The Best American Poetry

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews in conversation with Ami Kaye of Glass Lyre Press

 
NA:  You have been the editor of Pirene’s Fountain for a few years now?

AK: Yes, and I have enjoyed every moment with the journal! Our first issue went online in January 2008. Starting next year, PF will become a print annual, although we hope to continue an online presence.

NA:  And now you are starting up a press?

AK: I asked myself a dozen times if I really wanted start a new venture at a stage of life when most people are ready to retire, but it seemed like a natural evolution given our positive experiences with Pirene’s Fountain. In December 2011, we published a benefit anthology in response to the March 2011 Japan disasters, and were amazed by the response to our initial call for submissions. All told, it was hard work but we thoroughly enjoyed the process and the ultimate reward of holding a book we had put together. We received terrific feedback from our readers and contributors, and wanted yet another way to continue sharing and spreading the gifts of the many wonderful authors writing today. 

NA:  How did you come up with the title, Glass Lyre?

AK: I wrote a poem a while back called "In which he finds a lyre" and there is a reference to a glass lyre in the poem. At the time when we were looking for names for the company, I happened to be revising my manuscript and caught the words "glass lyre"—they fit well with the work we wanted to publish: "glass" for clarity, insight, vision and "lyre" for lyricism and language, so I put it to the team and it was unanimous!

NA:  What kind of work are you looking to publish?

AK: We will be publishing full-length collections and chapbooks of poetry, short and flash fiction, and the occasional anthology. In fact, our very first project will be “The Best of Pirene’s Fountain, Volume 1,” planned for later this year. After that, we will start publishing from some of the manuscripts—our submission editors are currently reading and making notes. We are looking for a diversity of topical treatments and styles from mature, seasoned voices as well as from emerging authors. An ideal manuscript would be unified and cohesive, with lyrical and substantive pieces that could stand on their own. The exceptional use of language is what attracts us most. It has been less than two months since we launched our website, and we have already received some promising manuscripts! 

NA:  Are you the sole or primary editor of the press?

AK: No, I am very grateful to work with a dedicated team: editor-in-chief Mark McKay; senior editor Lark Vernon Timmons; web and layout editor Katherine Herschler; associate editor Royce Hamel, and freelance artist Tracy McQueen. Recently Candice Sloan also came onboard to manage business operations, leaving me free to focus on the publishing and editing aspects of the press. The multi-talented, inter-generational dynamics at Glass Lyre makes for a great working environment.  

NA:  Will you publish translations?

AK: We are certainly open to the possibility in the future.

NA:  How many books do you hope to publish per year?

AK: We plan to start off small and slowly increase our output. Depending on the quality of submissions we receive and our team workload, we’ll make that decision as we go along. We would really have to believe in a manuscript before deciding to publish it. I would hazard a guess at a maximum of ten books per year, but one never knows how things turn out!

NA: How will you find your authors?

AK: We have built up a readership at Pirene’s Fountain and hope to get submissions from many of the talented authors we have published— we also hope that PF authors will help spread the word. In addition, we plan to promote Glass Lyre on social media, literary journals and through various publishing events and book fairs.

NA:  Will you run contests?

AK: Glass Lyre offers the “Kithara Book Prize.” The winning author will receive $500 and a certificate. Finalists are considered for publication, depending on the number of titles lined up for the year. We are also planning a contest for cover art, and may possibly run open awards at some point.

NA:  Are you currently open for submissions?

AK: Yes, we are open to submissions all year round. We take a break from reading during July-August and in December. Submission guidelines are available on the website and it’s a good idea for prospective authors to read them carefully before submitting their work: GlassLyrePress.com 

NA: I’d love to close with a poem from either Pirene’s Fountain or a book you plan to publish.

AK: Since Glass Lyre has only just begun to read submissions, it will have to be from Pirene’s Fountain. Let me say that we have received some truly brilliant poems over the past few years, so by no means am I choosing my favorite, however, this poem captures the fleeting nature of beauty, art and life itself.  It is by Lisel Mueller, who has been a wonderful friend and mentor to Pirene’s Fountain, from her Pulitzer-winning book, “Alive Together” (LSU Press, 1995):

In Passing

How swiftly the strained honey
of afternoon light
flows into darkness

and the closed bud shrugs off
its special mystery
in order to break into blossom:

as if what exists, exists
so that it can be lost
and become precious.

Ami Kaye serves as publisher and managing editor of Glass Lyre Press. She has been running the journal Pirene’s Fountain, for several years. Her work has appeared in various journals including First Literary Review- East, Tears in the Fence, Cartier Street Review, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Peony Moon, Scottish Poetry Review, and Diode Poetry Journal, among others. Ami’s work was nominated for the James B. Baker award, and included in poetry anthologies. She is the author of What Hands Can Hold. Visit amikaye.com.

Nin Andrews received her BA from Hamilton College and her MFA from Vermont College. The recipient of two Ohio Arts Council grants, she is the author of several books including The Book of Orgasms, Spontaneous Breasts, Why They Grow Wings, Midlife Crisis with Dick and Jane, Sleeping with Houdini, and Dear Professor, Do You Live in a Vacuum. She also edited Someone Wants to Steal My Name, a book of translations of the French poet, Henri Michaux. Her book, Southern Comfort  was published by CavanKerry Press in 2010. Follow Nin's blog here. Follow Nin on Twitter here.

Meet the Press: Karen Schubert in Conversation with David Hassler of Wick Poetry Center.

David Hassler

KS: The Wick Poetry Center isn’t exactly a press. Tell us what goes on in the Kingdom of Wick. 

DH: As one of the leading poetry centers in the United States, Wick has many roles in the university and community. You’re right—we’re not a press. We’ve been very fortunate to have a fantastic relationship with the Kent State University Press who each year publishes the winners of the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize and the Chapbook Competition for Ohio Poets. We take great pride in working toward our mission of encouraging new voices and promoting opportunities for individuals and communities locally, regionally, and nationally. We also aim to engage emerging and established poets and poetry audiences through readings, publications, workshops, and scholarship opportunities.

 Another project of ours is Traveling Stanzas, a collaboration between the Wick Poetry Center and Glyphix design studio at Kent State. The award-winning series, now in its fourth year, combines the creative talents of KSU Visual Communication Design students with established poets, student writers (grades 3-12), health care providers, patients and veterans to encourage dialogue about the connection between art, writing and healing. 

 KS: How do you stay involved once the book is in hand?

DH: As I mentioned, the Kent State University Press publishes the winning manuscripts of our first book and chapbook series; I serve as the series editor for the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize along with the judge. And Catherine Wing serves as the series editor for the Chapbook Competition for Ohio Poets. We also really value our Wick authors and judges, and try to follow their careers after Wick. One of the unique things about the first book contest is that not only does KSU Press publish the winning manuscript, but we also bring the winning poet and judge to give a reading on campus the fall that their book is released. The winner stays in Kent for a week and leads a poetry workshop for undergraduate students at Kent State. We similarly showcase our wonderful chapbook winners, by bringing both the student winner and open winner to give a reading on campus and meet with classes.

 KS: Is there a Wick aesthetic?

 DH: No. Our First Book contest is judged each year by a different nationally prominent poet. These final judges have a wide range of aesthetics which is reflected in our series. Similarly, the Wick Chapbook series also has a terrific range of styles in its authors.

 KS: The story of your conception is heartbreaking and also wonderful.

 DH: Yes, the Wick Poetry Center is a memorial program that was established out of a deep family loss. Robert and Walter Wick each lost their oldest teenage sons, Stan and Tom, in car accidents seven years apart. In 1984, Robert and Walter established a Wick poetry scholarship at Kent State in memory of their sons. When Maggie Anderson was hired to teach poetry at Kent State in 1989, she took notice of this endowment and began to grow the program, creating a reading series first, and then an Ohio chapbook contest and a national First Book contest. It has continued to evolve and grow and expand over the years with the enthusiastic support and active participation of the Wick family. Robert and Walter often say that the work of the Wick Center transforms their unspeakable loss into a meaningful gain for so many other emerging writers who are given opportunities that Stan and Tom could not have.

 KS: You have an anniversary coming up!

 DH: It’s hard to believe, but we have our 30th anniversary coming up next year. Our planning committee is beginning to meet and brainstorm ideas for making it a truly poetic weekend! We will be inviting back to Kent as many former judges, Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize-winners, and chapbook winners that can make the trip to Ohio in the fall of 2014. Among them are former U.S. Poet Laureates, acclaimed teachers and arts administrators, professors and students of subjects far and wide. We are planning readings, lectures, and other celebratory events, so stay tuned! And to make the celebrations even more spectacular, we will be able to host many of the events in our new location and park on the University esplanade in the newly revitalized downtown Kent.

KS: Who are the people making Wick work? What kinds of thing have Wick students and interns gone on to do?

DH: As it has been for years, Wick’s success is bolstered by an array of talented staff, graduate fellows, interns, and collaborators at the university and surrounding community. I was fortunate to follow in the footsteps of our renowned first captain, Maggie Anderson. And since then have built a robust team with strengths in business, communications, creative writing, outreach and digital initiatives, etc., who all work tirelessly toward our center’s mission of bringing poetry from acclaimed writers and everyday people to the masses.

Wick students and interns have gone on to a range of careers in not-for-profit arts administration, and teaching and administration in primary and higher education. Many are published authors. I couldn’t be more proud of my teams past and present.

KS: How did you get involved with the Poetry Center?

DH: I was first given encouragement and support from Wick, just as so many other emerging writers. I was lucky to win the Ohio chapbook contest while I was an MFA student at Bowling Green State University. The publication of my chapbook, Sabisihi: poems from Japan was hugely important in my career because it got me a job working for the Ohio Arts Council as a poet-in-the-schools the following year. I spent ten years driving around Ohio teaching poetry residencies for all ages in all different kinds of schools and communities. That experience was invaluable to me, and in the late 90s Maggie Anderson contracted me part-time to develop an outreach program for Wick. In 2004, I was hired full-time as the Program and Outreach Director.

KS: A friend recently noted that there is a strong creative writing force in Ohio, and I’d noticed that about other places that might seem unlikely – Iowa, Kentucky, Alabama – but had taken my own state for granted. Do you have any theories about why there is so much good writing coming out of Ohio?

DH: I think Kent and northeast Ohio in general is a place of deep listening and creative force that perhaps has been fed and charged by the wounds we have sustained as a community: the May 4^th shootings in 1970, the Cuyahoga River catching fire in 1969 in Cleveland, and other struggles within our communities. I don’t know for sure, but it seems like art, not just writing, but all forms of art, is so often an attempt to make sense out of what troubles us. There seems to be a deep conscience in this area. It’s fertile ground for poetry and all art. That, and, of course, our cloudy skies. We have to rely on our inner resources, our “inner weather.”

 KS: Any dreams or future projects in the pipeline?

 DH: As a matter of fact, yes—the Wick Poetry Center is embarking on perhaps its most exciting era yet! We are in the process of relocating onto the University Esplanade close to an exciting, revived downtown Kent and adjacent to a new park that will showcase community voices and serve as an outdoor gathering space. The proposed new location for the Wick Poetry Center is a historic home and former residence of Kent State’s first female faculty member, informally called the “May Prentice House.” The University is relocating the house onto the new esplanade, which weaves through the university and connects to downtown Kent.

 Another exciting feature of our relocation is an interactive "poetry park" that will sit adjacent to our new home. This inviting green space will be centrally located on the esplanade and will feature an outdoor gallery which will showcase the award-winning Traveling Stanzas posters; and also serve as a gathering space for quiet reflection or public events, performances, and classroom visits. As a community landmark, the poetry park will be a source of great pride for town and gown and become a destination point for community members, local schools’ writing classes, and participants in poetry writing outreach programs.

Karen Schubert's work appears or is forthcoming in MiPOesias, quickly, Ohio Poetry Anthology, Conte and others. She is the recipient of a 2012 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, and a 2013 residency at Headlands Center for the Arts. Her third chapbook I Left My Wings on a Chair  won the Wick Poetry Center chapbook contest and is forthcoming from Kent State Press in 2014. She teaches English at Youngstown State.

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews in Conversation with Kristina Marie Darline of Noctuary Press

{noctuary press} ~ a record, an unconcealing

 NA: How did you come up with the title, Noctuary Press? 

KMD: A "noctuary" is a record of what passes in the night.   I chose "noctuary press" as the title because my publishing project strives to create a record of, and give visibility to, innovative writing by women that takes place at the peripheries of existing genre categories.  This writing, since it's difficult to label or classify, runs the risk of remaining undocumented, invisible even.  Noctuary Press strives to document these challenges to existing genre categories.  Through this process of recording and documenting, we hope to promote dialogue among reviewers, readers, and editors about the role of genre categories within literary publishing and in the academy.

NA:There are so many independent poetry presses out there.  What made you want to start a new one?

KMD: You're absolutely right that there are many independent presses out there.  And a good number of them are open to cross-genre work.  But most of the presses that I've encountered privilege work that simply challenges the notion of genre.  Much of this writing is merely rebellious, and doesn't take the time to interrogate the assumptions behind genre categories, and the ways in which cultural gatekeepers use them to exclude writing that doesn't fit within their parameters.   Noctuary Press hopes to initiate dialogue about why writing that doesn't fit these traditional categories is so frequently "othered."  I believe that this is a more substantial task than merely critiquing the notion genre, as most existing publishing projects frequently do.

NA: Why is the press for women only?

KMD: The press is for women only because the writing that doesn't fit within traditional genre categories, and the work that's most frequently "othered," is women's writing.   As Adrienne Rich once said, and I'm paraphrasing here, many women refuse to write within a tradition that's hostile to them.  Yet there are few places in the literary community that offer a public space for this type of work.  Noctuary Press strives to offer this much needed public space for writing by women that interrogates received ideas about genre. 

NA: Tell me about Noctuary Press.

KMD: Noctuary Press is based in Buffalo, New York.  The project is funded by the generosity of the English Department at the University at Buffalo.  We actively seek submissions from outside the university in order to promote dialogue between poetry communities. 

NA: How long have you been in existence?

KMD: Although Noctuary Press was launched fairly recently (in October 2012), over a year of planning had taken place beforehand. 

NA: Are you the sole editor of the press?

KMD: I'm the sole editor of the press, and I'm responsible for choosing the manuscripts.  But I work with a local printer and designer, David McNamara at Sunnyoutside Press, in order to provide books of a professional quality.

NA: How many books do you hope to publish per year?

KMD: We hope to publish three titles per year in perfect-bound paperback editions.  This year we'll release titles by Carol Guess, Eva Heisler, and Kristy Bowen.

NA: How will you find your authors?  Will you run contests?  KD: So far, we've mostly solicited submissions from authors who have captured our attention.  But we hope to have our first open reading period in late 2013.  NA: If you could pick an author or two off of a shelf and make her a Noctuary Press author, who would you pick?

KMD: Simone Muench and Danielle Pafunda. 

NA: Tell me a little bit about your forthcoming titles.

KMD: I'm really excited by the stylistic range of the projects we're publishing. 

The first title we'll release is Carol Guess's F IN.  This book is an erasure project, a story in shards, which are taken from a novel Guess had written but never published.  The text, fragmented and elliptical, juxtaposes images of femininity and violence in thought-provoking ways, offering a beautiful matching of form and content all the while. 

The second title in the 2013 series, Eva Heisler's Drawing Water, is a carefully crafted, lyrical meditation on the artistic process.  Her work interrogates our attempts at representation in a series of intelligent and beautifully written linked prose pieces.   

Lastly, Kristy Bowen's the shared properties of water and stars presents a compelling narrative in the guise of mathematical word problems.  I'm excited by the ways Bowen blurs the boundaries between scientific modes of reasoning and the wonderful associative logic that drives poetry.  

NA: I’d love to close with a poem from one of your books.

KMD:  Here's an excerpt from Kristy Bowen's the shared properties of water and stars: 

Let’s say the blonde girl has someone whispering in her ear each night. Hundreds of bears lumber outside her windows. Her mouth like an open window. A small cut in the dark; club-footed, claw-hearted in her head. The bears outside her window watch the boys climb, one by one, up to the roof to touch her face. Her excuses are slender, silky, like the backs of her calves. Let’s say the dark writes itself anew along the walls each night. The word like a bubble in the throat until it bursts.

 

Kristina Marie Darling is the author of nine books, which include Melancholia (An Essay) (Ravenna Press, 2012), Petrarchan (BlazeVOX Books, forthcoming in 2013), and (with Carol Guess) X Marks the Dress: A Registry (Gold Wake Press, forthcoming in 2014).  Her writing has been honored with fellowships from the Corporation of Yaddo, the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Ragdale Foundation, as well as grants from the Kittredge Fund and the Elizabeth George Foundation. Kristina is working toward a Ph.D. in Poetics at SUNY-Buffalo.

Nin Andrews received her BA from Hamilton College and her MFA from Vermont College. The recipient of two Ohio Arts Council grants, she is the author of several books including The Book of Orgasms, Spontaneous Breasts, Why They Grow Wings, Midlife Crisis with Dick and Jane, Sleeping with Houdini, and Dear Professor, Do You Live in a Vacuum. She also edited Someone Wants to Steal My Name, a book of translations of the French poet, Henri Michaux. Her book, Southern Comfort  was published by CavanKerry Press in 2010. Follow Nin's blog here. Follow Nin on Twitter here.

Find all of Nin Andrews' Meet the Press columns here.

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews in conversation with Matthew Zapruder of Wave Books

NA: There are so many independent poetry presses out there.  What makes Wave Books different? 

MZ: Every press has a different focus, some limits or areas of interest. Wave mostly publishes work by so-called "mid-career" American poets: individual books of poems, translations, etc. So we don't publish a lot of other terrific books that our allies in the small publishing world take on. The small press ecosystem requires and benefits from that sort of variety I think. I do also believe Wave has some unusual and innovative ideas about design. Other presses of course publish gorgeous books, ones that we love, but our focus on type design as a necessary manifestation of the idiosyncratic poetic impulse within each book seems to me to be different from what many other presses are currently doing, and hopefully a contribution to the field of book design.

NA: I read on your website that Wave hopes “to continue to challenge the values and practices of readers.”  How do you plan to do that?  

MZ: In the way that any representative of artists does, by putting forth work that pushes our ideas about poetry and art and life in heretofore unexplored directions. 

NA: How did you become an editor at Wave? 

MZ: Brian Henry, my friend and fellow poet, and I founded Verse Press together in 1999. Soon after, I took over as the main editor of the press, because Brian was busy with his work editing Verse Magazine, as well as his teaching and other obligations. When Verse Press became Wave Books in 2005, I continued on as editor, and poet Joshua Beckman was hired as the other editor. I think our editorial work and vision are much stronger for having two editors and a very involved Publisher, Charlie Wright. 

NA: I see that Wave publishes translations.  I was wondering if you could give us a poem, or an excerpt from a poem, from one of your books of translations, and maybe a short bio of the author and translator.

MZ:Here's a video of Graham Foust reading some of his (and Sam Frederick's translations of Ernst Meister) and some more information about the book we recently published, In Time's Rift.

NA: How many books do you publish each year?  How does one become a Wave poet?

MZ: Currently we publish around 8-10 books a year. Obviously that means we have a relatively small regular group of authors we publish. As I wrote above, we focus on mid-career poets. Our editorial board takes very seriously our task of keeping track of what is being written by the poets of the generation we publish. Yet we realize we can't keep track of everything, so periodically we will have a reading period of some kind, usually to fulfill a specific purpose. When we were putting together a book of political poetry in 2008, we had an open submissions period where we read any political poetry people wanted to send: this was very educational and helpful for us as editors, in figuring out what we thought a political poem was or could be, and we took many poems from those submissions. This past summer we had an open reading period for manuscripts, just because we felt it was time to see what was out there that we might be missing. Again, this was incredibly educational (though also an enormous amount of work, to read everything), and we found several books from that group that we hope to publish in the next few years, translations as well as individual volumes of poetry.

NA: If you could think of a title of a book you would love to publish, what would that title be?

MZ: The Lost Poems of Robert Desnos.

NA: Is there a poet or two out there that you would like to publish (or to have published) who is not a Wave author?

MZ: We are open to working on specific projects with poets who have great publishing situations, in order to publish something else that they are doing that might not be appropriate for their main publisher. For instance, we have recently published translations by Graham Foust, whose books of poetry are published by our friends and co-conspirators Flood Editions. That seems like a good way to get to work with poets we admire, without in any way disrupting a happily functioning publishing arrangement.

NA: Could you describe some of the happiest or proudest moments for the press? MZ:I would have to say the Poetry Bus tour was an early proud moment, though I'm not sure it was always a happy one, only because Joshua and I and Travis Nichols (who were on the bus for the entire trip) practically had nervous breakdowns from the sheer velocity of it all. But it was a lot of fun, and something that I think brought a lot of pleasure to people all over the country, which was a great feeling. Each year we put on an annual festival in Seattle, to which we invite our authors as well as a lot of other poets. Last year we did a translation festival at the Henry Art Gallery, and I felt immense pride and gratitude that we were able to bring together so many brilliant translators and poets to talk in a way that felt very connected to true poetic practice. This coming year our festival will be focused around poetry and film, the weekend of February 22nd, and I am really looking forward to that. On a personal note, my proudest moments as an editor are when I really feel as if, through my responses and enthusiasm and general presence as a thoughtful and serious reader, I am bringing the poets I work with closer to the very best thing they can accomplish at a particular stage in their artistic life. I am happy and proud when I am in service to the people I feel are some of the finest poets writing today. Recently, when I saw the book of lectures by Mary Ruefle that Joshua so carefully and brilliantly edited, I was very proud on behalf of Wave Books and poetry.

NA: I’d like to close the interview with a poem from one of the Wave authors and a link to your website.  Would you be willing to select a poem and provide a link?

MZ: It's hard to choose one poem by one author. But I guess I'd like to post a link to a poem by Joshua, from a book that is forthcoming in Fall 2013, The Inside of an Apple. This selection originally appeared in a gorgeous limited edition chapbook, Porch Light. For more info about Wave Books you can check out our website or our Tumblr or follow us on Twitter.

Matthew Zapruder is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Come On All You Ghosts (Copper Canyon 2010), a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He is an editor for Wave Books, and teaches at UCR-Palm Desert's Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing. He lives in San Francisco. 

Nin Andrews received her BA from Hamilton College and her MFA from Vermont College. The recipient of two Ohio Arts Council grants, she is the author of several books including The Book of Orgasms, Spontaneous Breasts, Why They Grow Wings, Midlife Crisis with Dick and Jane, Sleeping with Houdini, and Dear Professor, Do You Live in a Vacuum. She also edited Someone Wants to Steal My Name, a book of translations of the French poet, Henri Michaux. Her book, Southern Comfort  was published by CavanKerry Press in 2010. Follow Nin's blog here. Follow Nin on Twitter here.

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews in Conversation with L. Timmel Duchamp of Aqueduct Press

NA: I read on your home page that you publish feminist science fiction.  Could you elaborate?

LTD: Yes, I founded Aqueduct Press explicitly to publish feminist science fiction. For me, though, “feminist science fiction” is a broad term that includes science fiction, fantasy, and fantastic literature written from a feminist perspective. All of these are contested terms, open to interpretation, and “feminist” covers a broad spectrum. For this reason, Aqueduct’s authors are not all entirely comfortable with one another. And admittedly, one of our authors couldn’t be called (or even considered) a feminist by any stretch of the imaginations. But categorizations don't much interest me. I’m actually more interested in what I call the “grand conversation” of feminist science fiction—viz., the way the work Aqueduct publishes is in conversation with other work of feminist science fiction. (An essay of mine, available for download from my website < http://ltimmel.home.mindspring.com/genealogy.html> as well as in the slim volume titled The Grand Conversation, explains this notion in depth.) 

NA: Why sci fi feminism?

LTD: Oh, for several reasons. First, feminist science fiction has played an important role in helping me think about feminist issues and theory, and I’ve adored reading it since I first discovered it in the late 1970s. Second, it’s what I write myself. Third, there was a nasty rumor going around in the late 90s that feminist science fiction was over. I wanted to show that feminist sf was not only still breathing, but even thriving and developing. And fourth, I saw a need that wasn’t being met by twenty-first-century publishers, who in their changed corporate circumstances now find a good deal of very fine work not commercially viable.  

NA: Who are some of the science fiction poets you publish?

LTD: Our largest poetry collection, The Moment of Change edited by Rose Lemberg, a feminist speculative anthology with an unusually diverse selection of poets, includes work by well-known writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, Delia Sherman, Theodora Goss, Amal El-Mohtar, Vandana Singh, Nisi Shawl, Greer Gilman, Sonya Taaffe, Athena Andreadis, Jo Walton, and Catherynne M. Valente, as well as a couple dozen lesser-known poets. We’ve also published another smaller anthology, edited by Theodora Goss, Voices from Fairyland: The Fantastical Poems of Mary Coleridge, Charlotte Mew, and Sylvia Townsend Warner that comprises poems by those three writers, fascinating essays by Dora Goss about each of these poets’ work, and poems by Dora responding to that work. We’ve also published an epic poem by Anne Sheldon (The Adventures of the Faithful Counselor) and single-author collections by Liz Henry (Unruly Islands), Lesley Wheeler (The Receptionist and Other Tales), and Anne Sheldon (The Bone Spindle). Some of the small single-author short fiction collections we’ve published have included poetry in addition to prose stories (by Eleanor Arnason, Kim Antieau Sheree Renee Thomas, Rachel Swirsky). Poetry, like science fiction, has always been an important genre for feminists,  and feminism in the 1970s and 80s would have been impoverished without the poetry of Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Marge Piercy, and June Jordan, to mention just four poets that helped sustained me throughout those decades.  

NA: How many books do you publish each year?

LTD: It varies a bit from year to year, but something in the neighborhood of ten (including our small books).

NA: I am a fan of one of your authors, Chris Barzack, whose new book, Birds and Birthdays, is just out from Aqueduct. I think Barzack walks a line somewhere between sci-fi and fiction. I guess I think of him more as a magical realist.  Do you agree?  Or am I defining sci fi too narrowly?  

LTD: The issue you raise is complicated and could be addressed from a number of angles. Like many writers in the genre that is often referred to as “sf/f/h” in order to include titles identifiable as science fiction, fantasy, and horror, Chris writes beautiful and interesting prose. I’ve noticed that some readers (particularly those who seldom read sf/f/h) believe that beautiful and interesting prose can’t possibly be sf/f/h, and that for them, a respectable literary term like "magical realist" might help them get around the contradiction in their thinking. In fact, Chris’s work fits very comfortably into a region of the genre known as “fantasy.” (One of the most widely-respected authors currently inhabiting that region is Kelly Link.) Magical realism is a pretty well-defined style of writing that I don't believe Chris’s work can be pigeon-holed into. My own sense is that the stories in Birds and Birthdays resemble the fantastic work of Angela Carter (who also wrote science fiction), while some of his other stories make me think variously of Carol Emshwiller, Shirley Jackson, and sometimes Kelly Link.  

Perhaps I should add that there are basically two different ways authors come to be identified as sf/f/h genre writers. One way has to do how they are positioned institutionally—by publishers, booksellers, and critics—into a marketing category. X is “literary,” Y is “sf/f/h.” Since Chris’s short fiction tends to appear in genre publications (often distinguished by its prose quality) and his novels are published as genre YA, he’s been institutionally categorized as a sf/f/h writer. The second way authors come to be identified as sf/f/h genre writers is through their use of and engagement with the narrative conventions and tropes of sf/f/h. Chris’s work can definitely be identified as sf/f/h because of the way it converses with other work of sf/f/h. 

NA: I see on your website, there is a literary magazine called Cascadia Subduction Zone.  Is that published by Aqueduct? Could you say a few words about that?

LTD: Yes, Aqueduct publishes the CSZ four times a year. We have just completed our second year of publication. Issues are available in both print and electronic editions, and we make all our back issues available for free download six months after initial publication.

I had two reasons for starting the CSZ. First, I felt a burning need to address the gender imbalance that women writers face. Just as literary review publications severely underrepresent work by women (as shown by the recent VIDA studies), so do sf/f/h review publications. Reviews of fiction tend to be of work published by men. N(iall Harrison, the Editor-in-Chief of Strange Horizons, has produced some revealing graphics that show just how underrepresented work by women is in sf/f/h review publications.) The CSZ’s policy is to review work by both men and women—only reversing the usual priority that tacitly considers work by men of greater importance and interest than work by women. Similarly, our reviews and essays and creative work are by both men and women—but again, with priority given to pieces written from a feminist point of view, which makes sense to us because all of the magazine’s editors are feminists. In this way, we hope to begin to redress the problem of gender imbalance and draw attention to work that is not getting the attention it deserves.

Second, I adore essays, particularly long essays, and I wanted to create more space for them in the world. I sometimes think I love essays almost as much as I love fiction.

I’d like to add here that although Aqueduct publishes the CSZ and I’m the publisher of Aqueduct Press, I’m just one of four editors of the CSZ and thus just part of the collective, consensus-driven process in producing it. Aqueduct simply handles the business side of it (which at this point also includes partially subsidizing it, in order to keep subscriber costs down).

NA: And there is also The Aqueduct Gazette?  And a blog?

LTD: The Aqueduct Gazette is currently in hiatus. I'd like to bring it back, but I'd need some volunteer help to manage that. The Gazette is basically a newsletter that combines news about Aqueduct's books and authors and some independent content-- a mix of promotion of Aqueduct's books and serving the broader interests of Aqueduct's audience. The blog is a larger version of that—but a version that I hope encourages the development of community. Many of those who regularly visit the blog are people who attend WisCon, the splendid feminist science fiction convention held in Madison, WI every Memorial Day weekend. Some are people who love Aqueduct's books and authors. Still others are sf/f fans who tend to be politically progressive and sympathetic to feminist values.

NA: Could you describe some of the happiest or proudest moments for the press?  Feel free to provide links to reviews, events, awards, readings, etc.

LTD: I’ve been fortunate to enjoy many such moments. Several of our books have won major awards or been nominated for them. The second book we published, Gwyneth Jones’s novel Life, won the Philip K. Dick Award (which I had the honor of accepting in her stead at the awards ceremony) and was short-listed for the James Tiptree Award, which recognizes fiction that seeks to expand and explore our understanding of gender. Ursula Le Guin’s Cheek By Jowl won the Locus Award; Helen Merrick’s The Secret Feminist Cabal won the William Atheling Award and was short-listed for both the Hugo and—despite its being nonfiction— Tiptree Awards. Nisi Shawl’s Filter House won the Tiptree Award. Vandana Singh’s Distances won the Carl Brandon Society’s Kindred Award and was also short-listed for the Tiptree.  Andrea Hairston’s novel Mindscape won the Carl Brandon Society Kindred Award and was short-listed for both the Dick and Tiptree Awards, and her novel Redwood and Wildfire won the Tiptree Award. Perhaps my proudest moment was seeing Andrea wearing the Tiptree Award tiara while delivering her Guest of Honor speech at WisCon last May. (WisCon is a fabulous feminist science fiction convention. A photo of Andrea wearing the Tiptree tiara can be found on the front page of the Jame Tiptree, Jr. Award website <tiptree.org>.)

A more private proud moment occurred during a panel at Readercon last summer, when Andrea Hairston, Brit Mandelo, and I discussed Joanna Russ’s classic How to Suprress Women’s Writing, with considerable audience participation. One of Russ’s chapters talks about how the seeming anomalousness of women’s writing contributes to the dismissal of work by women—an anomalousness that stems from the lack of institutional memory, which persuades each new generation of women that they are pioneers and loners, mere voices crying in the wilderness. One of my goals for Aqueduct is to emphasize the continuity of feminist sf—to insist on an immense context within which new writing needs to be understood to be fully appreciated. As I mentioned earlier, many people, some of them critics, had in the 1990s asserted the death of feminist sf. Aqueduct defies that assertion. We publish new feminist sf every year—work that is in lively, sometimes contentious conversation with what is now a large body of work. None of us needs to reinvent the wheel this time around. 

NA: What aspects of publishing and editing do you enjoy most?  Least?

LTD: I most enjoy editing and editorial conversations with the authors. It is a joy to me to help authors make their work the best it can be, and a deep pleasure to bring attention to work that would otherwise not be noticed. I also enjoy writing royalty checks. The aspects of publishing I least like is writing and sending rejections and drafting contracts. (I can’t think of anything more tedious than writing contracts.) I do these unpleasant tasks as conscientiously as I can, because they must be done, but without pleasure. The end result—beautiful books launched into the world—makes even the most tedious moments of drafting contracts worth it.

NA: I would love to close with a poem from one of your authors.

LTD: For this, I’ve selected Liz Henry’s “Mother Frankenstein,” from her collection, Unruly Islands:

Mother Frankenstein

Mother Frankenstein swollen lightning
stitching needles where my lips kiss
in your smoke-ghost skull where axons
open fire with past love letters electric
little histories of the alphabet gathered
in your pathetic apron's outwash plain,
Wars and arrows, night-knives, night blind star
nights of murdered poets unburied
scars stitching scars on your skin my lips kiss
plague-fury, forced survivors of a shipwreck
end of the world lost word lined up singers
sad stitch and mouth raw mothers of sorrow
More than sorrow or grief - exhaustion,
roseblown the words of dead friends cuneiform

Mother Frankenstein your full lighthouse tower -
flash in the raincloud from the empty tower -
masts cut away from the arc of your rainbow cut sailropes,
worm finger death curve of the wreckage of fists
cleared for later deciphering by a panel of experts,
tireless antmouth of your computers' calculation,
machinetooled fingers swollen from salt tangled
dishwater tears working writing battery
beyond the power of life to give charge

Child grown in there still in the ricket trap
daring to carry iron famine's rusty womb quilt scraps,
scuttling beetle limb bicycling in the full belly
knees life machine shipwreck piston
under your apron, under the crying breasts
longing for the knife-child who will empty the grey tower
emerging like the prow of a ship through fog,
painted wavemilk churn in the oiled gearteeth,
gun-child descending the stairs to the flaming torches,
memory's oilstained workbench and the thigh-vise grip of birth,
the moon's handfuls of nothing throwing craters of light in our faces

Your hand stitched to mine pulled me to the trenchmouth
buried in cataracts caliche bulldozed by tanks
and the blind hand dowsing artesian graves
found its original wrist: I can't see
the stone in my own eye, enough burial for forever,
Trumpet call of lightning to reanimate millions,
bring back those soldiers so they could kill, and kill, and go home
to their wives and mothers who are now ready to kill in turn
until the earth's scabbed graves are clean of soldiers and there are only
handfuls of nothing and craters of nothing cradling skeletons
with guitars, the ghosts of machine guns, ghost song,

Well of the dead, I would take you into my belly
Athena Diomedes would be with me clutching an embryonic boulder
to swallow the dead and bring them shining whole into all time,
stitches straining to burst with the bowling ball weight of the guilt
of futile miscarriages tumbling in cataracts in a stochastic tapestry,
I would leap into the night, iridium flash, verso of the meteor's flight,
unintentional handful of nothing and words and the workbench of memory,
Mary mother of Frankenstein you give me your blackened tooth's unwatched star,
your handfuls of stigmata, your soldier ants slicing the moon's andalusian eye,
your body's machinery in the bonefrost of lost desire and a kiss of loving betrayal,
the memory of your pellucid eggshell trembling in the corpus luteum of my fists

                                                    -- Liz Henry

L. Timmel Duchamp, familiarly known as “Timmi,” is best known as the author of the five-volume Marq’ssan Cycle (which won special recognition from the James Tiptree Award jury), consisting of Alanya to Alanya (2005), Renegade ( 2006), Tsunami (2007), Blood in the Fruit (2007), and Stretto (2008) and the founder and publisher of Aqueduct Press. She is the author of two collections of short fiction: Love's Body, Dancing in Time (2004), which was shortlisted for the Tiptree, and Never at Home (2011), and co-author, with Maureen McHugh, of a mini-collection, Plugged In (2008, published in conjunction with the authors’ being GoHs at WisCon). She has also edited several anthologies and has published a good deal of reviews and criticism. Some of her short fiction and essays are available on her website .

 Nin Andrews received her BA from Hamilton College and her MFA from Vermont College. The recipient of two Ohio Arts Council grants, she is the author of several books including The Book of Orgasms, Spontaneous Breasts, Why They Grow Wings, Midlife Crisis with Dick and Jane, Sleeping with Houdini, and Dear Professor, Do You Live in a Vacuum. She also edited Someone Wants to Steal My Name, a book of translations of the French poet, Henri Michaux. Her book, Southern Comfort  was published by CavanKerry Press in 2010. Follow Nin's blog here.

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews in conversation with Andrea Selch of Carolina Wren Press

NA: Tell me about the name first.  The Carolina wren is a lively little bird, but I am wondering if you wanted the word, Carolina, in the name to imply the South? 

AS: I didn’t found the press, so I didn’t choose the name. But the name is important: The Carolina Wren is a choosey little bird—a feminist bird if such a thing could be said. The female chooses her mate after inspecting nests made by several males. It’s also a very hardy bird, indigenous to the Carolinas… and I like to think it stands for the press for these reasons too. The press’s mission has always been to make underrepresented writers more accessible—in the 1970s, that meant women, people of color, and southern writers; more recently, we’ve expanded that to include other “others,” such as LGBT writers, writers of more diverse ethnic or racial backgrounds, differently-abled writers and even experimental writers. In other words, the mission to publish underrepresented writers has stayed constant while the definition of underrepresented has broadened.

(For more about the history of the press before the 21^st century, see CWP-founder Judy Hogan’s history on our website. )

NA: I think it must take a lot of vision, energy, and passion to start a press.  What inspired you to take that step? 

AS:  I’ll  talk about my history with the press and my later experience of “inheriting” the press.

Once upon a time, Judy Hogan published one of my poems in an anthology called A Living Culture in Durham. I was just graduating from Duke and saw the flyer on a bulletin board. I submitted and was accepted. I later met Jaki Shelton Green (probably the most recognizable poet CWP published in the 80s) when I wrote a story about her for the Independent in 1987.

After that, I forgot about the press until my friend David Kellogg, then president of the CWP board, invited me to submit to a new poetry series he was publishing. He wanted to publish poets in pairs—one established, one emerging—and I was to be the emerging poet alongside the Afro-Canadian poet George Elliott Clarke. My chapbook was published in 2000 and I was invited onto the Board of Directors soon after that.

 

Andrea Selch

In 2000, the press was beginning its transition from an inclusive community-oriented press to one with a critically-recognized national reputation. David was excited to be publishing experimental and political poetry, but didn’t have time for the fiction, nonfiction and children’s literature projects of the press. There were a few old-timers on the board and one part-time Executive Director on salary. As Vice President, I brought a few newcomers onto the board—some more edgy poets, younger types—and looked for a new designer. I lobbied for the press to make over its “look”—at that time the wren on the letterhead was a little puffball! I culled the press’s enormous mailing list and sent out yearly fundraising letters. I also found myself running the meetings and, when the Executive Director decided to move on in 2002, I started doing all the office work, mailing out orders, resubmitting grants, etc.  I brought out the next several poetry titles, as chapbooks.

 

As President, beginning sometime in 2004, I made several changes to the poetry series: First of all, instead of continuing the Poetry Series as “by invitation only,” I made it into a national contest. This brought us some income from submission fees, a wider array and higher quality of entries, and a stronger connection between the emerging and the established poets, since the established poet acted as the final judge for the contest. Having a national contest gave us a national reputation, which the press had not really had. We maintained the southern feel of the press by choosing southern or southern-connected judges most of the time. The judges were generally from underrepresented groups, and I think this appealed to emerging poets also from the margins.

Secondly, I also made the poetry series books more professional-looking and saleable. The early books in the series were chapbooks—handsewn with thread—and bookstores did not like this. Also, they were printed by a local fine press, which meant they were very beautiful but also very expensive. I researched printers for perfect-bound books, got competing bids, and was able to get the books for about a quarter of the previous price. Also, I increased the size of the book from a chapbook to a full-length collection, and opened it to first or second collections. This also increased the number of entries. Finally, I also really upped the promotional efforts: We send out 100 or more review copies (and sometime pre-publication galleys) for each book we publish, we host a launch either at AWP or here or in the author's home town, and we submit the published book to every year-end award we can find. Our books are distributed by Baker & Taylor, one of the two largest distributors in the country, and sold through our website and Amazon.com. We sell to universities directly and through Follett Educational and Barnes & Noble College Bookstores. This kind of availability is crucial…the books have to be accessible.

NA: What kind of writers do you seek to publish?  What kinds of work would you never print?

AS: In her history of the press, Judy Hogan mentions looking among the submissions for “those strange fish.” Yes indeed, we look for the strange fish. We love the experimental and political poets—Evie Shockley, Tiffany Higgins, Erica Hunt, Minnie Bruce Pratt and the forthcoming books by L. Lamar Wilson and Lee Ann Brown. On the other hand, I personally love very tightly crafted, musical poetry—like Yvonne Murphy and Karen Anderson. Though of course the categories of political poetry and lyrical poetry are by no means mutually exclusive—what we like best is work that is BOTH. When I read, I read primarily for music, and I have other readers who look for other things. By having a group of readers, we know every author gets a fair shake. My primary poetry readers are all phenomenal poets: Tanya Olson, Chris Vitiello, and Patrick Herron. Many collections that are submitted to us are imperfect—poets don’t always know what works in terms of ordering their poems in a manuscript, nor how the manuscript will change/grow once it gets designed into a book. We can also edit for content within the individual poems—if the book has the right feel overall, it will be a joy to work on—that shift from manuscript to book is actually my favorite part. Again, the challenge has always been to look for the best poetry but also to maintain our goal of publishing underrepresented authors.

I hesitate to use the word never, but there are certain works that we have so far always passed on: Rhymed verse, especially when it’s centered on the page. 19^th-Century-ish poetry or historical poetry. Poetry that appears racist, homophobic or otherwise hostile to our values.  Poetry with illustrations—because it’s too expensive—with the exception that we provided the ISBN and United States distribution for Grey Mare Press and The National Library of Wales’s The Book of Ystwyth: Six Poets on the Art of Clive-Hicks Jenkins. {We are also not interested in genre fiction, plays, or academic writing.}

NA: I grew up in the South, in Virginia, and I don’t know that the South ever fully leaves a person.  I was wondering if you might  say a little bit about your perspective on southern poetry and publishing?

AS: I always feel uncertain about generalizing here, especially since, despite my 30 years in NC, I am not considered a real southerner…

NA: I love that answer!  I am not real either.  But by rights, you are more southern than I.  I think the very fact that you say that tells you a lot about the south.   Could you talk a little bit about the Doris Bakwin award? 

AS: The Doris Bakwin Award for Wrtiting by a Woman is named for my aunt, who died in 2004. In her memory, my uncle Michael Bakwin gave us a start-up grant for this contest for fiction or memoir by a woman. In Doris’s honor, we always look for gutsy, talented writers—strong women who are telling strong stories. The titles in this series are Downriver by Jeanne Leiby, All Eyes: A Mother’s Struggle to Save her Schizophrenic Son by Phoebe Hoss, and Relative Strangers by Margaret Hermes. We are just now selecting finalists for the next book, and we will also be publishing a book by the current judge, Moira Crone.

NA: Somewhere I read that a CWP editor suggested a poetry book costs 60 cents to print. Is that true?

AS: I hope it wasn’t me that said that! It’s true that I have paid as little as 2.50 apiece for a 6x9-inch, 80-page book of poetry to be printed, based on a 1000-copy print run. That is pretty cheap per piece! But then again, $2500 is a big chunk of change to come up with and it’s less of deal once you consider the other costs associated with publishing a book: prize money to the author, design fees for book and press release, mailing of 100 review copies, as well as the fact that the standard discount to distributors is 55%. There is not much of a profit to be made….

Actually, I am surprised that you did not ask any questions about the economic portrait of the press. I think it’s really important to be open about these things

At the time the E.D. left in 2002, the press’s budget was about $17,000 a year, and there was only $79 in the bank!  In the ensuing years, from 2002 to 2012, I brought the budget back into the $30,000 range and we have settled on 2-3 books or projects per year. We survive by virtue of a) grants from the NC Arts Council and the Durham Arts Council, b) gifts from donors, and c) book sales and contest submissions--about equal parts from each. I am one of the major donors to the press, and of course I don’t take a salary, nor do any of the board members. I usually have a part-time worker, an Assistant Director, who works 5 or 10 hours a week for a generous hourly wage. Aside from publishing books, and a part-time assistant, our single greatest expense is attending AWP—that can cost $3000 or more! But it is well worth it—the other attendees are our greatest audience of readers and submitters.

Our main challenges over the 10 years I’ve run the press have been economic. In the1990s there was a lot more grant money around, but since the 2000s began, the money has been slowly drying up. Our grants (and those of other public arts organizations including libraries) have gotten smaller and smaller. At the same time, a weaker economy has meant fewer or smaller contributions from donors, and slower book sales, and following on that, less willingness on the part of bookstores (and libraries) to carry our books. It used to be that our books went straight onto library shelves (meaning that a good part of a print run was quickly sold), but that isn't so anymore.

Two things that have helped us in the last decade: 1) Cheaper printing has meant that we can do larger print runs more cheaply, or choose more interesting (and previously vastly more expensive) trim sizes. 2) By really improving the quality/caliber of the writers we publish, we are selling more books to colleges and universities for use in classrooms. This in turn has meant that college students are getting introduced to our press—and we do find ourselves receiving more entries from the MFA world. (Our attendance at AWP every year also helps!

Ebook publishing, I believe, is affecting the publishing industry as a whole—everyone has had to hurry up and start delivering content for eBook readers. It's much cheaper to produce an eBook than a printed book, and many works are getting a new life as ebooks. We are getting ready to release several of our past fiction collections and memoirs as eBooks. But we have not been satisfied with the eBook formatting of poetry—line breaks get all messed up--so we are waiting for that issue to be resolved before issuing our back poetry titles as eBooks.

NA: Are most of the writers you publish prize-winners? Or do you also solicit manuscripts or have an open reading period? 

AS: For the last several years we have been publishing contest winners (and judges) almost exclusively. We have also published a few poetry collections of poets we know and love— Jaki Shelton Green, Nancy Simpson, and Shirlette Ammons—as well as The Book of Ystwyth: Six Poets on the Art of Clive Hicks-Jenkins, our recent collaboration with Grey Mare Press and The National Library of Wales. Since I have been doing most the work myself, about 2-3 books or projects a year is all I can handle in addition to being a mom, an equestrian vaulting coach, and a poet myself too.

NA: Will you say a few words about the fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books you publish?    

AS: As for prose—the Doris Bakwin winners are all we have done in the last few years. We published two children’s books, The North Carolina Alphabet and Peace Comes to Ajani in the last few years. The books were beautifully produced, but I am not an expert at marketing children’s literature, so they didn’t find their audiences. Between that, and the fact that color printing is hugely expensive, we are no longer doing children’s literature. But that could change—what gets published has a lot to do with who is on the Board of Directors—and for the past several years we have been poetry-heavy. Who knows what the future may bring, though.

NA: Could you say a few words about your new authors? 

AS: We are right now putting together the next two books in the Carolina Wren Press Poetry Series: L. Lamar Wilson’s Sacrilegion and Lee Ann Brown’s Crowns for Charlotte. Both of these books are political and musical at once. They should turn a lot of heads. We are also about to launch Ten Wrens, our first-ever audio sampler of CWP Poets. This cd will be a way to introduce people to poets we have published since 2005, in other words from from Jaki Shelton Green to Lee Ann Brown. Lamar Wilson is a dynamo, with readings scheduled widely next year, starting with Cave Canem in February. Lee Ann Brown is also a frequent reader, so 2013 will be a big poetry year for us.

NA: What are some of the happiest or proudest moments for the press?  Feel free to provide links to reviews, events, readings, etc.

AS: One book I am very proud of is Evie Shockley’s a half-red sea. Evie was one of the first “emerging poets” in the poetry series, paired with Erica Hunt. When Evie’s chapbook The Gorgon Goddess quickly sold out, I asked her to judge the contest and to let us do her first full-length collection. She accepted gladly and we did her book in a wide format with a fold-out page for one poem. Evie hit the ground running with that book—she read/performed as often as she could, she went on panels, she attended conferences—basically she did what I hope all our authors will do—get out there and share the poetry. That’s how the book sells. Of course it has to be excellent writing to begin with! Anyhow, I am so glad I printed 2000 copies of the book because she has really sold it—we are almost to the point of reprinting. Evie’s second book, the new black, came out from Wesleyan UP in 2011, and has been extraordinarily successful. I’m glad she went to another press for that book because I don't think CWP could have handled the promotions at that level. Our job, bringing this talented writer into the mainstream, is done!

By way of ending this perhaps-too-long blog entry, I want to say that my time at CWP has been a wonderful adventure. I have become a publisher through my experiences at CWP, and I have made some wonderful friends through it. I think CWP does an important job bringing writers into the public eye, and also helping writers who are also in academia, get closer to tenure. That job security is so important for poets—if only all our artists could be sustained like that!

And a word to aspiring poets: The CWP poets who are successful are untiring self-promoters: they set up dozens of reading for themselves, they meet with writers groups and classes, attend conferences and book fairs, search out year-end awards that we can submit their books to, and so forth. With the exception of the launch party and the 100 review copies, which the press covers, these poets make these efforts on their own dime, and that is not unusual for poetry. There’s no money in it, never has been—you have to do it for the love of it, of the roll of the words on your tongue, the feel of the paper in your hands.

NA: I would like to end the interview with a poem or excerpt from a Carolina Wren author.  Would you be willing to post one below? 

AS: There are so many wonderful poems to pick from, and from so many wonderful books, as you can see by a glance at our website.

But here’s a short poem from Yvonne C. Murphy’s new collection, Aviaries.

Mona Lisa

It’s a mistake, this mystique.

A technique of thin glazes,
I look like I’m thinking.

He used urine as
a base for me

(I won’t tell you whose).

He also used arsenic—
built-in bomb.

He thought he was a god,
he could have been more generous.

These hands in my lap, perpetual,
I want a pet.

I want a dog
like the other girl got.

Fuck, I hate the Louvre
(pardon my French).

Did I tell you everyone wants me?
Enigma, c’est moi!

All day the tourists—

I’m a girl forgotten
by her womanly body.

My robe is heavy, I need a nap.

----

Andrea Selch joined the board of Carolina Wren Press 2001, after the publication of her poetry chapbook, Succory, which was #2 in the Carolina Wren Press Poetry Series. She has an MFA from UNC-Greensboro, and a PhD from Duke University, where she taught creative writing from 1999 until 2003. Her poems have been published in Calyx, The Greensboro Review, Oyster Boy Review, Luna,  Swink, The MacGuffin, Prairie Schooner and featured on the Best American Poetry blog. Her full-length collection of poetry, Startling, was published by Turning Point Press in 2004, and reissued by Cockeyed Press in 2009. In 2007, Choreo Collective danced her “Holy Shell Waiting for the Return of the Soul,” and “Early Weaning” at the biennial symposium of Duke University’s Sallie Bingham Center for the Study of Women’s History and Culture. She won a 2008 “Hippo” Award from The Monti for her spoken story, “Replacement Child.” Her small collection of Ekphrastic poems, Boy Returning Water to the Sea: Koans for Kelly Fearing, was published by Cockeyed Press in 2009, and in 2011 her work appeared in The Book of Ystwyth: Six Poets on the Art of Clive Hicks-Jenkins.   She lives in Hillsborough, NC, with her partner, their two children, and a passel of quadrupeds.

 Nin Andrews received her BA from Hamilton College and her MFA from Vermont College. The recipient of two Ohio Arts Council grants, she is the author of several books including The Book of Orgasms, Spontaneous Breasts, Why They Grow Wings, Midlife Crisis with Dick and Jane, Sleeping with Houdini, and Dear Professor, Do You Live in a Vacuum. She also edited Someone Wants to Steal My Name, a book of translations of the French poet, Henri Michaux. Her book, Southern Comfort  was published by CavanKerry Press in 2010. Follow Nin's blog here.

 

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews in conversation with Kelly Forsythe of Copper Canyon Press

NA:  Copper Canyon Press is such a successful independent poetry press.  I simply love the fact that Copper Canyon is for poets only.  But how do you do it?  What makes this press so unique and successful?

KF: Thank you for your kind words about Copper Canyon. I think success in the poetry world is largely defined by having a community who supports your efforts, and Copper Canyon has a terrific community of readers, authors, benefactors, volunteers, board members and staff members. We are lucky to have talented and creative folks working at Copper Canyon who are not only passionate about poetry, but dedicated to getting it into the hands of readers. 

I also think Copper Canyon--and this is something I noticed when I first began working here--is in a constant state of learning. We are continuously educating and reeducating ourselves on the changing ways of the industry as well as seeking out new authors, translators and diversifying our book lists. We are turning 40 years old this year—it’s definitely been a communal effort with lots of branches, stems, leaves and roots.

NA: Who came up with the name, Copper Canyon?

KF: Our founders decided on the name “Copper Canyon.” It refers a large, open pit copper mine in the western mountains of Utah (as the story goes, it was a sacred spot for some jewelry-making Utes).

NA: What are some of the struggles and the rewards of working with an independent poetry press?

KF: I see the struggles of working with an independent poetry press as part of the rewards. Though I cannot speak for everyone, I think the majority of people working in the poetry publishing industry are aware of the financial challenges of nonprofits and understand that trends in sales are going to be strikingly different than, say, the launch of the iPhone 5.

However, I get to work with some of the nation’s most talented, fiery, intelligent writers. I’m able to interact with poetry on a level that continues to push my intellectual boundaries. Working for an independent press has had dynamic effects on my own poetry--my job has profoundly effected my personal life in a positive and intensely productive way.

I feel a potent, aggressive and ardent sense of gratitude for what I do. When I was studying in Chicago, my MFA thesis instructor Jaswinder Bolina called my attention to how lucky we are, as Americans, to be able to study the art of poetry. Many other countries have economic or socio-economic issues that prevent people from even attending college, let alone attending college to study poetry. I’ve never forgotten this and feel the sentiment carries over into my work with Copper Canyon. It’s not so much that the rewards surpass the struggles, but that the struggles enrich—and in some cases create—the rewards.

NA:  Whenever I hear the name Copper Canyon, I think of Pulitzers and National Book Awards.  Maybe you could say a few words about your recent prize-winning collections. (Feel free to include links to the books, reviews, etc.)

KF: One of our most recent prize-winning collections is Laura Kasischke’s Space, in Chains, winner of the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award. Space, in Chains is one of those collections that captures contemporary domesticity with such sharpness and, as Stephen Burt writes in his NBCC review, “At times the poems are undoubtedly ‘confessional,’ derived from traumatic moments in the poet’s own life. And yet the same poems that look to Kasischke’s experience ask us briskly to look to our own...”.  It’s a startling, graceful collection.

C.D. Wright’s One with Others won the 2010 Academy of American Poets Lenore Marshall Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was also a finalist for the National Book Award that year. Wright did an interview for the National Book Foundation where she says, “Every poet I know is trying to write their way through the vortex of discourses, and moreover, to write against a massive sense of helplessness.” It’s hard not to be profoundly effected by that statement, or by the investigation being done in One with Others.

NA:  I am always looking for poetry books in translation.  Copper Canyon Press has a nice selection.  Is it a challenge to market translations?  If so, what do you do to overcome that challenge? Do you have any new books in translation coming out?  If so, could you post a short excerpt?  And maybe provide a link?  

KF: Ah, happy to hear you’re interested in translations! W.S. Merwin’s Selected Translations is forthcoming very soon (you can read a review of it at Publishers Weekly), along with Sun at Midnight, translations of Muso Soseki’s work (2013). Much further down the line in the spring of 2013 is New Poems: Rilke, translated by Joseph Cadora. I don’t feel that it’s “challenging” to market translations, though it’s certainly different than working with English-only poetry collections. I think there’s a huge opportunity to find new readership when you publish (or publicize) translations. It allows Copper Canyon to navigate the landscapes of other countries: our translators help us better understand who the readers of poetry are in China, Japan, and so on. It’s invaluable, really, to have that kind of knowledge, and I think we are all grateful for the trans-cultural insights we get each time a translation gets sent down the rail.

 NA:  Do you also publish books on craft?

KF:  We have in the past, Theodore Roethke’s On Poetry & Craft is one example. In the words of our Executive Editor Michael Wiegers, they are more “the exception, not the rule.” The Press’s mission, first and foremost, is to put poetry into the hands of people. So when it comes to considering new manuscripts, Michael is focused on primarily poetry collections—however, if the right book on craft came along, it would certainly be taken into consideration. A PC answer, I know, but true. 

NA:  Your book covers are really beautiful.  Who designs them?

KF:   We have two designers, Valerie Brewster and Phil Kovacevich who regularly work on the cover designs of our titles. In addition to these two graphic designers, Michael and Tonaya Thompson, our Managing Editor, focus lots of time and energy on book design...not to mention the author themselves, who have a hand in selecting artwork and providing feedback on the covers of their collections. For example, the cover of Dean Young’s newest collection Bender: New & Selected is a painting by Young: you can see it here; and Natalie Diaz’s When My Brother Was an Aztec cover features a photograph of her actual brother.

NA:  How does one become a Copper Canyon poet?

KF: Well...I’m going to go (indirectly) with John Keats on this one. It’s like his theory, a “Mansion of Many Apartments.” Essentially, Copper Canyon is a house with many rooms, and each room represents a different aesthetic, poetic concern, theme, topic, etc. Just as each room in a house has a different key or “way to get in,” so does Copper Canyon. There is no one way to become a Copper Canyon poet. I’m not an authority on the editorial aspect of book selection, but I know Michael Wiegers is a firm believer in brilliance; i.e. brilliant writing that reaches the public both emotionally and intellectually. We occasionally find poets through recommendations, we occasionally solicit specific poets, and we read every submission that come into our mailbox.

NA:  I am such a fan of one of your new poets, Natalie Diaz.  Her collection, When My Brother Was an Aztec, is stunning.   On the one hand, her poetry speaks of her Native American childhood, and on the other, it is surreal, melodic, and darkly visionary.  I would love you to talk a little bit about her work.

KF: I agree, it’s “darkly visionary” and stunning. I think Natalie Diaz’s poetry speaks to a community of voices that have been historically underrepresented. What’s so fascinating about her writing is how rich in emotion it is while still tackling politically and socially relevant subjects. When My Brother Was an Aztec is not just gently approaching “identity” or “culture,” it’s full-on embracing the collision of language and society, language and love, language and community, and so on. The poems move tactfully between tenderness and brutality so the reader gains quite a realistic picture of her personal life in addition to a more global insight on Native American society. 

NA:  Could you mention some other new and forthcoming titles?  Maybe provide links to interviews, reviews, etc.

KF: Absolutely—we have a great upcoming Spring / Summer 2013 season with collections by Bob Hicok (Elegy Owed, forthcoming in March), W.S. Merwin (Collected Haiku of Buson), former Yale Younger Poet and doctor Fady Joudah (Alight), Kwame Dawes (Duppy Conqueror: New and Selected), Lisa Olstein (poems from her collection Little Stranger will be featured in an album by the band Cold Satellite), Ed Skoog (Rough Day), Tishani Doshi (Everything Begins Elsewhere) and Jane Miller (Thunderbird).

There is also Brenda Shaughnessy’s newest collection Our Andromeda (she has a recent review in The New Yorker where the poems are referred to as “vulnerable, heartbroken, mean, vengeful, and thrilling.”). New York Times bestselling memoirist Stephen Kuusisto has a new collection of poetry due out soon called Letters to Borges, along with Mark Twain Award winner Dan Gerber with Sailing Through Cassiopeia, Tung-Hui Hu (Greenhouses, Lighthouses), and Tom Hennen (Darkness Sticks to Everything: New & Collected).

Dean Young’s Bender: New and Selected has just hit the ground running. We also have some exciting books by debut poets like James Arthur (Charms Against Lightning) and the APR / Honickman Prize Winner Tomas Q. Morin (A Larger Country) that are absolutely polished and beautiful works.

NA:  I would like to close the interview with a poem from a Copper Canyon poet.

KF: While I don’t have one favorite CCP poem, I heard Matthew Zapruder read this poem at the Denver AWP in 2010 (before I began working at Copper Canyon) and it struck me as the kind of poem that can make you laugh, but also intensely consider your entire life’s work and commitment to poetry—yes, I wish I was being hyperbolic. It’s from his collection, Come on All You Ghosts (2011) and you can also find it online at The Poetry Foundation website.

The Prelude

Oh this Diet Coke is really good,
though come to think of it it tastes
like nothing plus the idea of chocolate,
or an acquaintance of chocolate
speaking fondly of certain times
it and chocolate had spoken of nothing,
or nothing remembering a field
in which it once ate the most wondrous
sandwich of ham and rustic chambered cheese
yet still wished for a piece of chocolate
before the lone walk back through
the corn then the darkening forest
to the disappointing village and its super
creepy bed and breakfast. With secret despair
I returned to the city. Something
seemed to be waiting for me.
Maybe the “chosen guide” Wordsworth
wrote he would even were it “nothing
better than a wandering cloud”
have followed which of course to me
and everyone sounds amazing.
All I follow is my own desire,
sometimes to feel, sometimes to be
at least a little more than intermittently
at ease with being loved. I am never
at ease. Not with hours I can read or walk
and look at the brightly colored
houses filled with lives, not with night
when I lie on my back and listen,
not with the hallway, definitely
not with baseball, definitely
not with time. Poor Coleridge, son
of a Vicar and a lake, he could not feel
the energy. No present joy, no cheerful
confidence, just love of friends and the wind
taking his arrow away. Come to the edge
the edge beckoned softly. Take
this cup full of darkness and stay as long
as you want and maybe a little longer.

 

Kelly Forsythe is the publicist for Copper Canyon Press. She has poems forthcoming or published in Black Warrior Review, Columbia Poetry Review and The Minnesota Review. In 2011, she was featured in American Poet as an Academy of American Poets “Emerging Poet.”

Nin Andrews received her BA from Hamilton College and her MFA from Vermont College. The recipient of two Ohio Arts Council grants, she is the author of several books including The Book of Orgasms, Spontaneous Breasts, Why They Grow Wings, Midlife Crisis with Dick and Jane, Sleeping with Houdini, and Dear Professor, Do You Live in a Vacuum. She also edited Someone Wants to Steal My Name, a book of translations of the French poet, Henri Michaux. Her book, Southern Comfort  was published by CavanKerry Press in 2010. Follow Nin's blog here.

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews in Conversation with Kate Gale of Red Hen Press

NA: Red Hen Press looks like a fairly large and sophisticated operation. Located in Pasadena, you offer several awards in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. And you have two other imprints, Arktoi and Boreal Books. And you offer literacy programs in the schools . . . How do you manage all that?

Dr. Kate Gale

KG: Red Hen is in Los Angeles where the cultural noise level is high. To make any kind of difference, you have to work hard at building community. We’re able to do all the things we do—20 books a year, the two imprints, two issues of The Los Angeles Review, $5,000 in awards, a Writing in the Schools program, an active presence at international book fairs such as London, Frankfurt, Guadalajara—because we have good staff people who are very organized and don’t waste time, an outgoing and energetic managing editor, and a publisher who cares deeply about books and book design. We’re constantly trying to improve our methods and operations, to make production, publicity, marketing, and development more efficient and effective.

NA: Why is it called Red Hen? I keep thinking of the little red hen who planted the seed, and cut the corn, and took it to mill, and baked the bread and ate it all herself. Is there some reference here?

KG: You got it. In the beginning, we wanted to be a collective, but typically for sprawl cities, two of us ended up doing all the work, so when we became a 501(c)3 we decided to be Red Hen Press. In poetry, everyone wants to eat the bread—get published—but most people don’t want to plant the wheat and knead the dough. The actual work of putting together books and getting them out into the literary culture in such a way that someone will read them is daunting to most.

NA: Could you talk a little bit about the different contests the press sponsors?

KG: We conduct three contests ourselves, and two in conjunction with other organizations. The Benjamin Saltman Award, for an original unpublished poetry collection, is named after my poetry teacher, a fine Southern California poet. It’s for $3,000 and has been won by some outstanding poets. Our first winner was Gaylord Brewer, several of whose books we’ve now published, most recently Give Over, Graymalkin. The last two winners are Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, whose But a Storm is Blowing from Paradise came out in March of 2012, and Brynn Saito, whose The Palace of Contemplating Departure will come out in March of 2013. We also have the Red Hen Short Fiction Award and the Red Hen Poetry Prize, both for $1,000. The winning pieces are published in The Los Angeles Review. We choose new final judges for all three awards every year and all the initial reading is done by the Managing Editor and Publisher.

Every year, we also publish the winner of the A Room of Her Own Foundation’s To the Lighthouse Poetry Prize, for the best unpublished poetry collection by a woman. Every other year, we publish the winner of the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Press Poetry Prize, for a second or third full-length collection by a Latino or Latina poet. Each of those winners also receives $1,000. 

NA: Are most of the writers you publish prize-winners? Or do you also solicit manuscripts or have an open reading period?

KG: Of the 20 books we publish each year, two are the imprints, one is the Ben Saltman Award, one is the AROHO winner, and every other year one is the Letras Latinas winner, so that leaves 15 or 16 slots depending on the year. Our core poetry authors take up the rest of the poetry slots, so we are not acquiring new poets. But our prose list is still in progress. Our open reading period is the month of June and we accept work from agents throughout the year.

NA: Will you say a few words about Arktoi Books?

KG: I asked Arktoi’s Editor, the poet Eloise Klein Healy (whose new and selected, A Wild Surmise, comes out in March of 2012) to answer this one. Here’s what she said: “Red Hen Press was my first choice of publisher to approach about an imprint. I had come to the conclusion that lesbian writers weren't being published in the numbers I had grown used to and I wanted to do something to give them more opportunities. Also, I felt that the lesbian community had reached a new stage and the writing should reflect that literary and political growth. I felt I wanted to publish books that spoke to the whole world, that would find a way to many audiences, that would reflect the intelligent and challenging work I knew was out there waiting to find its way into books. And, a book is still a ticket, so Arktoi exists to put tickets in the hands of fabulous writers who happen to be lesbian women.”

NA: And Boreal Books? I am such a fan of that book, Double Moon, by the artist Margo Klass and the writer, Frank Soos.

KG: Boreal Books brings out one title a year by a writer from Alaska.  So far we've had a book by Eva Saulitis, a marine biologist who studies killer whales in Prince William Sound.  Leaving Resurrection contains essays that deal with questions science doesn't let her ask.  The second title is Double Moon, the book you admire--intricate box constructions by Margo Klass and brief responses crafted by Frank Soos.  Full color and a sophisticated design make that book especially gorgeous.  Our third title is a book of poems, A Measure's Hush, by Anne Coray, who lives subsistence on the north shore of Lake Clark.  No road leads to her cabin, but these poems can get you there.  She's an artist, musician, and poet.  This year's Boreal Book is a novel in poems by Nicole Stellon O'Donnell.  She went into the Alaska and Polar Regions collection at Rasmuson Library and found a cache of 600 letters to and from one of the first women to come to Fairbanks during the Gold Rush.  Nicole got ideas for characters and a story line and wrote Steam Laundry.  The Boreal Books series spotlights the finest new writing from Alaska.

NA: How long has Red Hen Press been in existence? How has it evolved over time?

KG: We started in 1994 as a poetry press. By 1997, we were also publishing prose, and at this point, nearly half the list is prose. We’ve become a national press with four reading series in Los Angeles and four in New York.  Our editorial direction has always been to embrace the work of outsiders, but now that has evolved to include publishing books by established authors whose new books are too risky for New York, like Ron Carlson’s Room Service, a hybrid work of poetry, prose poetry, and micro-fiction, or David Maine’s An Age of Madness, a truly haunting novel. We publish work by such disparate authors as Camille Dungy, John Barr, Doug Kearney, David Mason, Chris Abani, and Lisa Krueger.

NA: Is there any way to describe what kind of writers you seek to publish? Or maybe what kinds of work you would never print?

Meet the Press: Karen Schubert in Conversation with Karren Alenier of The Word Works

KS: The Word Works is located in Washington, D.C. how does that change things from if you were in, say, Mount Happy, Ohio?

KA: I believe there were advantages to The Word Works in its early days of the middle 1970s in being located in DC. Our founding president Deirdra Baldwin had face-to-face access with people who knew the inside stories on how to get nonprofit status and National Endowment for the Arts grants. We also could go down to the Library of Congress and talk to the Consultants in Poetry (this was the title before we had Poet Laureate). We hung out with poets such as William Meredith and Maxine Kumin.

photo (c) Jim Rich

 

We were original supporting members of The Writers Center, a Maryland organization that helped with the printing and sales of small press books. We were members of a group at the Folger Shakespeare Library that helped coordinate poetry programs so we wouldn’t all be giving competing readings on the same night. One of board members Jim Beall got permission from the National Park Service back in 1975 to conduct poetry programs at the Joaquin Miller Cabin in Rock Creek Park and annually since that year we have been mounting programs in Miller’s name. For 35 years, those programs were mostly outdoors. We believe we are the only literary organization with such a relationship with a federal department and certainly the longest running outdoor poetry program. I personally think this was only possible because we had savvy help from DC insiders who could run interference when we got into trouble with conservative government officials. For example, we had a guerrilla theater group led by Kirby Malone doing what he called silent poetry and passersby reported us to the park rangers thinking there were some kind of marauders taking over picnic grove #6 where the Miller Cabin stands. (This was way before people talked about terrorists.) Kirby is now active in New York theater and opera.

We also had access to poets with prominent accomplishments, publishing Edward Weismiller (a Yale Younger Poet who became a George Washington University professor) – his Word Works book: The Branch of Fire. Also a long list of prominent names in The Unicorn and the Garden edited by Betty Parry: Robert Bly, Chinua Achebe, Sterling Brown, Lucille Clifton, Allen Ginsburg, Josephine Jacobsen, Galway Kinnell, Carolyn Kizer, Linda Pastan, Muriel Rukeyser, and others. We sponsored work that Betty Parry did to archive stories from DC’s black intellectual community that included poets Sterling Brown and May Miller Sullivan, but it also address other African Americans in other disciplines like architecture. With Jim Beall’s grant-writing expertise, we got a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which resulted in a colloquium at the Folger Shakespeare Library. To a certain degree, we built ties with the publishing scene in New York. Some of our authors, including me, had books at the independent Gotham bookstore.

Perhaps we were wrong in thinking that the main cities to pay attention to for literary events were New York, Washington, DC, and San Francisco. New York had the big publishing houses, Poets & Writers (we used them to promote our Washington Prize), and critical mass for where the people with big names lived and worked. DC had the Library of Congress and its Poetry Consultants who had a regular schedule of programs, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities (we got grants from the NEH also), and people who were smart and connected were also friendlier in DC versus NYC. San Francisco was the seat of the old radical fringe – Beatniks and Hippies.

And we also from the beginning thought about reaching beyond the limits of the U.S. Our group often talked about Paris in the Twenties, American expats, and doing bilingual editions. I think our geography played into that kind of thinking. When the Internet became accessible to ordinary folks, I was on it in 1994 putting up a web page for our activities and books. Now, we can be located anywhere and we are. Our current president Nancy White lives in Cambridge, New York, and to me that’s on a par with say, Mount Happy, Ohio!

KS: Tell us about your submission process and publication schedule.

Meet the Press: Karen Schubert in Conversation with Glenn Sheldon of New Sins Pres

Glen Sheldon

KS: I stopped by your table at AWP and it looked great – new titles, lots of spark. Do you go every year? Is it overall an effective event for a small press?

 GS:  Thanks Karen, we go most years.  It isn’t cost effective, but it does put New Sins in the public eye.  This last year was encouraging as we had our highest sales ever!  Most small presses are doing this for love, not profit.  In fact, I went to a panel at the last AWP that discussed how the small press has become the gate keeper for the printed book. 

KS: In what way is the small press the gate keeper?

GS: Whereas commercial publishers publish a book, they don’t keep it in inventory for the duration because of the cost of storage.  So at some point, books end up in the remainder bins.  Small press publishers, if they aren’t doing print-on-demand, print what they anticipate will sell over the course of say 5 years or so (maybe more).  Our closets are our storage, or corners of our houses or apartments, and we expect to trip over them for years to come.  Also, we’re not out to make a profit; most of us lose money to get our books visibility, and we know that.  We publish for the love of the written and published work of our authors.  And with more and more commercial publishers going digital, you’ll find the small press the last bastion of printed books, particularly when it comes to poetry (because university presses, where you’ll find poetry books, are beginning to have to rely on books that will sell because of the overall institutional financial resources—or lack of—in higher education, particularly the public sector).

KS: What’s the story behind your press? How did it begin, where are you now, and who are the people behind the pages?

GS:  My late partner Rane Arroyo and I would occasionally visit the surrealist poet Charles Henri Ford in New York City, who was a mentor to the both of us.  We were intrigued by some of the early poetry broadsides that he shared with us as well as his own word collages.  When President Ronald Reagan cut the funding for the NEA because of some of the gay artists and their work, we decided we had to put leftist political and gay voices out there so we started the press with broadsides.  We moved to chap books with the election of the first Bush and with the second Bush administration we moved to full length books as well as chap books.  So obviously right wing politics had fueled our desire to get left wing and alternative voices out in the literary world.  (In fact, Rane gave a keynote speech at a university that mentioned the building of the Bush Sr. library.  In the construction of the restrooms, Bush Sr. insisted that the builders use a material that was graffiti proof, proving to us that he was anti word.)

Since the death of my partner, I have continued because we have gained a national reputation as a press for voices that might not be included in the main stream.  So I am continuing along the path that we forged many years ago.  Through the years some editors have come and gone and sometimes we have relied on a guest judge, but from the beginning of the chap books onward, two key players have been Teneice Durrant Delgado and Dan Nowak.  Although we have never worked with just one artist for our covers, the artwork we choose is usually from abstract expressionism or outsider art, thus giving our books a certain unity in look. 

KS: I know that Rane’s death rocked the writing world. How is running the press different without him?

GS:  When Rane was alive we were co-publishers of the press, but I served as Managing Editor.  In that position I did most of the production work and still do.  As a former professional editor I have no problem taking over the editorial aspects of the books we publish.  However, in terms of dealing with the authors on an individual basis, Rane had more patience and insight into their vision and how it would fit into the frame work of New Sins Press.  Luckily Winged City Chap Books is growing to become an independent entity and allows me more time to focus on New Sins.  In terms of book fairs, we have always relied and continue to rely on our editorial staff to do most of the labor there. 

KS: What is your publication schedule? What is the rationale behind your policy to forgo a reading fee, and also a cash prize?

GS:  Normally our reading period has been from January until May.  Beginning this year, we anticipate reading manuscripts year round.  In all likelihood one or two books will be published from the 2012 submissions.  In terms of not having a reading fee, we publish our books and expect to lose revenue on them because New Sins exists out of pure love for poetry.  We don’t use a business model nor are we a non-profit.  We publish what we can afford to finance ourselves.  I don’t know what other small press publishers bring in with reading fees, but I suspect that even with reading fees they lose money.  I think all small press poetry publishers face similar losses.  We are doing this to keep poetry that would not be published by the mainstream out in the public eye.  Again, it is for the art.

KS: Will you be at AWP in Boston?

GS:  Of course.  I grew up in Salem, MA and I went to college in Boston.  I have deep roots there and a lot of friends.  I don’t get back to the East Coast very often so the Boston conference is a good excuse.  In all likelihood, AWP Boston will be the last conference for several years that New Sins will have a presence at, as several of the subsequence conferences will be out West. 

KS: What is the story behind the name New Sins?

GS:  Actually, I came up with the title of the press.  I became active in the Boston gay community at the age of sixteen.  I was around the organizers in the months leading up to the first Gay Pride Parade that I attended.  At that time I met the individual who was to be the keynote speaking at that event, whose name is now completely lost to me.  Anyway, in one of my conversations with her, she encouraged me to remain a community activist.  Her actual advice to me was to go out there and be a “nuisance.”  So the title of the press is actually a play on that word. 

Glenn Sheldon is the Honors Professor of Humanities at The University of Toledo where he teaches literature and Cultural Studies.  He is the author of the critical monograph, South of Our Selves, and two full length poetry collections:  Bird Scarer and Angel of Anarchy.  In addition to several poetry chap books, his work has appeared in numerous literary journals.  He is the publisher of New Sins Press and lives with his five cats in Toledo, Ohio.  

Karen Schubert is the recipient of a 2012 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in poetry. Her poems, interviews and essays appear or are forthcoming in The Review Review,  riverbabble, AGNI Online, Knockout Literary Magazine, Artful Dodge and others. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Bring Down the Sky (Kattywompus) and The Geography of Lost Houses (Pudding House). She runs a cash mob in Youngstown, Ohio.