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The CLMP Newswire
A Biweekly Email News Dispatch on Independent Literary Publishing
A Project of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (http://www.clmp.org)

Table of Contents for November 1, 2002 (Volume 2, Number 20)

• Skanky Possum is No Feral Cat
• The Feminist Press Reaches Out to Prisons with Recent Grant
• Zoo Press Turns One
• In Brief

SKANKY POSSUM IS NO FERAL CAT

One day, Dale Smith--who along with his wife Hoa Nguyen founded the poetry magazine Skanky Possum--was trying to trap a feral cat near his house. "I got a skanky possum instead," he says. And so began the longish, nearly mythological story of how the Austin, Texas-based journal got its name. "I really just sort of blurted the name out, but once we began digging behind it we discovered a few things," says Smith.

According to Smith, "skanky" is a Caribbean word for a kind of dance, and has its linguistic roots in ska, a New World-style music. And, Smith notes, the possum in Mayan culture delivered fire to human beings. "He was their Prometheus," he says. "He stole fire from the gods, and we liked the idea of using a fire stealer for our magazine." Smith also points out that possums, America's only native marsupial, will eat almost anything, including trash and other detritus of urban life. "The poets we publish live close to the ground, listening to their environments," says Smith. "And since our magazine publishes mostly the work of North American writers in new world geographic, political, and social contexts, the possum--in whose pouch new life is nourished--is a kind of image for those concerns."

But its not just the genesis of the name that makes Skanky Possum stand out in what Smith calls the "micropublishing" world. Until recently, he and Nguyen--who each have jobs--hosted regular "possum parties" to hand-paint each and every one of the 300 covers of the magazine that are sent to subscribers. "We had food and beer and wine, and between six and 12 friends showed up to paint the covers," says Smith. Due to time constraints, the editors and their friends now paint only about 10 covers, which are then offset and returned. Once back in the fold, the covers are hand-stamped with the name of the magazine and then painted with a wash and stapled. "Everybody still helps us staple," says Smith. "It's a pretty low-tech enterprise."
However low-tech the journal may be, it does have a website to reach a broader audience. A special section on the website called "Possum's Pouch" feathers essays and reviews. But it still features the quality writing readers have come to expect of the journal. Smith describes the work in Skanky Possum as "fluid," adding, "it falls between many generative sources." Several of its authors--including Amiri Baraka, Tom Clark, Elaine Equi, and Clayton Eshleman--were included in the 2002 Best American Poetry anthology, a testament to the journal's excellence. To check out Skanky Possum and "Possum's Pouch" for yourself, go to http://www.skankypossum.com.

THE FEMINIST PRESS REACHES OUT TO PRISONS WITH RECENT GRANT

New York-based Feminist Press has always had a dual mission: to preserve the legacy of women's voices by publishing the lost works of literary classics written by women, and to reach places where women are most silent. "Nowhere are women more undeserved than in prisons," says Jean Casella, Publisher/Director of the press. "And one way to make a contribution is to donate books." Casella says her interest in doing outreach stemmed from a book The Feminist Press is publishing, Wall Toppings: An Anthology of Women's Prison Writing. It was originally published in the mid-1980s, but soon went out of print. The Feminist Press revived it and set about to publish a new version, which includes almost 40% new work. "After working on this project, we got more and more interested in the subject [of donating books to prison] and began to thinking on a broader level," says Casella.

Casella began researching educational programs in prison, starting at Bedford Hills State Prison in Westchester County, New York. "It was the most moving experience. The people who get into these educational programs are true students. They see it as their only chance. It's the only positive thing in their lives." She also discovered it wasn't that easy to implement a prison book-donation program. "We learned pretty early on that it's absurd to just go in and give away books," she says. "The question becomes which books are the most useful and how to work it out so that they can become part of a well thought-out curriculum."

The experience became pivotal in Casella's commitment to reach this population of underserved women, so The Feminist Press reached out to the New York Community Trust and were eventually awarded a grant of $40,000 to give books to prisons. In exchange, the press is charged not only with giving away books to women inmates, but with developing teaching materials in partnership with the prison's educational program, as well as creating and implementing assessment tools for gauging the educational levels of the inmate population. The only stipulation was that the money had to be used to launch a prison program within New York City. So Casella turned to a local jail--the women's section of Rikers. (The Feminist Press also received $2,500 from the Bydale Foundation, which they used to donate books to Bedford Hills.) The most pressing problem at Rikers was turnover--unlike Bedford Hills, the population at Rikers is not stable. So for Casella and the inmate educators, the issue was finding books that were short and compact and could thus be the most useful to a population that did not remain long at the jail. Also challenging was finding books that could be read in the classroom, since security issues preclude inmates from carrying the books to their cells. Casella and her staff chose mostly anthologies with the idea that students could read a chapter or two at a time. Content was also important. The subject matter had to appeal to the women, and for that reason many of the donated works are multicultural. "The beauty of this concept is that we're getting the foundation to buy books for people who can't afford them," says Casella. "They pay wholesale prices, and we're getting the same amount that we would get from the bookstores."

Learn more about the Feminist Press and its 32 year history by logging on at http://www.feministpress.org.

ZOO PRESS TURNS ONE

Nebraska-based Zoo Press celebrates its first year in January, and founder Neil Azevedo couldn't be more pleased with the way it's gone so far. "We have not only met our projections for the year, we have exceeded them," he says. This comes as a surprise to the one-time editor at Columbia University Press, because he wasn't sure how he would support a startup press unless he had access to readers. Finding an audience and keeping the books alive was the press's prime challenge. Eventually Azevedo realized he could connect with readers by establishing a relationship with well-known and widely respected literary journals. Before starting the press, Azevedo screened poetry for The Paris Review. So he asked the editors if The Paris Review would act as the sponsor for an annual contest, with the winner published under the auspices of Zoo Press. The venerable journal enthusiastically agreed, and so Azevedo tried presenting The Kenyon Review with a similar proposal. They too climbed on board.
Like most literary contests, submitters to the Zoo Press contests pay an entry fee--in this case $25--to enter their book length, unpublished poetry manuscripts. The winner of The Paris Review Prize in Poetry receives $5,000 and publication by Zoo Press in the fall. Zoo press also agrees to publish the first runner-up and two other books, usually submitted in the contest although these two remaining titles can come from other sources. The same holds true for the winner of The Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry: the first place submission receives $2,500 and publication by Zoo Press in the spring, while three other books, including the first runner-up, are also published at the same time.

Financially, it works out well for Zoo Press because the entrants' fees cover the full costs of the winners' award as well as the publication of the other books. "We even have money for small advances for the other books," says Azevedo. "And whatever's leftover we use to market them." In fact, it was the push for marketing the books that drove Azevedo to find a distribution partner that would be able to successfully bring the books to a wider audience. "Poetry is never going to be a big seller or catch the buzz the way novels might," says Azevedo. "But poetry suffers when you blindly accept this as fact."

So Azevedo decided to think outside the usual distribution box and approached the University of Nebraska Press, which agreed to solely distribute the press's books. "It's a better partnership than if we went with someone like Consortium," he says. "Though Consortium is probably more experienced at publishing poetry, they have a lot of books to push, whereas the University of Nebraska will only push our poetry." Azevedo has been delighted with the way his partnerships have allowed him to net the results he was looking for: to publish poetry of high caliber and accessibility to a wide audience with enough funds left over to help market the books. For more information or to view the press's catalog, go to http://www.zoopress.org.

IN BRIEF

Two Copper Canyon Books Make the National Book Foundation's Poetry Shortlist The National Book Foundation unveiled a shortlist that includes two poetry books published by Copper Canyon Press: The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body by Alberto Rios and In the Next Galaxy by Ruth Stone. For more information on the books, log on to Copper Canyon's website at http://www.coppercanyonpress.org.

Dana Gioia Nominated As Chairman for NEA
Dana Gioia has been nominated as the next chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts. The 51-year old poet has published three full-length books of poetry, including the American Book Award-winning Interrogations at Noon, as well as a collection of essays, Can Poetry Matter?-all of which have been published by Graywolf Press, http://www.graywolfpress.org.