The Best American Poetry

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews interviews J.P. Dancing Bear of Dream Horse Press

NA:   First, how did you come up with the name, Dream Horse Press?   

JPDB:  The long story short is that my first author had a dream about a white horse carrying his first book.  If it hadn’t been for my commitments to that author, I would never have started a press.

NA:   What inspired you to start a press?  And what advice would you offer to anyone else who might want to own or start a press?

JPDB:  I never would have thought to start a press if it hadn’t been for my prior commitment to the author while working as the Managing Editor at a different press which dropped the author’s book after it had been accepted and work begun on production. I felt so bad about it that I resigned from that press and started Dream Horse Press to complete the project.

For anyone wanting to start a press, my advice is to first ask other presses for their advice. Most of us made a lot of mistakes at the beginning and can really help new presses avoid some of the pitfalls. Second, don’t start with an author who has never published a book before--not for the first project.  It’s easier for everyone if your first author has some experience.  Third, begin with a dialog with an author, not an offer to publish; if it’s a good fit, everyone will know where this is going before a formal offer to publish has been made.

NA:  If you were to publish famous poets from the past, poets who might represent the Dream Horse Press aesthetic, who would you publish? 

JPDB:  I will start by saying, unlike a lot of poetry presses, I really could not care less about poetry ‘schools’ and their politics.  If you look at the authors DHP has published, you see that fact first and foremost.  To clarify further:  I would pick famous books, NOT authors to publish: This Branch Will Not Break by James Wright, Tremble by C.D. Wright, Twice Removed by Ralph Angel, Tamarit Poems by Federico García Lorca, Ariel by Sylvia Plath, The Most of It by Mary Ruefle; Dream Songs by John Berryman—and those are just a few that come to me off the top of my head.

NA:  You have many projects including editing The American Poetry Journal, running the Dream Horse Press, and hosting a radio show.  How did these projects begin and evolve? 

JPDB:  The American Poetry Journal came about because I was feeling dissatisfied with a lot of publications I was reading, usually because they were focused on a particular school. To me, schools are NOT what make poetry important or enjoyable; they should not be a main focus. I focus on two major poetic devices in poetry: sound (a poem is meant to be read aloud to enjoy it fully), and image (paint a scene within the mind of the reader/listener). Partly this goes back to something Robert Pinsky has said about the body of the reader being the instrument and the poem being the sheet music; and partly it is the experience of having words build complete images or scenes within the reader’s mind. In the APJ, I enjoy the  freedom to present, for example, a surrealist free verse piece next to a lyrical formal piece.

I took over the Out of Our Minds radio program on KKUP when the previous host, Jim Standish, had to move. I’d been a guest on the show several times and Jim knew I had a good network of authors around the country, and that in college I had interned at radio and tv stations and had a communications background. So he asked me several times to take over the show. I refused, because it was a big commitment and I wasn’t sure I wanted to make it. But when he told me that the then 20+ year old program was in danger of being dropped without a solid programmer to host it, I felt compelled to take it on.  We are now the second longest, continuous running poetry show on the air and during my eleven years as host have had some of the best contemporary poets grace our airwaves with their work and thoughts. Recently, we began podcasting the show and it is available on iTunes.

NA:  What are some recent highlights that feature Dream Horse Press writers?  (Feel free to provide links, photos, references, etc.)

JPDB:  Lisa Lewis’ poem “Counting Change” from her book Burned House with Swimming Pool was featured on Poetry Daily.

Lisa Lewis’ poem “Coupled” from her book Burned House with Swimming Pool was featured on Verse Daily.

Jason Bredle’s poem “City of Lavender” from his chapbook The Book of Evil was featured on Verse Daily. 

Here’s a review of Keith Montesano’s Ghost Lights.

Here’s a review of Kyle McCord’s Galley of the Beloved in Torment.

NA:  As a publisher of poetry books, do you ever feel discouraged by our cultural lack of appreciation for poetry?  Or are you an optimist, a believer in the future of American poetry?

JPDB:  You know, having done the radio show for the past eleven years, I can honestly say that I am an optimist with regards to poetry.  Most of my audience are not poets, but have developed a sophisticated palate for poetry of all kinds. From the emails and phone calls I have received over the years, I know poetry has touched people and means something very special to them. As a publisher, I get similar messages about books and poems I’ve published. And as poet, again I have gotten so many letters and emails over the years about how something I’ve written has touched someone’s spirit. How could I not be optimistic about poetry?

J. P. Dancing Bear is the author of nine collections of poetry, most recently, Inner Cities of Gulls (2010, SalmonPoetry).  His next two books will be Family of Marsupial Centaurs through Iris Press in 2011, and Fish Singing Foxes through SalmonPoetry in 2012. His poems have been published in Mississippi Review, Third Coast, DIAGRAM, Verse Daily and many other publications.  He is editor for the American Poetry Journal and Dream Horse Press.  Bear also hosts the weekly hour-long poetry show, Out of Our Minds, on public station, KKUP and available as podcasts. 

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 is forthcoming from CavanKerry Press. Follow Nin's blog here.

Meet the Press: Karen Schubert interviews Sammy Greenspan, editor of the Kattywompus Press

KS (above, left). Who, and where, is Kattywompus Press?

SG (above, right):  Kattywompus Press is an independent literary small press which was born on the north coast in August, 2010, in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. 

KS. All editors know or learn the story of the conception, to follow the birth metaphor, of their press, but since KP is less than a year old, perhaps that story is still in the making.

SG:  Since I don’t believe at bottom in the notion of anything static in the world, I’d have to say that, yes, KP is certainly still evolving as a press. I expect we will be evolving as long as the press exists. To be more concrete, I initially conceived the press in the mold of Pudding House, a thirty-year-old independent literary small press in Columbus Ohio where my first book was published. In fact, KP was founded on the core of Poets’ Greatest Hits, a chapbook line invented by Jen Bosveld at Pudding House and published there for its first decade. Kattywompus Press has taken over and is continuing this unique, invitation-only line, which is modeled after the recording industry’s greatest hits albums, and features nearly 300 poets (and counting). My original intent was to publish other poetry chapbooks alongside this line, which we are indeed doing. Straightforward, manageable, no complicated logistics. But I found myself rapidly expanding the scope of what we produce, in response to two compelling factors. First, the publishing industry is in rapid flux, and seems to demand some degree of innovation for small presses to persist. In particular, we lean in to the growing interest in book as artifact, which is a natural outgrowth of our commitment to publish books with not only excellent content, but high standards of physical production—well-crafted books which are esthetically appealing and will in every respect withstand the test of time. Second, I found myself personally attracted to a broad range of projects. So leap we did. This press is all about the passion of art through the book. We address this with elegantly produced chapbooks, with one of a kind artist’s books, with perfect bound books, and limited editions of a variety of special constructions, papers, and bindings. In other words, if it’s a book, and we are crazy about it, we publish it. I started with this same intention of diversity in authors and subject matter, and wound up incorporating those notions for the physical containers of writing, as well.

KS. Who are the people behind the press? Your bio on the Kattywompus website notes that you have been many things, including a physician. How is publishing different for you, after these incarnations, compared to someone whose trajectory might be English major, writer, press?

SG:  I’ll take your second question first and segue into the first. I can’t speak very much to how this would be different if I had a more conventional entry path to small press publishing--my perspective, like my vocational trajectory, is necessarily kattywompus. No doubt my radically different past jobs have helped mold me. It’s probably important that I have worked as a crap-for-wages waitress who walked out on a boss who had me, literally, down on hands and knees with a whisk broom and a flashlight; and later worked as the attending physician in charge of the graveyard shift of a major pediatric trauma center ER. These are wholly different roles entangled with grossly disparate sectors of our class system and culture, and of course the map between those poles was, to be polite, interesting. But beyond that, do these previous jobs inflect my editorial or publishing work? Not in specific ways.

Philosophically, I am a radical anti-segregationist. My door as a publisher is not just wide open, it’s off the hinges, for any and all comers. I want strong work, and I intend to represent many viewpoints in the press. I mean this both in an author- and subject-demographic sense, and also artistically. I publish traditional rural voices, cutting edge experimental writers, every ethnic and racial perspective that I can pull in, multiple genders and gender-orientations; without genre boundary or restriction. The cherry on top, for me, is that I get to weave this artistic inclusivity in with my passion for social justice--there are some potent political voices among the Kattywompus Press writers. These are the things I have cared about my whole life, and small press work offers the avenue for their expression.

As to who we are, in a more prosaic sense, Kattywompus Press is a sole proprietorship. So, on paper, it’s me. I have an exquisitely wonderful associate editor, Bonné de Blas, head of Art Books Cleveland. I have the ear and good counsel of friends in the arts, and I’d not have leapt when I did without Jen Bosveld’s ridiculous generosity and imagination. I’m also blessed with the support of people who don’t know me, but know the work and volunteer to support it (thank you!)

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews interviews Sarah Gorham of Sarabande Books

NA:   When I think of Sarabande Books, I think: what a beautiful name, what beautiful books, and what a great web site. So first, how did you come up with the name for the press?

SG:  My husband and co-founder Jeffrey Skinner and I dreamt up a wish list of names, ran a preliminary check at the library (on one of those old-fashioned databases–this was 1993), and found them all taken by other publishers. So, we rummaged through indices of every sort: bird books, astronomy dictionaries, etc. and settled on two beautiful names: Sarabande Books, and Stanza Books, neither of which were registered in the databases. I still believe “Stanza (meaning “room” in Italian) Books” would make a great name for a poetry publisher, but we were devoted to short fiction too, so it was a little misleading. Plus the word “sarabande” has such an interesting history: a “sex dance” originating in the New World, imported to Spain, where it was banned in 1583 under penalty of death. Later, civilized by the English, German, French. The world suggested the kind of literature we look for: accomplished and elegant on the surface, with a wild underside.

NA:  Tell me about the process of creating such lovely books. Do you have a staff book designer or several designers? Do you ask the authors to look for cover art or to help create their own cover art?

SG:  For the first 15 years, we used Charles Casey Martin as our designer and production manager. He’s a writer himself with a meticulous and elegant approach to producing books. But he took off for Panama, and later, other Central American countries with the Peace Corps, so my managing editor Kirby Gann moved into design and typeset. The transition was amazingly smooth, thanks to the visual and organizational talents of both. Our “look” is now more contemporary, I think, with clean, bright colors, a good direction. Authors provide us with cover art and we take it from there. We don’t let them design the books, but offer several choices and are open to suggestions. We have the final word, essential in some cases!

NA:  Of course, it's not just the covers that are beautiful . . . Can you offer any insights into how you go about selecting the books you publish? What makes a book a Sarabande book?

SG:  We distinguish between literature that had to be written, or was written under an inescapable pressure to redeem a life. We love strangeness and innovation, writing that makes us look at objects, people, places and makes us wonder how we could not have seen this all along?  We dislike knowing exactly what’s coming next, nor are we impressed by wild, clever pyrotechnics in syntax, grammar, vocabulary or structure, because doing so is hip by some political or other exterior measure. We look for poems or stories or essays that magnetically possesses a combination of music, thought and feeling. The syntax, grammar, etc. grows naturally out of that combination. Our books show the reader a hidden room, which may be dark or light. These are the primary reasons for choosing a manuscript.

After that, we like to balance a list by genre, gender, race, sexuality, seasoned, and new authors. Two of our yearly selections come to us through our literary contests (McCarthy Prize in Fiction, Morton Prize in Poetry), one through our Bruckheimer Kentucky Literature Series, another through our distinguished chapbook series. That leaves 7 openings, which we try to divide equally between genres, although recently we’ve been expanding our literary nonfiction selections. If, however, we receive a majority of superlative work in any genre, we go for it.      

NA:   Sarabande has an excellent website, complete with links to author events, interviews, book reviews, publications and more. Can you tell me a little bit about how/why this came about? Do you manage the site personally? Is it a lot of work? Does this help the press significantly?

SG:  Our website has become our major marketing tool and we’ve expanded it to include audio, video (book trailers), online newsletters and catalog, ebooks, a fantastic blog that updates often, and of course, our Sarabande in Education website which offers a substantial readers guide for each title we publish. Finally, online chats with our authors can be arranged for professors who adopt our titles for classroom use. We were among the first to offer this tool (in 1998), thanks to a large grant from the Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Fund. The whole staff participates, interns included, but Meg Bowden is the primary mama.

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews interviews Mary Biddinger, editor of the Akron Series in Poetry

NA: I’d like you to tell me a little bit about the Akron Series in Poetry. How many books of poetry does the University of Akron Press print each year?

MB:  We currently publish three books of poetry a year. One is the winner of the annual Akron Poetry Prize, and the other two are either books by continuing authors (such as John Minczeski’s A Letter to Serafin or Alison Pelegrin’s forthcoming Hurricane Party), or editor’s choice selections usually taken from the pool of prize submissions.

We’ve also recently started the Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics, which is a separate series aimed at publishing volumes of criticism. Our first title, The Monkey and the Wrench: Essays into Contemporary Poetics, debuted in January. This series seeks to give contemporary poetics a home in print. So much intelligent writing takes place online, which is wonderful, but I also feel as if it deserves promotion in print form.

NA: Do you pick the winner, or do you have guest judges some years?

MB: We have a guest judge every year, and I am dedicated to choosing a very different sort of judge every year. Last year we had G.C. Waldrep, and this year we have Natasha Sajé. I am someone who grows weary of seeing the same judges everywhere, so I try to think beyond the obvious choices. I also think it’s important for a press to reflect and support a variety of sensibilities, so switching up the judges helps.

I personally read every single manuscript that crosses the transom. If I recognize a manuscript as being by an acquaintance or a friend, I pass it along to an outside reader or two. I’m a friendly person and feel a great sense of affection toward so many people in the poetry world, and I believe it’s best for me to have many eyes on the manuscript, in the interest of fairness. We pass the finalists, and sometimes the semifinalists as well, along to the judge, and then the decision is out of our hands.

NA: How would you describe your job as a series editor? What are the rewards and challenges?

MB: I would describe my job as dreamy. I have always loved to read, and I have the sort of mind that tinkers with whatever it’s reading, so editorial work is a perfect fit. In the summers I read poetry manuscripts all day, and I never become bleary-eyed or disenchanted. The poetry manuscript will never become anything less than a work of art for me, and no matter how many hundreds of manuscripts I read, I will never forget how emotional the thing itself is. These submissions mean so much to their creators, and I want to treat them with tremendous respect, even reverence.

The largest reward is being able to promote poetry, and help writers move forward in their lives (both within and outside poetry) thanks to the support of the press. I was not a cheerleader in high school, but I certainly am now when it comes to promoting my authors and their accomplishments. I also just love to read new poetry, and to identify trends in the manuscripts I read. One year there were a ton of ghazals. Then there were lots of abstract epistolary poems. We always, always get multitudes of bird poems, too.

In terms of the challenges, there’s really just one: having to decline manuscripts. It absolutely breaks my heart. Every year I want to publish ten, or even twenty, of the manuscripts we receive. When the rejections go out, my heart just drops. Beginning this year, we are hoping to be able to send more personalized responses to folks who do not win the contest. We recently transitioned from SASEs to notifying via website post, and I’d like to at least be able to send some emails to people with particularly promising manuscripts.

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews interviews Rick Campbell, editor of Anhinga Press

NA: The Anhinga Press is a well-established press that has been around since 1972.  When did you become the editor-in-chief of the press? How has the press evolved under your direction?

RC:  I became the director in 1992.  I don’t think of myself as editor-in-chief because my co-director, Lynne Knight, is actually a much better editor than I am.  I see my job, or at least what I have done, as more of the PR guy.  I set up readings, I solicit writers, I find judges for our Prize contest.  I also write grants. I think I try to make Anhinga Press socially attractive, to make it a good place for writers to send their work and to know that they will get attention for their work if Anhinga publishes their books.  Lynne actually makes the books as good as they are.  But, to answer the question, the press has grown significantly since I started working on it. We’ve gone from publishing one book a year to doing five books a year.  We have more money to use on promotion, to bring writers to Florida for book tours, and to make sure that we produce quality books.

NA: Tell me a little bit about the press. How many books do you publish each year?  How does one become an Anhinga poet? Do Florida poets have an easier time getting published by Anhinga?

RC: For the last few years we have been publishing five or six books a year; however in the coming years we plan to cut back to four books.  This is due to a reduction in grant income and because Lynne Knight and I both agree that making five books a year and taking good care of five writers consumes more time and energy than we have to give.  One can become an Anhinga poet by winning the Anhinga Press Robert Dana Prize for Poetry. After 25 years of awarding the prize, we changed the name this year to honor our friend and Anhinga poet, the late Robert Dana. We also publish the Philip Levine Prize winner’s book.  This contest is run by the California State University at Fresno.  We also solicit work by poets that we like and we actively try to publish subsequent books by poets that we have previously published. We do have the Van K. Brock Florida  Poetry Series, named for Anhinga’s founder, and though this enables us to publish Florida poets, since it’s only one book a year among the books we do, I don’t it’s easier for Florida poets to become Anhinga poets.

NA: Do you think that running contests and selecting authors from contests is the best way to find manuscripts for publication?

RC: I don’t know if it’s the best way, but it seems to be an economic necessity.  The contest brings in about one-third of our yearly funding. It enables us to publish the prize winner, to bring that poet to Florida for a reading tour, and to publish at least one other book per year.  It’s hard to sell poetry.  If we sold $40,000 worth of poetry books in a year, then we would not have to have a contest, and given the work needed to run the contest, we probably would not do it.  The contest brings in excellent work by emerging poets, but we only get to publish one of them.  Dozens of other worthy collections get passed over.

NA:  It seems to me that Florida is a state that is particularly friendly to writers.  There are so many fabulous authors, book fairs,readings and related literary events. You are in charge of two wonderful reading series. How does this happen? What does Florida do to make this happen?  How do you put together your reading series?

RC:I don’t even know if this assumption is true. Florida has a lot of conferences and all now, true, but it may be as much a function of our warm weather as it is some fondness for poetry. Florida is what, the third or fourth most populated state in the country, so yes, we have a lot of universities and writing programs and good writers, but I don’t know that we have so many that I would consider what Florida does for writing all that special.  We are also a historically and culturally new state. We are growing. We have growing pains.  Education is not well funded, well administered, and sometimes even well liked here.  If you take away the sun and the beaches, I’m not sure what’s left.  Maybe the advantage we have here, if any, is that a relatively few years ago almost nothing, culturally speaking, existed.  We, the people who run the book fairs, conferences, and reading series, had to hustle to create them, and then hustle to maintain them.  I know when I ask a writer from Ohio to come do some readings in Florida in February, it’s not too hard to convince him to leave the cold, frozen north for a week.  We created our reading series and conference, sponsored by the Florida Literary Arts Coalition, because there was a need for it, and because we wanted to see it happen.  We just worked hard to get it started.  Maybe because there’s so much culturally empty space in Florida, we are not always fighting each other for attention.

Our new books, for 2010, include Robert Dana’s New and Selected Poems; Diane Wakoski’s The Diamond Dog; Kelle Groom’s Five Kingdoms; Sean Sexton’s Blood Writing; Michael Hettich’s Like Happiness; Sarah Wetzel’s Bathsheba Transatlantic (the Levine Winner); and Gretchen Pratt’s One Island (the Anhinga Prize winner.)  In 2011, we will bring books by Gerard LaFemina, Erika Meitner, Lawrence Hetrick, and the new Anhinga Press Robert Dana prize winner, Horses in the Cathedral, by Kimberly Burwick.  The best place to get information on all of these books is the Anhinga website, www.anhinga.org.

NA: Could you describe some of the happiest or proudest moments for the press?

RC: For me, certainly meeting Robert Dana and then having the chance to publish five of his books.  It’s always good to tell the new prize winner that he or she has won.  And, maybe the best thing is the lasting relationships and good friendships that we have developed with the writers we have published over the years.

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

RC: Most—getting a book out for someone who appreciates it. And also getting to represent the press in public at events like AWP.  Least—the daily work.  Paying bills, trying to balance books, rejecting worthy manuscripts.

NA:  Does editing and publishing help or hinder your own creative process?  Could you talk a little about your own books?

RC: At first, editing books helped me with my own work, but by now, after almost 20 years, it really just gets in the way.  It’s quite time consuming to run the press, even just my part of it. I don’t have as much time to write as I would like. My writing never seems to have the same pressing deadlines that the press’ activities do and I’m not good at making my writing a priority.  Once my books have been published, especially the last one, Dixmont, the connections I’ve made by working with Anhinga helped me to get readings and sell the book, but in general I think running the press now, hinders my personal work more than it helps it. I’ve published a chapbook and three full-length books  in the last ten years.  I don’t know if I could have done more if I were not running Anhinga Press, but I know that right now I could be writing more if I were not devoting so much time to the press and the FLAC reading series and all.  I don’t want to moan about this though.  I have enjoyed being a publisher and a writer. It’s been a rich experience.

Rick Campbell’s most recent book of poems is Dixmont, from Autumn House Press. His other books are The Traveler’s Companion (Black Bay Books, 2004); and Setting The World In Order (Texas Tech 2001) which won the Walt McDonald Prize; and A Day’s Work (State Street Press 2000);. He’s won a Pushcart Prize, an NEA Fellowship in Poetry, and two poetry fellowships from the Florida Arts Council. He’s published poems and essays in many journals including The Georgia Review, The Missouri Review, The Florida Review, Prairie Schooner and many others. He is the director of Anhinga Press and teaches in the English department at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Florida.  He lives in Gadsden County, Florida, with his wife and daughter.

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews interviews Richard Mathews, editor of the Tampa Review and director of the University of Tampa Press

NA. I'd love it if you would start by telling me a little bit about yourself:  how you became a writer, editor, publisher, and how these worlds are interwoven.

RM. The worlds have always been interwoven for me, I guess.  That’s a good word to use. From writing and printing little stories using a toy printing set with rubber type as a kid, to editing my high school newspaper, working as a writer and layout staff person for weekly and daily newspapers while putting myself through school at the University of Florida, to being a letterpress printer and university editor/publisher today. As an undergrad I switched from a journalism major to an English major, and I got more serious about writing poetry and fiction. I was founding editor of the literary journal Florida Quarterly at the University of Florida and went on to earn my PhD at the University of Virginia, not only because I knew I could study with a great literature faculty there, but also because I could take creative writing workshops with Peter Taylor, who was their writer-in-residence.  Some of his longtime friends from college days, Robert Lowell most frequently, would visit from time to time and come into our workshop. During my time there I shifted away from fiction toward poetry. I won an Academy of American Poets prize and began to publish my poetry in little magazines, but I also continued to write fiction, with Peter’s encouragement.  I have to say, though, he was especially supportive of my poetry, even though what he saw of it was incidental really, since he was teaching fiction workshops.

Of course, it makes sense that he’d encourage poetry, given his long friendship with Lowell and his marriage to the wonderful poet Eleanor Ross Taylor.  In fact there’s a continuation of these good memories made tangible in a collection of short stories we published about a year ago.  Through a surprising series of events, we had the chance to publish the first collection of short stories by Jean Ross Justice, a wonderful writer whose work I hadn’t really known until the manuscript was passed along to us by a mutual friend, Robert Dana. Jean’s work had appeared in Esquire, Antioch Review, Yale Review, Shenandoah, The Oxford American, and elsewhere, but these and other stories had never been collected until we brought out her book, The End of a Good Party .  It turns out that Jean is the widow of poet Donald Justice.  And she is also the sister of Peter Taylor’s wife, the poet Eleanor Ross Taylor.  As things unfolded, Peter and Eleanor wound up living in Florida (in Gainesville, at my old alma mater, the University of Florida), as did Donald Justice and Jean, before they moved to Iowa. These interesting, layered connections only slowly dawned on me, after we had already decided to publish the book of Jean’s stories, without any of us having realizing the links . . . 

It’s a marvelous literary “full circle” in interesting ways.  Again, it seems thoroughly interwoven. Jean’s book would not have happened without some more tight interweaving, through the friendship of two great colleagues here at Tampa who have been consistently involved with Tampa Review, Don Morrill and Lisa Birnbaum, close friends of Robert Dana, who also knew Jean Justice.  Lisa has been one of our fiction editors, and she offered to work with Jean as our in-house editor to agree on the final selection of stories and see everything through final page edits.  It was a labor of love for all of us—and we’re also proud to have published some of Jean’s stories in Tampa Review. 

NA.  How would you best describe your press? 

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews interviews Kathleen Rooney and Abby Beckel, founding editors of Rose Metal Press

Kathleen Rooney (L) and Abby Beckel, founders of Rose Metal Press (photo by Martin Seay)

NA: How would you best describe Rose Metal Press?  In other words, how long has the press been in business?  How many books do you publish each year?  What kinds of books are you interested in?

 AB & KR: Rose Metal Press is an independent, not-for-profit publisher of work in hybrid genres, specializing in the publication of short short, flash, and micro-fiction; prose poetry, novels-in-verse or book-length linked narrative poems; and other literary works that move beyond traditional genres to find new forms of expression. We publish three titles a year including two full-length books and one chapbook.

Shortly after our 2005 graduations from the MA and MFA programs respectively at Emerson College, we co-founded the press in Boston in January of 2006—we’re turning five this year. If our press were a person, it would be starting kindergarten! To celebrate, we are having a fund drive, the details of which can be found here.  Give early; give often.  

NA: How do you find your authors, and vice versa? Do you solicit books from writers you admire?  Do you run contests?

AB & KR: Each year, we run a short short chapbook contest, and publish the winner in a limited edition with covers that we letterpress by hand on a vintage Vandercook at the Museum of Printing in North Andover, Massachusetts. Most recently, our celebrity guest judge was Kim Chinquee—we’ll be announcing the winning author soon.

 The other two titles we publish annually come from either open reading periods in which we make specific calls for hybrid work, or from over-the-transom query letters. We don’t solicit per se, though in the past, we’ve been so taken with the finalists for our chapbook contest, we’ve gotten the various authors’ permission to published them all together as chapbook anthologies, including 2008’s A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness featuring Amy L. Clark, Elizabeth Ellen, Kathy Fish, and Claudia Smith, as well as the forthcoming They Could No Longer Contain Themselves featuring Elizabeth Colen, John Jodzio, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Sean Lovelace, and Mary Miller.

NA:  I understand that Rose Metal Press has a particular interest in flash fiction and prose poetry.  You published an anthology of prose poetry last year. I am wondering if you might say a few words about
that anthology.  What is it about flash fiction and prose poetry that appeals to you?

AB & KR: Per our mission statement above, we’ve always been most interested in hybrid work. We like traditional genres too, of course, but we feel like some of the strangest and most exciting things happen in the places where those genres blur.  So when Tara L. Masih approached us about putting together The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, we were thrilled. We were thrilled x2 shortly thereafter when Gary L. McDowell and F. Daniel Rzicznek queried us about assembling The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry. Now, we’re going for the trifecta with Dinty W. Moore who approached us about, and is presently editing The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction, forthcoming in 2012. 

NA: I admire anyone who has the nerve to venture into the world of publishing these days.  What inspired you to start a press when there are so many presses out there already?  Did you see a need or niche for yourselves?

AB & KR: We knew that we wanted to create publishing opportunities for work that might get overlooked otherwise because of its formal oddity. From a marketing perspective—which is the perspective that a lot of the larger trade publishing houses take most frequently—work that is hybrid, which is to say work that is more difficult to categorize or label, is perceived as a tough sell, and therefore as a bad risk. It struck us as perverse that talented authors who can do more than one thing at once—it’s prose, but wait, it’s also poetry!—should often have a harder time placing their work than writers who do just one thing well. So we made cross-genre innovation our mission. But in addition to looking for work that is hybrid, we also look for work that is fresh, strange, funny-sad, linguistically adventurous, and formally innovative. We look for work that is not afraid to take unusual risks.

NA: How did you come up with the name, Rose Metal Press?

 AB & KR: Rose metal is a fusible alloy with a low melting point consisting of 50% bismuth, 25-28% lead, and 22-25% tin. Also known as “Rose’s metal” and “Rose’s alloy,” Rose metal is typically used as a solder. Just as the alloy Rose metal joins one unlike thing to another so strongly that they can’t be parted, Rose Metal Press looks for work by authors who fuse unlike elements in ways that are both surprising and seamless. 

NA: Will you say a few words about some of the books that you have recently published? Tell us where we can find them? Provide links to interviews, reviews, etc.?

AB & KR: Our latest book is Color Plates  by Adam Golaski, of which Publishers Weekly says “The artwork of Cassatt, Manet, Degas, and Toulouse-Lautrec make up four rooms of a fictional museum that house a series of brief stories (plates) imagined by Golaski. Over the course of 66 plates, he reveals the subtle intersections between appreciation and invention.”

 Next up is the aforementioned They Could No Longer Contain Themselves, followed by the winner of our fifth Annual Short Short Chapbook Contest (you can see the winner of the fourth annual one, We Know What We Are by Mary Hamilton here), followed by The Louisiana Purchase by Jim Goar. What we are saying about the latter is that it’s what Alice would have found had she fallen into William Clark’s map instead of a rabbit hole; it is an uncanny territory that both delights and disturbs.

NA:  How much work is involved in running a press?  Is this a part-time job for both of you? Do you have to fundraise as well as edit books? What do you love/hate most about running a press?

AB & KR: So much work! But it’s labor-of-love-style work, so it’s worth it, even though every dollar we make goes right back in to the publication of future books. There are so many responsibilities that it could easily be a full-time job for each of us, except for the fact that we both have other full-time jobs that we need to actually earn money. So yes, we absolutely have to apply for grants and fundraise—as mentioned above we are currently raising 2011 operating costs through our Five-year Anniversary Fund Drive. We try not to be haters, so we’ll just say we love it all, although some parts of it we love more than others.

NA: What are some of Rose Metal Press’s happiest moments?

AB & KR: We’ve had five years full of them, including when we finally figured out what to name the press, the afternoon our first book arrived from the printer (and every time one has arrived since), receiving our first grant from the NEA, throwing launch parties, etc.

We also really enjoy following the careers of our authors and seeing them go on to more success and publication. That’s a big part of our mission: Getting the work of innovative authors out to a broader audience so that the opportunities for both readers and writers are wider.

 Also, we are both especially happy when working at our table at the AWP Bookfair (we’ll be at Table A4 in D.C.), as well as other occasions where we get a chance to be live and in-person and in the same physical room with our authors. This face-to-face interaction doesn’t happen as often as we’d like since so much of what we do, we do electronically, and since our authors give lots of readings all over the country, but we can’t attend every single one.

Abigail Beckel has worked professionally in publishing for more than 10 years at publishing houses such as Pearson Education, Beacon Press, and Blackwell Publishing, and for the magazine Physicians Practice. She is a published poet and lives in Washington, DC.

 Kathleen Rooney is the author, most recently, of the essay collection For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs (Counterpoint, 2010). Her poetry collection, Oneiromance (an epithalamion), won the 2007 Gatewood Prize from the feminist publisher Switchback Books, and her collaborative collection with Elisa Gabbert, That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness, was published by Otoliths in 2008. She lives in Chicago and teaches at DePaul University.

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews interviews Raymond Hammond, editor of NYQ Books and The New York Quarterly

NA:  I read that NYQ Books only publishes books by poets who have published in The New York Quarterly magazine.  How does that work?  Do you solicit manuscripts from these poets after they have published in the journal? 

RH:  We do not solicit work. We rely on two very simple concepts to select manuscripts.  The first is prior acceptance for publication in the magazine.  Prior acceptance gives us a good starting point for manuscripts as the editorial vetting is already done, and done at no cost to the author such as in a contest scenario. The second concept is that we also do not accept unsolicited manuscripts—an invitation must be extended.  The invitation gives us a modicum of control over how many books we consider at any given time, and most importantly it allows us to better coordinate the books we are looking for which keeps the press as eclectic as the magazine.  The vetting and the invitation process allow us a starting point of already knowing the author and their work.

NA:  Do you then solicit poets to submit to the New York Quarterly?  Or are you, as I would imagine, already overwhelmed with submissions?

RH:  We work very hard to keep the selection of poems for the magazine to just that, the poem for the poem’s sake for the sake of the magazine.  The way that a poet begins to get noticed for inclusion in the books is when we start accepting repeated submissions from them, then we say to ourselves, maybe we should just do a book of their work.  I have found so far that having the books for that added venue is a very nice option because some people I just want to publish more of their work than publication in the magazine will allow.

NA: I also have read that the NYQ Books is a new press.  How long has NYQ Books been in existence? Why was the press started?  What were some of the first books you published?

RH:  The concept of NYQ Books has been around since the magazine began in 1969. It was something that the founding editor, William Packard, told me was always a dream of his. Then after his death, we found several proposals for an NYQ Books in the records that had been drafted by him. The name, NYQ Books, comes from Bill. After much research and consideration and dreaming on my own part, we began the press June of 2009 in celebration of NYQ’s 40^th anniversary. 

We made the decision to start the press in order to provide a venue for book publication for many of our poets who have been overlooked by the more mainstream presses.  We put these books into publication right alongside more established poets and are not concerned about sales statistics.  To accomplish this goal, we began our idea with two basic premises.

The first premise was to say to ourselves, “Poetry doesn’t sell.”  And while this statement sounds self-defeating and is open to all sorts of debate and sounds like a cry of desperate mediocrity, there is an element of truth to it which immediately removes any grand expectations that we will sell thousands of copies of each book we publish.  By removing this expectation, we can publish and keep in print books that don’t immediately sell right alongside books that do, and we are hoping that eventually the press will work as a single organism, some books supporting the others—but keeping all in print.

The second premise which dovetails with the first is to publish what we want and what fits the scheme of the press as a whole, to base our decisions on the poetry itself and eclecticism of the press rather than on how well we think a book will sell or what book won a contest.

Many of the principles of the press, such as not worrying about the sales potential, reducing the overhead and risk, and maintaining the books in print have been made possible by print on demand technology which was not available in Bill’s time. As well, print on demand is more eco-friendly.

NA:  What kinds of books are you most interested in reading and publishing? 

RH:  The goal of the magazine has always been to present anything, any style, any school, any genre of poetry to our readers—to never limit what we consider or present.  And so it is with the press.  I am very pleased that we have what I would consider academic type poets right alongside poets such as the experimental poet Richard Kostelanetz or a cab driver or a high school teacher.  We are looking to mix it up and be known for our eclecticism.  I don’t want to be known for any particular style of poetry. I want readers to identify with the NYQ Books brand when they read something from a poet that they liked, and will then turn around because of that brand and try something else, something new. 

NA:  How many books do you publish each year? 

RH:  With the publication of Adam Hughes’ Petrichor on December 1, 2010, we will have 28 books in print.  That is 28 books in the 18 months since June 1, 2009—I am very proud of that fact.  Our plan was to produce as many books as we possibly could right up front—to “front load” the program, to allow books to build off of the others and establish a broad, eclectic base.  We need to slow that number down at this point, and I am thinking right now that we will probably settle, speaking practically, into a number like 14 a year—but we probably will not stick to that too closely since there are so many books we want to publish, given the funding and the time.

NA:  What are some of the proudest moments for the press so far?  Could you provide some links to reviews, blogs, awards, etc. featuring NYQ Books.

RH:  It sounds hokey, I know, but the proudest moment for me personally was when that first book proof was delivered.  And I am privileged to relive that experience with each and every book that we produce. To hold it, smell it, read it cover to cover after putting it together is truly something amazing. Every book is that special to me, because each one is unique and can only do what it does in the world for the word.  That is what this is all about, putting the work of poets into the hands of readers.  I am also very proud of maintaining the same eclecticism as we have in the magazine. I am also rather proud of the website, which I built myself.  It is simple and clean and touts an author section where each author can log in and find their sales and royalties for the previous months.  The authors can update information about readings, and we also have “Reviews and News” where there are links to all things pertinent to a book including awards and reviews.

NA:  It’s always hard, it seems to me, to get poetry into the hands of readers.  Do you have any secret recipes for doing just that?  Any magic for distributing your books? 

RH:  Our business plan is “keep it simple.”  To this end we actually limit distribution channels rather than having more. This seems counter-intuitive, but by limiting the channels, we are also limiting risk, investment, and time expenditure.  If we keep those things in check, then we can produce more books, and concentrate on getting the books out to readers rather than all of those not-fun-things like inventory, sales tax, accounting, fulfillment of orders, etc.  To this end we are somewhat unique in that we do not sell the books directly—no storage, no inventory, no sales tax, no shipping—let the distributors handle all of that.  In addition to Small Press Dsitribution, we also have several agreements with Ingram to get the books out to a worldwide market.

NA: What is the best place for a reader to find NYQ Books?

RH:  The best place is at our website, http://www.nyqbooks.org.  All of our in-print and forthcoming books are listed along with links to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powells, and Small Press Distribution, as well as the international Amazon sites. As I said above, we do not sell directly to the reader.  This reduces the risk we take on inventory, removes a very complicated accounting stream that would involve sales taxes, fulfillment, etc. Some of our books get placed into bookstores that are relevant to the author, but these vary by book and will be the topic of a new page linked to the book’s page on our website in the near future.  We would also like very much to begin a relationship with independent bookstores in various major cities who would be known for carrying all of the books in the series, but this has been slow to start mainly because of the time commitment on our end to start it.  I hope this is coming down the road even if it is just a few around the country.

Raymond P. Hammond is a poet and critic who, originally from Virginia, now resides in Brooklyn and works at the Statue of Liberty National Monument as a law enforcement officer half of the week and as editor-in-chief of The New York Quarterly the other half. He holds an MA from New York University where most of his classes were intense studies of poetics with William Packard at the Chelsea Gallery Diner over a hamburger. He has two books: an old chapbook of poetry, Glacial Reasoning, and a new book of criticism, Poetic Amusement.

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews interviews Peter Conners, Publisher, BOA Editions, Ltd.

Ed note:  This is the second post in our "Meet the Press" series for which poet Nin Andrews will interview editors of small presses.  Today Nin interviews Peter Conners (photo), publisher of BOA Editions -- sdh

NA:   I would love to start by asking you to describe BOA Editions in a very general sense.  Tell me how many and what kind of books you publish every year.

PC:  We typically publish 10 books per year: two translations, one Poulin contest winning book, two books of fiction, and five books through our Continuum Series which focuses on poets who have already published at least one previous book of poetry.

NA: Can you tell me a little bit about the translations you publish?

 PC: We publish poetry translations through our Lannan Translations Selection Series which is supported by the amazing Lannan Foundation of Santa Fe, New Mexico.  The Lannan Foundation is a quiet hero of independent publishing and, in the case of BOA, allows us to publish two collections of contemporary poetry in translation every year. It won’t surprise any of your readers to hear that: A) There is an astonishing dearth of contemporary poetry translations in this country, B) It is vital for American readers, professors, poets, etc. to have exposure to the work of contemporary world poets, C) Poetry translations don’t sell very well. So we take pride in our translation series and view bringing these books to American audiences as an important part of our mission. You can check out a list of BOA translations at the bottom of this page. 

NA:  BOA is a small press that has made a name for itself.  What has made BOA so successful?   (Feel free to provide links to interviews, reviews, etc.)

PC: Publishers succeed because of the books and authors that they publish. BOA has thrived for 34 years because we’ve published outstanding books that reflect a catholicity of tastes. All of the awards, reviews, accolades, etc. start with an author putting their vision into words. Once that happens, the work of the publisher kicks in: helping the author edit their work, making a beautiful final product, and getting it to as many people as possible. BOA’s success is built on 34 years of publishing works of singular vision and then working as hard as we can to get those books into the world. You can read more about BOA’s mission and history here. 

NA: How do you find new authors?  Do they come to you with their unsolicited manuscripts?  Do you seek out certain writers?  Do you run contests?

PC: All of the above. We have at least one open submission period per year for poetry (our Continuum Series), fiction, and translation. The A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize contest for first books of poetry is open from August 1 – November 30.

We also keep our ears open for potential projects all year around – so manuscripts also arrive via referral or solicitation.

NA: I heard an editor recently complain that he reads a lot of what he calls “MFA manuscripts” these days. He says they are well-written but uninspired.  Do you know what he’s talking about?

PC: I certainly know what he’s talking about in terms of “well-written but uninspired” manuscripts. As an editor, those are the hardest ones to grapple with: you spend time with them, you read them, consider them, and you wonder at how something so well-wrought can leave you so cold. But in the end, as an editor, there’s little you can do to fix a “well-written but uninspired” manuscript. You can’t edit duende into a manuscript. That said, BOA has way too many gifted authors with MFAs to pigeonhole grad programs in that way. There has always been more bad writing than good. Who has time to assign blame? If a manuscript works, we’ll do our best to publish it. If it doesn’t, we move on.  

NA:  Has working in publishing changed you as a writer? 

PC: Absolutely. I wish every writer could work in publishing for a few months. One of the best lessons I’ve learned is that different books fit best with different publishers and no matter how bad you want to force an indie to act like a corporate publisher or vice-versa, it’s not going to happen. At this point, I’ve published books with big publishers, tiny publishers, and publishers in-between, and I’ve managed to maintain good relationships with all of them. The key is not to dump your expectations at your publisher’s doorstep. Tell them what you want, but also listen to what they’re capable of doing. If your needs don’t fit their capabilities – look for a different publisher. Working in publishing teaches a writer about the intersection of their dreams with the realities of the publishing model. It can be a tough pill to swallow, but if you pay attention you can also save yourself a lot of stress along the way.    

NA:  What is the most exciting aspect of working for BOA?  What are the challenges presses like BOA face?

PC: I’m a literary being: I read, write, edit, review, discuss… live literary. Working at BOA allows me to make a living as part of the world I love. What could be better? I also thrive on making connections between people and BOA gives me tons of opportunities to do that. I do it on the macro level: connecting an author (via their work) with readers, critics, professors, peers, etc. I also get to do it on the micro level of connecting one individual with another individual through the common thread of BOA. Once those connections are made, BOA becomes larger than any one individual – it becomes a shared experience sparked by literature.

The challenges BOA faces are the same, and just as tedious, as with any not-for-profit organization: money. Money buys more staff that can do more work on behalf of our books. It’s a simple calculation: 5 people can accomplish more than 2 people. At BOA, we manage to accomplish an amazing amount with limited resources. But I can’t help dreaming about how much we could accomplish with a little more change in our pockets. Then again, not-for-profit literary publishing affords a remarkable amount of independence that many people in corporate publishing (especially editors) would love to have. There are always tradeoffs.  

NA:  Can you tell me about the books that are forthcoming this year?   Provide some links to interviews, reviews? 

PC: We’ve stepped up our communication game this year by launching the BOA blog.

We update the blog a few times each week and also link it to our Twitter and Facebook accounts. In other words, if you want to know about BOA – right up to the minute – check out our blog and follow us through our FB and Twitter accounts. All of our new releases are noted there along with reviews, interviews, and links to all things BOA. We also have a really sleek web-store that features our new titles and offers special deals on books. 

Meet the Press: Nin Andrews interviews Phil Brady

Ed note:  With this post, we introduce "Meet the Press" for which poet Nin Andrews will interview editors of small presses.  Today Nin interviews Phil Brady (photo), editor of Etruscan Books.  -- sdh

NA:  I’d love you to start by just giving a description of Etruscan Books.

PB: I know it sounds trite, but it's difficult to describe the 40 books we've published or contracted to publish since our beginning in 2001 because I love every one of them. I remember where we first met; first grope, first kiss; when I first swooned. It's all so sappy.  I hide my blush behind the mission statement: "to nurture a dialogue among genres." That works about as well as a cold shower.

But though I'm the last person to describe my love objects, I'll give it a shot:

They are engaged but not entangled in the world. They tell stories without plod. They offer lightning glimpses of a midnight landscape. They shake and stir. They yield more with each reading. They whisper to one another behind my back. I strive to learn from them and to learn them by heart. 

NA:  How did the press get its name?

 PB: We did a lot of market research. Which means we called three or four buddies. Our first choice was Siena Press, in honor of Siena Oristaglio, our founding funder's daughter. But folks thought that we were linked to Siena College. Then we tried Tuscan Sun Press, to commemorate a trip to Tuscany that the Oristaglio's and I had taken many years ago. But that was about the time Frances Mayes published Under the Tuscan Sun.

 Then our co-founder Bob Mooney pointed out that the Etruscans had settled Tuscany, and that in many ways the Etruscans' relation to the Roman Empire--underground, mysterious, somehow necessary even though powerless—reflected the role of the small press world in imperial America. Bob's good with stuff like that.

So for us, the question isn't where our name comes from, but whether we can live up to it.

NA: How is Etruscan different from other small literary presses?

PB: Not so different, we hope. We aspire to follow the example of presses we admire: BOA, Graywolf, Copper Canyon, Sarabande, Coffee House, New Directions, CavanKerry, Milkweed, and many others which have produced great books for the last thirty years or more. The small press world is burgeoning right now, filling needs—both aesthetic and economic—that aren't met by corporate publishers.

You know, Nin, I’ve been hanging out with a physicist—I won’t mention any names but his initials are Jim Andrews—and I gather from him that with strings and black holes and quasars and dark matter, cosmic scale is truly weird. Small press scale is wacky too: Immense effort is lavished on products of tiny consequence. The genius of the writing and the labor of bringing books into print are awe-inspiring, and yet most small press titles sell fewer copies than a teen has facebook friends. Now, this could frustrate, I suppose. But it makes me giddy as a charmed quark. I’m helping to produce something absolutely wonderful, something that very few people know about. We all sense that there’s something not quite right about the commercial equation between quality and popularity; but in the small press world, where merit is the only value, the infinitesimal can seem vast, in a weird way.

How is Etruscan different? Well, at ten years old we're a relatively new press, but because Mooney and I are...how shall I put this?--junior geezers?...we have a long history. We didn't begin as swashbucklers trying to publish impetuous younglings. We wanted to provide a platform for writing across traditional genres, writing with heart and seasoning.   We wanted to feature work which emerged out of a sense that genre isn’t bound by a set of conventions but is instead a manifestation of a human impulse. There is an impulse to sing, an impulse to regale, an impulse to explain. Yes, genre solidifies into tradition. But the best work—the most new and most ancient—still thrums with that primal impulse. "Form in dread of power," as Emerson puts it. We were looking for work that carried the tradition but emerged from the source. So, we began by scanning our bookshelves, contacting some writers who for us had set that kind of example: Bruce Bond, H.L.Hix, and William Heyen. From them, came our next generation: Carol Moldaw, Jennifer Atkinson, Diane Thiel.