“I’ll take film for $1000, Alex”

We’ve taken control of North Philly Notes to celebrate its illustrious creator and owner.

His twitter handle is “I’m a twin and a film critic who always has a book in his hand. I also have an opinion, and I’m not afraid to share it.“ That pretty much sums up Temple University Press’s publicity manager Gary Kramer. Gary has worked at the Press for almost 20 years and before that he had a brief stint at Princeton U. Press. At Temple, he’s responsible for the preparation of copy for book jackets, catalogs, and press releases as well as securing advance promotional statements from various academics. He plans and coordinates publicity activities for all Press books and participates in the development of marketing strategies. He compiles and produces a weekly update e-mail titled “News of the Week,” which informs our mailing list subscribers of the authors in the news, appearances, reviews published that week, and any new blog entries on our North Philly Notes blog site. He’s incredibly hard-working, smart, and engaging with amazing skills and abilities. He is also witty and imaginative. He responds to emails with lightning speed, and maintains such good relations with authors that oftentimes authors write him before they even approach their acquisitions editor.

But Gary has much more going on beyond his work at the Press. He’s the author of Independent Queer Cinema: Reviews and Interviews and co-author of Directory of World Cinema: Argentina. He’s also a film critic whose blurbs often adorn movie ads in the pages of the New York Times. Ask him any question about a film and he knows the answer; if you don’t know the name of the film just give him one actor’s name and a one sentence description of the film and he’ll name the film.

Gary exemplifies everything we love about university press publishing.  He gives his all to the Press and our authors, he’s a published author, and his film reviews are read by moviegoers worldwide.

Jeopardy anyone?