Flood Relief
There was a flood in Colorado and NewLights Press, which specializes in high-quality handmade books, is giving all the money they make this weekend to help fix things. Their books are beautiful. You should check it out.
Whoa: PRISM Index and What You Will
Here I have two great publications with incredible design and construction. They are 1) Prism Index, a magazine in its second issue, edited by Jeffrey Bowers, and 2) What You Will, a chapbook of poems by Kyle Schlesinger and published by NewLights Press.
They are both amazing — unbelievable, really, in their existence. It’s remarkable that human beings can do this stuff.
J. A. Tyler, ZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Author J. A. Tyler has put together a neat thing, a story across five stories, across five publishers. He calls it “wreckage” and describes the story with his uniquely destructive voice:
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ is wreckage. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ takes place as five distinct works, all built around the same core story. Each narrative is that of a girl who holds the last water in the world, a herd of chaos that takes it from her, and the boy who comes to resuscitate it all. But each story takes this kernel and shreds it in a new direction, incorporates other elements, reshapes the narrative in its own image. And each press that came aboard this project, releasing this wreckage into readers’ hands, worked on the same principle of core unity with distinct press-specific alterations. All that is left is the beautiful static hum: zzzzzzzzzzzzz.
The publishers, linked here, are:
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ [a well]: Greying Ghost
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ [the stars]: Warm Milk Printing Press
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ [this town]: The Collagist
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ [an island]: NewLights Press
This week I received the installment from Aaron Cohick’s NewLights Press (home of the $400 Brian Evenson book), and it is an amazing artifact. It’s completely letterpressed inside and out, and sturdily constructed. It’s hefty. It’s probably about 30 pages, depending on how you count them.
You can see images of the NewLights book here.
New Journal from NewLights Press
Hey friends, I’m just home from two days at the CUNY chapbook fair, and I’ve got some great stuff to tell you about–but it’s 430PM on Friday and Brooklyn is sunny in the high 60s. Put another way: you couldn’t pay me enough to sit here and blog about books on a day like this, and anyway, you’re NOT paying me. So standby for the post-game analysis, but meanwhile here’s one tidbit to be glad about. NewLights Press is putting together a new experimental journal to be called Et Al.
Et Al. is an experimental journal focused on the possible intersections of the literary and visual arts. It starts from the idea of an “arts journal” as a (non)site of the collective production and reception of meaning; one object, in multiple, built from multiple inputs and transmitting to multiple outputs. While traditional journals operate by reproducing text and images as discreet entities centered around a common theme, aesthetic direction, or author-function, Et Al. will be built on the principle of active production and the legible intersection(s) of text, image, typography, material, printing processes, and the temporal structure of the book form. Each issue of Et Al.will be, in essence, an artists’ book of rhizomatic (non)authorship, textually, visually, and structurally. Brought to you by your friends at the NewLights Press.
NewLights had some of the most innovative and beautiful books I saw at the whole festival, plus Aaron Cohick was a pleasure to sit next to for two days, and was totally into trading some of my product for his. Check him out.
Later, kids-