Hired Booksparks, $10,000 PR campaign:
• National print, broadcast, and online media campaign
• Targeted trade media campaign for reviews and spotlights
• Digital marketing campaign including blog tour
• National content placement campaign
• Local print, online and broadcast media campaign
• Branded graphics package including print collateral, social media
graphics, email and newsletter banners
• Local/regional book tour
• Early reviewer promotions on Goodreads and NetGalley
Francine Falk-Allen was born in Los Angeles and has lived nearly
all of her life in northern California. As a former art major who
got a BA in managerial accounting and ran her own business for
thirty-three years, she has always craved creative outlets. Over
the years, this has taken the form of singing and recording with
various groups, painting, and writing songs, poetry, and essays,
some of which have been published. Falk-Allen facilitates a polio
survivors’ group in Marin County, and also a Meetup writing group,
Just Write Marin County. She was the polio representative
interviewed in a PBS/Nobel Prize Media film, The War Against
Microbes.
Falk-Allen resides in Marin County with her husband, Richard Falk.
She loves mystery, and historical novels, and captivating biography
and memoir, movies, music, pool exercise, the outdoors, travel,
hanging out with good friends, lots of British tea, and a little
champagne now and then.
2019 Living Now Book Awards Gold Medal Winner in
Inspirational/Memoir (Female)
2018 Sarton Women's Book Awards finalist in Memoir
Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2018
2018 Sarton Women's Book Awards Silver Medal in Memoir
“Overall, this is a frank, no-nonsense account of living with a
disability, edged with a razor-sharp wit . . . Bold, charming, and
inspirational.”
—Kirkus Reviews
"It’s refreshing to see a sense of humor that leans absurdist
rather than self-deprecating, and Falk-Allen’s cheekiness
enlightens as much as it endears. Not a Poster Child is enlivened
by its uniquely compassionate approach to living with a disability
as it confronts timely issues of vaccination, workplace
accessibility, and life-affirming kindness."
—Clarion/Foreword Reviews
"Not a Poster Child places the reader inside the body of Polio -
and into a world of surprising expectations. The view from Francine
Falk-Allen’s captivating memoir envelopes unexpected family
dynamics and intimate insights only a writer who has “lived the
life” can bring to the page. As the daughter of a Polio victim,
this book brought me closer to my mother’s experience and into a
reality few have walked…”
—Pamela Livingston, MA, MFA, Book Passage
“With plainspoken eloquence, Francine Falk-Allen brings to life the
rich palette of emotions of her lifelong battles with polio—the
sorrows and joys, the heartbreaks and triumphs. Her book is funny,
inspiring, and bitingly honest. It’s a revealing, constantly
surprising story that shines a new light on that eternal human
question: how can we make the most of our lives?”
—Edward Gray, Emmy Award-winning documentary producer and
director
“A beautifully written book about loss, pain and finding the will
to forge ahead. Falk-Allen writes openly and courageously as she
details a childhood spent overcoming first, a bout with polio, and
then [another heartbreaking loss]. With equal parts humor and
irreverence, she takes the journey through young adulthood and
finally to the current challenge of dealing with the late effects
of polio. A first-rate memoir on all accounts.”
—Brian Tiburzi, Executive Director, Post-Polio Health
International
“After thirty-five-plus years in publishing, this is the best
personal manuscript I have ever encountered. [Falk-Allen has] a
muscular style like Dave Eggers. [She has] made early childhood as
compelling as Robert Louis Stevenson did. A strong, distinctive
voice, coupled with an important story to tell.”
—Gillian Glover, former features editor for The Scotsman, Scotland,
UK
“Reading Not a Poster Child was one of those experiences where you
suddenly realize you didn’t know how much you didn’t know. Not only
did it pull back the curtain for me on what it’s like to grow up
handicapped, it also gave me deeper understanding of an old
friend.”
—Steven Bratman, MD, author of Health Food Junkies
"Not a Poster Child is a candid memoir that reminds us just how
essential it is to find wholehearted engagement in life, no matter
how difficult our path. It is eye-opening about the misinformation,
types, and treatments of polio. While it chronicles the author’s
challenges of growing up with a physical disability, her gifts of
approaching life with humor, openness, and a feisty spirit can
embolden us all."
—Leslie Davenport, author of Emotional Resilience in the Era of
Climate Change
“Not a Poster Child is a memoir of wit, unstinting honesty and
compassion about Falk-Allen, who contracted polio as a child and
has lived her life as handicapped, and ordinary. But this is not an
ordinary story. You grow to love this character who is our heroine…
a story of a woman with disabilities which fade as she confronts
the essential questions of how to make a life . . . with love and
rejection, searching and finding, failure and success . . .
unwavering in her willingness to take on life and make it work on
her behalf. In the end the reader—this reader—has a friend and
confidant.”
—Susan Richard Shreve, author of Warm Springs: Traces of a
Childhood at FDR’s Polio Haven
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
