. Just being in her company made me ashamed of every complaint I had ever uttered, and only in putting her life's story in writing could I ever hope to fully recall the grace and gratitude this woman brought into my easy life.

For those who have read I Am Baybie, http://www.IAmBaybie.com makes offers readers a gallery of images of the two women and a live sampling of songs they sang on the street.

Forthcoming Publications