From the Editor
In Uncategorized on November 1, 2009 at 12:00 amAbout two months ago, I invited a number of chapbook publishers to participate in a roundtable discussion for The Chapbook Review. I asked them to define the term “chapbook,” to talk about some favorite chapbooks that they haven’t published, to share when they first thought about publishing chapbooks. I also asked them to share who/what were some of their inspirations, how they defined their role as publisher/editor, and how they defined their press’s aesthetic and mission. I asked them to detail some other things writers should consider before submitting to them, to share some things that caught their eye when they picked up a manuscript, and their thoughts about the technical aspects of printmaking and publishing. I was also interested to hear them talk about commerce, marketing, and publicity. Many of the editors and publishers here also write fiction, poetry, and/or nonfiction of their own, so I was curious about how this influenced and informed, if at all, their approach/aesthetic/mission. I asked them to share the ways their press has grown, what some of their goals were, who they published and why, who would they love to publish and why, who they’ll be publishing next, and what else was on the horizon for their press. You’ll find Bannock Street Books’s Sarah Black, TinFish Press’s Susan Webster Schultz, Yazoo River Press’s J.Q. Zheng, Small Fires Press’s Friedrich Kerksieck, Publishing Genius Press’s Adam Robinson, Musclehead Press’s John Berbrich, Dancing Girl Press’s Kristy Bowen, Rose Metal Press Abigail Beckel and Kathleen Rooney, Toad Press’s Genevieve Kaplan, Blood Pudding Press’s Juliet Cook, and Mud Luscious Press’s J.A. Tyler all weighing in.
And don’t forget the reviews. Molly Gaudry’s Parts (an excerpt from her forthcoming lush and lyrical novella, We Take Me Apart) is ably reviewed by Ryan W. Bradley. And Molly Gaudry herself offers an impassioned examination of Claudia Smith’s Put Your Head in My Lap. Smith’s book is easily one of the top chapbooks this year. And Sean Lovelace (his How Some People Like Their Eggs is one of this year’s champs as well) goes all Hotel, Motel, Holiday Inn upside your head. Alec Niedenthal gives us a glimpse of a subject searching for an object (or is it, objects searching for subjectivity?) in Ben Estes’s Lamp like l’map. Craig Santos Perez explores how things are lost and found in translation in Jacinta Galea’i’s Aching for Mango Friends. And J.A. Tyler tirelessly unties the threads of mortality in Andrew Taylor’s And the Weary Are at Rest.
