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We're 10 days into Small Press Month, and we absolutely suggest you take a look at their recomended titles. But if you're looking for something a little more home grown, we've whipped up a sampling of our very own local indie presses and their offerings:
Switchback Books: Switchback is a feminist small press, publishing two poetry books a year. They've published three books so far, and you can sample poems online from their published poets.
Featherproof: Featherproof is the baby of Zach Dodson and Time Out's Jonathan Messinger. We're in love with their free printable Mini-books , but please do buy after you try. If you prefer live entertainment to bookbinding, they're having a short fiction reading at Innertown tomorrow.
Dancing Girl Press: Dancing Girl is another feminist poetry press, run out of the Wicked Alice zine and founded and edited by Kristy Bowen, who you might remember as MiC Wickedpen. We recommend their latest, Kitchen Witch by seven-time Pushcart nominee Theresa Boyar.
Puddin'head Press: Puddin'head Press has been around since 1985 and is run by David Gecic. Their website catalog is a little hard to poke around on, but they have plenty of readings and events going on to help you discover their writers.
Fractal Edge: Fractal Edge Press is a mostly poetry publisher. Their events page is sorely outdated, but we do suggest checking out this sample of Francesco Levato's Marginal State.
March Abrazo: March Abrazo is a press focusing on Midwest Latinos and Native Americans. We especially liked the sample poem from Bitter Coffee by Frank Varela.
Cracked Slab: Cracked Slab publishes two books a year focused on experimental and international poetry. The City Visible is their ode to Chicago.
Answer Tag: Answer Tag Home Press is dedicated to Midwest poets and authors. We recommend Four Fables by John Tipton, head of Chicago Poetry Project.
All of the above presses will also be taking part in the Small Press Showcase hosted by The Poetry Center of Chicago at the SAIC ballroom on March 28th at 7 p.m. The event is free.
Do you have any other events or small presses we missed? Post 'em in the comments.
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not technically a "press", StoryStudio (a writing center near Irving Park) has an online magazine called 'cooler by the lake'
http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com/
mich:
Yeah I didn't count magazines as the list would be much much longer. I love StoryStudio though. They're a neat family of people.
SMALL PRESS IS THE BEST PRESS! I run a store in Pilsen that carries a lot of books published by small presses. www.goldenagestore.com.
Twilight Tales publishes genre fiction, fantasy, horror, SF. Fun stuff.
They do a reading series too, Monday nights in Lincoln Park (for right now, at "The Mix", but they might be moving soon.) Open mike nights first Mondays of the month.
Small Press Month is a farce. Its committee is composed of reps from large publishing conglomerates and if you crticize it expect to be censored, slandered and attacked by large publishing conglomerates such as TimeOut Chicago. The Poetry Center of Chicago is one of the most heavily funded orgs in town, they even accept money from Boeing, and they should be the LAST organization to represent Small Press Month. The eight presses you list are all fine small presses but together they barely represent a sliver of Chicago's small press world. Fractal Edge Press is the publisher of the Executive Director of the Poetry Center's own book (as you point out) and this is why Fractal Edge Press was chosen to participate in this event over other more established small presses. Nothing wrong with that except when the Executive Director is on a salary paid by tax dollars and should be working toward helping the community, not abusing his position to advance his own career. Puddin'head Press is the main distributor of Fractal Edge Press titles, so two of the eight presses chosen for this event have direct nepotistic ties to the Center's Executive Director. Jonathan Messinger's press was no doubt chosen because doing so guarantees press in TimeOut Chicago, since Messinger is the Books Editor there. There is a lot of that going on at the Poetry Center; they also like to feature people who work at the Chicago Reader in order to get press. Nice political move, but not very fair to everyone else. There is nothing wrong with feminist presses by why are two feminist presses featured in this event when no African American presses such as Third World Press are featured. March Abrazo and Puddin'head are the only two presses included in the Small Press Month activities that have even existed for more than a few years. Originally this event was suppose to take place at the Chopin Theater and was suppose to represent a wider spectrum of small presses but The Poetry Center took it upon itself to steal the idea and make it all about these eight presses. This caused a lot of hard feelings and as a result Small Press Month achieved nothing in Chicago except for adding to the divisions in the small press world. Besides some fancy posters and this one event that exclusively features Francesco Levato's friends, can anyone tell me what good Small Press Month has done for Chicago.