I want the press to have a sense of immediacy vital to a small-ish, specific contemporary reading audience that seeks literature with a what I call a visceral-mystical aesthetic—work that seeks a way to engage the big questions by examining the particular leaky, fleshy, grotesque difficulties, embarrassments, and traumas of being embodied.
co•im•press’s closest influences are Action Books, Black Ocean, Noemi Press, Spork, Birds of Lace, Fence, and Tarpaulin Sky. The editorial perspective of the journal Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas is also a significant influence (Roberto Tejada, Kristin Dykstra, and Gabriel Bernal Granados, editors). I worked on production and marketing/distribution for Mandorla from 2009 to 2013 via Illinois State University’s Publications Unit, and through that work, I also learned of its forerunner in spirit, El Corno Emplumado / The Plumed Horn (Margaret Randall and Sergio Mondragon, editors; there is a really great documentary on The Plumed Horn, too). I admire the way Mandorla’s editors and contributing editors created an open, networked community of writers across languages, borders, hemispheres, which can be divisive elements if we let them. Working with Kristin Dykstra when she was at ISU, I learned: that publishing can be a political act, to respect translators as much as authors, and the importance of translation as an art and practice. I also became attuned to the shameful dearth of translated works published in the US.
