How do your titles transcend boundaries?
When we started out, there was this intense divide between narrative and experimental verse. Kazim Ali, our founder, was really interested in publishing books that blurred that line—books that proved you could be radically experimental but have a human somatic quality—the bodily, the queer, the messy.
How do readers receive genre-crossing work?
It’s important for readers to feel invited in, but we also put out pretty challenging work. About 10 years ago, we published Bhanu Kapil’s Schizophrene, which was, in a sense, her workbook: research, conversations, stories, and essays. Someone put it forward for Powell’s Books’ fiction contest, and readers didn’t know how to make sense of it. It pushed up against the limits of fiction, especially as it is imposed in North American publishing.
How do you see your social responsibility as an indie publisher?
We’ve been publishing queer archives and trans writers for years, and all of a sudden it feels important to keep publishing these visibly, and to continue building networks that support writers who don’t fit into mainstream publishing.
After 20 years, what’s next?
I’m so excited about our institutional community—for a lot of this time, I was on my own—and using that to do more partnerships. We’ve also developed an editorial fellowship, now in its second year, where fellows make a real book happen: binding, ISBN, everything.
