Small Press

Most places that publish both fiction and criticism seem to favor the fiction. They might have a print magazine that publishes fiction, and a web site that publishes more fiction, and then somewhere on the web site they’ll make a little space for book reviews. These publishers seem to believe that great fiction will emerge from a crowded field of lesser fiction. That’s not what works for us. We believe that great fiction emerges from a field of great criticism. The lesser stuff gets mowed down, recycled. To write something great you have to be thinking deeply and arguing passionately with a diverse group of friends.

Every person who purchases a Two Lines Press subscription is a godsend. They’re our core, and they’re just so so important. It’s money in the bank, and it’s people who are giving us a huge vote of confidence by saying they trust whatever we’re going to put out there. We like to thank them whenever we can—for 2014 we printed up special, signed chapbooks from Naja Marie Aidt’s Baboon, and this year we collaborated with the translator Jan Steyn to produce a really cool, hand-pressed erasure/translation/mutation broadside. There were definitely some eyes popping from sockets when those things arrived in the mail!

In 1956, City Lights published Allen Ginsberg’s seminal poem “Howl” and became the lightning rod for a new generation of untamed poets. This rare combination of bookstore and publishing house battles on as one of the increasingly rare, un-chained independent book enterprises in America. Expert bookworms stock a comprehensive selection of the best books in every field…