chicagopoetry

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 06:48:00 -0600

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.

mksmary

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 23:28:06 -0600

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.

martinesyms

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 23:00:26 -0600

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.

Jess D'Amico

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:37:47 -0600

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.

mich

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:29:00 -0600

not technically a "press", StoryStudio (a writing center near Irving Park) has an online magazine called 'cooler by the lake' http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com/

Chicagoist: Small Presses with Local Flavor

chicagopoetry

mksmary

martinesyms

Jess D'Amico

mich