there’s an intimacy that’s activated [or visibilized] when making books by hand together. there’s a warmth and a joy in that relationship … to the text, to the author, to your co-makers, to the book itself. we believe it’s worth our time to attend to that warmth and joy.
Our main goal is publishing exciting literary works made from parts. We really leave what exactly this means up to authors. We’ve often told people, “Send us your weird stuff.”
I guess what I’m driving at is that I’m interested in how books can work like buildings, where buildings are mute, dumb, raw assemblages of geometry and materiality under the auspices of cultural iconography, they don’t communicate, they don’t embody a causal understanding of truth, they aren’t–even when they attempt to be–representational, they simply “are.”
Our mission is to find new literature written in countries around the world and facilitate its translation into English as part of a larger aim to encourage cross-cultural and -linguistic exchange. Our aesthetic is experimental, wild, unkempt.
I have strong opinions about art and about publishing, and while it can sometimes be difficult to get people’s attention, I do believe that one can build a devoted, engaged community around a press, just as punk rock communities often coalesce around a particularly beloved venue.
We hope to create a press that supports Native artistry in all forms. We hope to bring quality work to Indigenous literature and create a world for Indigenous voices to thrive as genuinely and true to form.
Gordon Hill Press publishes mostly poetry, but also some literary criticism and some stylistically innovative fiction. We strive to include a wide diversity of writers and writing, but we have a particular emphasis on publishing writers living with disability.
We feel our operations need to be positioned within a sphere of revolt and radical will. Pure, pure love.
But expression (not only in myself outwards but by other people inwards) has always enabled me to find optimism. The name of the press embodies this sort of optimistic cynicism.
We believe a book provides a theater for the words, where the stage starts with the cover and moves inward through the physical narrative established by the pages—a journey through time and space.
I believe very strongly in the mission of the small presses. Far beyond the froth of commercial publishers, independent and small presses are largely where literature is born and lives.
I think that the kind of work you can encounter in micro-press publishing is where it’s at. Sure, it may not fit perfectly on your bookshelf, that accounting of one’s intelligence… but it is where poetry is most free, and so obviously, best.
Our aesthetic focus has always been on creating handmade, unique publications which, in their format, do justice to the writing published in them.
It’s as if 11:11 Press wanted to exist, and I happened to pick up on its wavelength and brought it into physical being. It’s like gravity or magnetism, and I can’t help but do it, and do it in a way that is fair for the authors, readers, and editors.