Last year we published an anthology of pop culture non-fiction called Bring the Noise, which was kind of a greatest hits anthology from the magazine, but it had some new stuff too. That served as a nice transition from working exclusively on the magazine to doing books as well. We wanted to learn how book production would be different from a print mag and work with people we trusted and who trusted us to do a good job.

Like most things Barrelhouse, it’s a team effort. I’m heading up the poetry list. Non-fiction editor Tom McAlister did most of the work on the anthology. Joe Killiany is currently reading through the fiction manuscripts we received during our open reading period. Dave Housley has been doing a lot on the production end. We’re all in on the design and proofing and getting quotes from printers, etc. If this were a more corporate business, you might say our staff is cross-trained.

Mike Ingram is heading up everything for Lee Klein’s Thanks and Sorry and Good Luck, due out March 4th. It’s a collection of rejection letters from Eyeshot magazine. I don’t think I’ve ever come across anything like it. Lee’s brilliant and his rejections are at turns hilarious, tender, mean, terse, sarcastic, and honest, but at the core they really deliver great advice for writers about writing and publishing. It’s going to be a great book.

After almost 10 years doing the magazine, we arrived at a place financially where we had a little more money and we wanted to reinvest that in a way that we felt would help us grow and continue to promote the good work of the people we publish. So we decided our two priorities would be paying writers and publishing books.

Publishing books is something that we’ve talked about pretty much since the magazine started, but we weren’t all convinced at the same time. We wanted to make sure that we in a good enough place that the magazine wouldn’t suffer and that we wouldn’t run into a situation where we do two books and then have to give it up. That wouldn’t be fair to the writers. Probably about two years ago, we came to a consensus that the time was right and we could sustain this for the long term without sacrificing quality on any front.

I feel a little funny about the word “ambitious.” I had a poetry professor in undergrad who always said a poem was “ambitious” when she really meant it didn’t make any sense. Barrelhouse certainly likes to try out a lot of different things—conferences,podcasts, reading series, T-shirts, what-have-you—but I hope it all hangs together somehow. We basically run everything we try through a decision process to ask if it is stupid enough to be good, or just stupid.

Overall, the aesthetic of the press will match the aesthetic of the magazine. The goal is to publish great stories, poems, and essay that engage with contemporary life. We’re not looking for anything Classical or magic realism or your personal memoir (if you pronounce it mem-mwah). All of those things can be done well, but they’re probably not for us. We’re open to a wide range of forms and formlessness, but I think it’s got to be real in the sense that it moves us and shows us something new about life on Earth in the Twenty First Century. Is that too much to ask?

We’re currently looking at two books per year. We’ll rotate through poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Beyond that, we don’t have a hard and fast schedule.

A long time ago, Reb Livingston said in an interview somewhere that for No Tell Motel Books she really only worked with people who she first published in the magazine, because then she knew they weren’t totally crazy or at least she knew what kind of crazy they were and she was okay with that. I always thought that approach was smart because publishing a book isn’t like publishing someone’s poem in a magazine. It’s a long relationship with lots of back and forth and personal investment of time, thought, and emotion.

I reviewed Justin’s first book when it came out in 2009 and I loved it. It immediately struck me as a real human being writing, thinking, working things out through language. I’ve been a huge fan ever since. There are a handful of poets that I wish I could subscribe to, like an RSS feed, and just get everything they write right into my brain. Justin’s probably at the top of that list.

Over the years, we crossed paths a few times and I was publishing some poems of his in Barrelhouse 11 when we issued the call for fiction manuscripts. He asked me if we’d be looking for poetry manuscripts at any point and I told him I’d love to see what he had. We weren’t planning on doing poetry for another year or so, but You’re Going to Miss Me When You’re Bored blew me away. It’s personal and smart and funny and weird and inventive and feels like the kind of collection that people really connect to. I did. I believe it’s an important book.

Justin’s book is due out February 18^th. It’ll be available at AWP so be sure to stop by the Barrelhouse table and pick one up. Just look for the Spinning Wheel of Destiny and you’ll know you’re in the right place. Preorders are also available now, here.