In general, we’re hoping the publishing world becomes less stuffy, more about sharing ideas and work and just having fun. Not everything has to be so “serious,” in that the institutionalized aspect of it is so off putting and snobbish and gatekeeping at times. Most of all, we want more experimentation all around.
ND/SA publishes new poetry chapbook manuscripts by emerging, diverse New York City writers. We are generally excited by a unified text with a strong sense of voice and purpose and a startling use of beautiful, difficult language.
It’s simple really: I look for queer/trans writers who are making beautiful, powerful work. I love the weird, experimental, avant-garde work that is coming from the margins, and I want to center that work as best as I can. To tack down exactly what I’m after at Damaged Goods is something I haven’t done yet. I’m just publishing work that speaks the loudest to me.
My parting words for anyone interested in publishing books: always trust your gut; prepare to spend a lot of money and make none in return; assume that you will experience some major setbacks; accept that you will disappoint others despite your best efforts to please everyone. If you still want to publish books after taking all of this into consideration, you are doing it for the right reasons, and you’ll likely be thrilled, just as we are, to publish titles that deserve to be distributed the world over.
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.
So, poets who decide to go with Glass aren’t going to see their books on Amazon or in SPD. But they will have an editor who has selected their book because he loves it and thinks people need to read it. So, they will have a publisher that will champion their work for as long as it takes to get their book in people’s hands. And they will have an editor who will do everything possible to create a book that they are in love with. And they will never have to send a penny to me (the poets selected for the Glass Chapbook Series get, in return for letting me publish their work, fifteen complimentary copies plus a copy of the other chapbooks published in their year. They can purchase additional copies at cost but they are not required to purchase any). This is the basic agreement I make with my authors: Glass isn’t big and fancy but Glass will put in 1,000,000% in order to make your book a success.
The press arose from our founding editors’ observation that the publishing world lacked explicitly inclusive feminist presses. There were (and are!) many excellent presses promoting women and LGBTQ writers; GGP’s contribution to the field was meant to be an explicit invitation to feminists of every gender and sexuality to consider (and/or challenge) what constitutes feminist work.
I had been researching Black lesbian writers for a few years, and I came to realize that the challenges that the women faced in regards to publishing still existed (lack of diversity in publishing; the [false] notion that lesbian literature was now “mainstream;” lack of access to agents, editors, and other publishing professionals; and more than anything, the notion that our stories were somehow unworthy or had no literary merit). I decided right then that I could do something about that.
Most of our books could be filed under ‘experimental’—we all know what that is supposed to mean, though I have issue with that appellation. We are particularly interested in work that’s standing firmly—be it nude in boots and shouting from puddles, or more ornately said in oceans of robes—in gender, sexual and social identity issues, Indigenous Australian literature, ecopoetics, archival poetics…though any work that uniquely and unabashedly uses language, idiom, shape and negative space would interest us.
Website Submission Guidelines Interview with Mary Ann Rivers and Ruthie Knox, Publishers How did Brain Mill Press start? We founded Brain Mill Press in 2013 with a year of research and…
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 of HP is honoring lesbian existence, discovering a range of lesbian voices and promoting lesbian representation in the arts. As far as we know, there is no other press with this singular mission. We want to bring lesbian poets of all ages and backgrounds into the fold of publishing and create a market for lesbian-identified poetry.
The name Blood Pudding Press derived from me not being a fan of a certain style of light-hearted, comedic, semi-clichéd poetry, which seemed akin to vanilla snack pack pudding to me. I prefer more bloody, visceral, emotional, challenging, unique, quirky, non-mainstream, abstract artsy poetry, even if such styles are inedible to some.
The idea of bringing out the innovative, risk-taking work by women being turned down by editors at male-dominated presses grew, in part, out of the Coop experience. Virtually every literary press in the country in 1974 was run by men, one notable exception being Alice James Books, a feminist press formed on the east coast a year earlier.