Category: Uncategorized
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I wrote it about a year ago. It appeared the day after Election Day. It’s about questions.
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Next Friday, October 17th I get to join the amazing Sean Thomas Dougherty, Cynthia Marie Hoffman, and Sarah Carson to talk about writing between literary genres. Find us in the lecture hall at the McDonough Museum of Art, Youngstown State University.
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At 11:15 a.m. where I’ll join Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer, Joseph Ross, and moderator Fran Abrams to talk poetry in the Edgar Allen Poe Pavilion. More info here.
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SPD is winding down, or I should say, SPD sent out an email without warning to small presses across the country last week announcing that it has closed its doors. I have lawyer thoughts about all of this that I will keep to myself, the better part of valor being discretion, but poet-Jennifer is here to ask you to buy directly from small presses.
Academic, independent and small presses are where you will find brave, genre-evasive, smart, funny, really serious, really joyful, deeply truthful, deeply ironic work. It might be all those things at once. It might be agented. It might be stuff agents don’t know how to sell or wouldn’t want to try to sell. It will not be bland, it will not be stuff that’s engineered to satisfy a focus group. I don’t really want to read books that have been market-tested to death. If you are here, you probably don’t either. Survival of this segment of the literary market means the survival of small and indie presses.
Order from them directly. Presses make the most money that way; Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and distributors take a cut on profit margins that are already very small. Adam Smith-style economic principles don’t hold up very well in publishing for a variety of reasons, and the reluctance of the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice to involve itself in, oh, much of anything at all anymore hasn’t helped. If small presses die, we will read what the Big 5 decide we want to read, and I suspect that will mean cozies, self help, thrillers, and . . . you know what? I love a good cozy. I have no beef with cozies. But I also want work that challenges, and you should too.
Keep good books coming by supporting small presses. Buy books. Read them. Then buy more. Be an invisible hand in the publishing market but an invisible hand for good.
River River Books is a great place to start. Or start somewhere else. Just support small presses, and thanks.
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I am honored to be among this company.
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I am thrilled to be included on this list of some of the best books published by university and small presses in 2023. Full list of finalists here. Foreword’s editorial team read 2,400 entries in 55 categories to make these selections. The winners will be announced in June. Congratulations to all of the finalists!
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Review copies are available.
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I’ll be speaking with Patti McCracken (The Angel Makers) and Sarah Weinman (Scoundrel, Evidence of Things Seen) about women and the literature of crime and signing books immediately after.
Who else will be at the Festival you ask? People you won’t want to miss: Jami Attenberg, Percival Everett, Dwight Garner, Roxane Gay, Pauline Kaldas, Ada Limon, Brian Teare! This is only a partial list, there are so many extraordinary writers coming to Charlottesville this spring. 2024 is the 30th anniversary of the Festival of the Book and I am so excited to be a part of it.
Jennifer A Sutherland 