Small Press

Our mission at Baobab Press is to utilize our decades of experience in the book industry to promote works of heart and substance that are relevant now and will remain relevant in the future.

Instead of seeing the world in such dualistic terms as East versus West, North versus South, we envision the gathering of the most progressive elements everywhere, and the publication of such a gathering in our list.

We’re not exempt just because we’re editors: if we’re going to ask for this type of work, we better be able to do this type of work. We have to know what it feels like to make it. It’s beyond us, but we’re not beyond it.

We started out of a framepack & computer screen tight-roping language, trying to figure out what can’t be said & how to say it. I guess the ramble can be summed up with—narcissism leading to boredom leading to community leading to fulfillment.

I think Poets & Writers summed our aesthetic up perfectly when they described WILDNESS as a journal “that embraces the mysteries of the self and the outside world.” Our tastes run along two parallel paths: the internal and external savagery and peace of the lived life. We love to experience the calm of a studied life, but also the rawness and pain of a truth expressed.

When I’m looking for a book, I look for stylists. It’s not the just the story, it’s how it’s told. That’s a pretty boring thing to say, but it’s true. Our first writer we published was Kyle Coma-Thompson. That’s a writer who has a lot to say, and he says it in a way that really isn’t like anyone else. His stuff can be polarizing, and often puzzling, but the way he writes, the way he pays attention to the sentence is remarkable. He’s soon to be a force.

On a daily basis, we’re inspired and influenced by every other indie press around: it’s a lot of hard work to run a press—often thrilling, but frequently full of difficult and thankless tasks—and I admire everyone who is doing this, who is giving of themselves to help facilitate the continuation of independent literature, all the other editors and publishers working hard to bring new books out into the world.

The mission is embodied in our tagline: “Publishing the Best Literature of the American Jewish Experience.” We’ve attempted to take the best practices observed throughout the book-publishing business and adapt them to our particular style. We only publish a small number of books so we’re highly selective in our acquisitions. We’re looking for manuscripts that tell a story (whether via fiction or non-fiction) in a compelling, unique way that all readers will learn from and enjoy.

The Grind Daily Writing Series is never far from my experience of Bull City Press: the invitation to pursue hard, solitary work, and not alone, but with other like-minded writers. For me this pervades the Bull City ethos… hard working writers celebrating the work of other hard working writers. That is the vision Bull City has of a community—to connect writers with writers as well as readers, to foster & challenge writers, and to celebrate/broadcast writers’ accomplishments.

Website Submission Guidelines Interview with Joshua Young, Founder & Editor; Abigail Zimmer, Poetry Editor; and Ian Denning, Prose Editor How did The Lettered Streets Press start? Joshua: My father and I wanted…

You know, the typical publishing story. I was sitting in a bar in the year 2000 with some freak I knew from a miserable job I had at the time and he turned to me and said, “I want to start a press and you should be the editor because you are very outgoing.” I downed my tenth or so beer and told him that was a great idea and he could count me in. At this miserable job, I had written a novel called For Fucks Sake, and we decided to launch the press with my book. At the same time, I started dating my future wife Elizabeth, who already worked in publishing, at a literary agency. The three of us spent the next two years meeting at the freak’s apartment with occasional assorted other freaks making detailed plans on how we would publish our one book; after the meetings, we would all go to dinner and get drunk.

We aim to remain fluid, open, human. The Rescue you see now may or may not resemble the Rescue of the future. We’re interested in work that celebrates darkness, humour, hybridity, gesture, bewilderment, and limits. We are inspired by strong women and visionary literature, by writers who think about art, by ritual and asymmetry. Rescue is currently located in Iowa City, Chicago, and Cleveland—we are diehard Midwesterners—and the crew these days includes our Creative Director Sevy Perez and our Editorial Assistants Alyssa Perry and Zach Isom.

The camel’s back is broken, and you’ve got the scoop: Jaded Ibis Press, in its current incarnation, will no longer take submissions. We’re completing our contracted books—asking the authors to pitch in with marketing and publicity at a level we have not previously requested or expected.

Conventional publishing has always argued that its job is to serve the writer. We don’t see that. We see our job as serving the reader. And that’s an important shift I think. Publishers are going to have to move toward to that approach, because it’s the readers who pay the wages. So it’s kind of perverse, really, that most publishers see the people they pay, the writers, as being their primary responsibility rather than the people who pay them.