We continue our “Best of 2017″ series curated by the entire CCM-Entropy community and present some of our favorite selections as nominated by the diverse staff and team here at Entropy, as well as nominations from our readers.
This list brings together some of our favorite presses, publishers, magazines, literary journals, and other publishing projects that were doing phenomenal work in 2017. This doesn’t mean necessarily those that were founded or started this year, just those we thought were doing particularly exciting & cool things this year and deserve a little bit of extra attention.
(For last year’s list, click here.)
In no particular order…
1. Delete Press
Delete Press publishes work by established and emerging poets. We ask ourselves the question: what does it feel like to be set on fire with an odorless accelerant? We respond by building chapbooks that are letterpress printed and handbound. Anti-gravity ephemera is also floated.
2. Platypus Press / Wildness
Platypus Press is a boutique publisher based in England. We seek to unearth innovative contemporary poetry and prose from a broad variety of voices and experiences.
wildness is an online literary journal that seeks to publish contemporary poetry, fiction and nonfiction that evokes the unknown—the lostness; the distance.
3. The Operating System
THIS is not a fixed entity. It is an ongoing experiment in resilient creative practice which necessarily morphs as its conditions and collaborators change. It is not a magazine, or a website, but rather an ongoing dialogue ABOUT the act of publishing on and offline: it is an exercise in the use and design of both of these things and their role in our shifting cultural landscape, explored THROUGH these things.
4. Guernica
Our mission is to publish writing that both enters and illuminates the fray. We nurture and support artists and storytellers who make wild, honest, and surprising work. We encourage them to skip the hot takes and dive deeply into the high-stakes issues behind the political rhetoric, and tell stories that show the personal is inextricable from the political. We are a home for stories and ideas that don’t fit neatly into any one category. Our outlook is global, and we are always working to broaden the range of voices we publish.
5. Belladonna
The Belladonna* mission is to promote the work of women writers who are adventurous, experimental, politically involved, multi-form, multicultural, multi-gendered, impossible to define, delicious to talk about, unpredictable and dangerous with language.
6. The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective
The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective is the coming together of poets who believe words can transform lives. Founded in 2013 in Bangalore, India, as a not-for-profit press, the Collective publishes innovative, diverse poetic voices from India & the Indian diaspora. Through a mentorship model, members of the collective support one another in producing beautiful poetry books, chapbooks, and anthologies. Through workshops, readings, and community and school events, the Collective is building a poetry community in which artistic expression leads to positive action, as each poem initiates a dialogue with society and the greater world.
7. Verse
Verse lets you create and share poetry playlists. A poetry playlist is what we call a collection of poems around a particular topic, theme, time period, technique, or any other dimension that suits your fancy. Our main goal is help people find new poems they like. The modern world has a lot of social infrastructure around music discovery, but not as much around poetry. A Verse playlist is liked a curated DJ set of poems: it gives you some context and personal connection that might help you appreciate the work better.
8. Dream Pop Press
Dream Pop Press is comprised of Dream Pop Journal, a quarterly online literary journal, and the small press arm that will begin accepting chapbook submissions in 2018. Dream Pop seeks to make space for non-narrative, linguistically inventive writing. We are interested in lyric memoirists, cross-genre experimenters, fearless inventors, and poets who dream in made-up languages.
9. The Account
The Account: A Journal of Poetry, Prose, and Thought originated late one evening in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago. We were interested in the conversations that could arise when an account was paired with creative work. We imagined a journal where writers could offer such accounts beside their poems and prose, and where artists could offer the same pairing of work and aesthetic statement.
10. Nat.Brut
Nat. Brut (pr. nat broot) is a journal of art and literature dedicated to advancing inclusivity in all creative fields. Our magazine is a broadly interdisciplinary safe space that values marginalized voices, and we promote environmental sustainability in both form and content.
11. Under a Warm Green Linden
Under a Warm Green Linden, launched in 2008, is both a forum on the technical and ineffable qualities of the art of poetry and a biannual digital poetry journal. Reviews and interviews with established and emerging poets are intended to deepen, illuminate, and complicate an understanding of their work; and excellent poetry of all subjects and styles by a diversity of authors illustrates our conviction that poetry encourages an engagement with our deepest truths, challenges, fears, and joys.
12. Dreginald
DREGINALD is an online literary magazine seeking to publish excellent writing. DREGINALD is not particular when it comes to form/genre because DREGINALD cares only about excellence. You send your most excellent work and DREGINALD says either “no thanks” or “give me that.” DREGINALD is not scared. Try us. We’re ready. DREGINALD yes! DREGINALD no! DREGINALD yes! yes!
13. Hyacinth Girl Press
Hyacinth Girl Press is a micro-press that publishes up to 6 poetry chapbooks each year. We specialize in handmade books of smaller press runs. We consider ourselves a feminist press and are particularly interested in manuscripts dealing with topics such as radical spiritual experiences, creation/interpretation of myth through a feminist lens, and science. We think outerspace, in particular, is pretty darn cool.
14. Catapult
Catapult publishes books of the highest literary caliber, offers writing classes taught by acclaimed emerging and established writers, produces an award-winning daily online magazine of narrative nonfiction and fiction, and hosts an open online platform where writers can showcase their own writing, find resources, and get inspired. We nurture emerging writers by helping them better their craft, and support more established writers by evenly sharing revenues from the classes they teach, and by paying to publish their work online. Catapult strives to be a successful business model for the future of independent publishing.
15. 7×7
Writer Amy Bonnaffons and artist Axel Wilhite launched 7×7 in 2015 to facilitate a new kind of interdisciplinary collaboration. Each 7×7 invites one visual artist and one writer to engage in a two-week creative conversation. The format, inspired by Surrealist games of the early 20th century, challenges participants to improvise, in their respective disciplines, a spontaneous story that pushes into ever-wilder imaginative terrain. Every finished 7×7 is singular, unclassifiable, and wholly original.
16. Sundress Publications
A 501(c)3 non-profit literary press collective founded in 2000, Sundress Publications is entirely volunteer-run, publishes chapbooks and full-length works in both print and digital formats, and hosts a variety of online journals. Our mission is to champion great work—especially by persons under-represented in literary publishing—and we welcome writers and artists regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, disability, religion, class, veteran status, and educational background.
17. Gigantic Sequins
Gigantic Sequins is happy to be your favorite black & white print literary arts journal. GS was born in Brooklyn, grew up in Philadelphia, and currently lives primarily in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, with outposts throughout the US in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, & more. We’re known for the quality fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, art, & comics we print as well as our unique design & aesthetic. Our editors like to publish writers & artists who have their hands in various sorts of figurative creative cookie jars, as well as writers & artists at a variety of different stages in their careers.
18. Dream Delivery Service
The man who writes dreams and delivers them to your door: Mathias Svalina rides his bike for long distances and writes surrealist poetry. He’s combined the two into a sort of job, travelling the US, writing dreams for customers, and delivering them direct to their door before they wake up.
19. Independent Publishing Resource Center
The IPRC’s Mission is to facilitate creative expression, identity and community by providing individual access to tools and resources for creating independently published media and artwork. Since its inception in 1998 the center has been dedicated to encouraging the growth of a visual and literary publishing community by offering a space to gather and exchange information and ideas, as well as to produce work. We’ve empowered thousands of people to create and publish their own artwork, writing, zines, books, websites, comics and graphic novels. We’ve helped community members find their artistic voices, especially disenfranchised youth (including GLBT, minority, at-risk, and homeless youth) whose lifestyles and experiences tend to be marginalized in the major media.
20. Literary Hub
Literary Hub is an organizing principle in the service of literary culture, a single, trusted, daily source for all the news, ideas and richness of contemporary literary life. There is more great literary content online than ever before, but it is scattered, easily lost—with the help of its editorial partners, Lit Hub is a site readers can rely on for smart, engaged, entertaining writing about all things books. Each day—alongside original content and exclusive excerpts—Literary Hub is proud to showcase an editorial feature from one of its many partners from across the literary spectrum: publishers big and small, journals, bookstores, and non-profits.
