Los Angeles

Ray Bradbury will always be known as one of the City of Angels most famous native authors. Similar to our most well-known poet, Charles Bukowski, Bradbury graduated from Los Angeles…

Thanks to the efforts of Los Angeles Poet Laureate Luis Rodriguez, two poetry anthologies published in the last year and a few recently written histories on Los Angeles Poetry, there…

Note from the Editor: For the 100th (!!!) entry in our Small Press Database, we’re going back in time to the first small press interview we ever conducted, with Writ Large Press…

I never intended to become anorexic. I was surprised and wondering if I should be happy or panic when the scale hit 102 lbs. Between breaking up with my on-again-off-again…

Christopher Soto (aka Loma) is a queer latinx punk poet & prison abolitionist. Their first chapbook, “Sad Girl Poems” was released from Sibling Rivalry Press at the end of January.…

If I were to be incarcerated, I would send away for photocopied pieces of the Sistine Chapel from people who still cared about me. I’d get an outstretched arm from…

So, we have been able to create our own aesthetic—something a little more laid-back, with a vibe closer to, “this is something we’re passionate about that’s also fun as hell,” and less, “this is a very serious business that can only publish from a certain list of writers or we’ll lose all our precious cool factor.” We’re not super obsessed with being perceived as anything other than two Stevie Nicks-wannabes who also like to read good stuff.

Hollywood Notebook by Wendy Ortiz Writ Large Press, 2015 190 pages – Writ Large / Amazon   The day as a constellation of quiet moments: snippets and skraggles of thought that suffuse…

I’ve never wanted to outwardly define Penny-Ante beyond the obvious: “Penny-Ante is a book publisher and an art-based project company.” It’s fairly simple. The press acts in earnest to develop projects we feel deserve an audience. I don’t think a further directive would do any service to the authors. All our authors are independent thinkers and unique personalities who speak boldly for their oeuvre; one of many reasons the press serves their efforts.

One of the beautiful things about Ricochet is the aesthetics (as well as the class, sexual orientations, and ethnic backgrounds) of those who make up our board are all over the map. As someone who helped found the board, this was really important to me. I’m not interested in putting out books by people who look and sound like me. I’m interested in those manuscripts that are thrilling and important, regardless of the details of the author or her aesthetic practices. If my blood pressure goes up (in a good way), I know I’ve found something. I don’t know that getting any more specific is worthwhile, as it will only exclude work I would likely love.

Death is the mother of all Beauty. What tribe did she belong to? What Gods did she sweat during her scream from this terrain of scrub-brush into the all-congealing-tar? The…

1   I worried about him often in those days. After moving away from Los Angeles, I thought I would be able to forget the little things. And I did.…

On one hand, these books are serious bizness and holy shit is it a lot of work. On the other, I enjoy a feeling like I’m getting away with something, publishing book about video games—as if some real adult is going to pop into my life and say, “Okay, Durham, fun’s over.” It hasn’t happened yet.

I owe what I know—and that appeals to me as only a little, still—of John Trefry’s novel Plats (Inside the Castle, 2014) courtesy of Michel Butor. Not that either John…