Editor Interview: Astrophil Press

Innovative Literature

11:11 Press
Calamari Press
Coffee House Press
Stalking Horse Press
Dorothy, a publishing project
7.13 Press
Conjunctions

Rikki Ducornet
Anne Carson
Brian Evenson
Italo Calvino
Brandon Hobson
Laird Hunt
Helen Oyeyemi
Julia Elliott
Bruno Schulz
Franz Kafka
James Joyce
Virginia Woolf

We strive to publish work from a variety of aesthetic traditions that explore the possibilities of genre, form, and language. We thrill in reading work that falls in the spaces in-between what is known and what is unknown. We occupy a space between the most experimental publishers and more traditional literary fiction publishers.

We seek work by authors who are obsessed with the potential of language, of its power and its beauty and its danger. If you interested in sending us work during our open reading periods, it helps to be familiar with the kind of work we publish. Most authors we publish, have either purchased our books in the past, read previous work by authors on our press, or are familiar with the work we publish.

The ideal submission hooks me in the first few lines. There is a music or strangeness to the line-work that intrigues me. It is a book where the author has obsessed over language (shape and sound), meticulously edited the work, and whose experiment is expertly rendered. (Aren't we all experimenting on the page no matter how grand or slight?) It is work that requires active reading, that does not give easy answers, does not respond to marketplace trends, to solve itself for the comfort of the reader, but seeks to find new territories of experience. Simply put, it has magic in the line, is playful, loses me in wonder, or burns at the edges.

If they get anything wrong, it would be that they send work blindly, not recognizing the kinds of work we publish. We are pretty flexible, we also want people to send their work where it will be loved and appreciated and sometimes we aren't the right fit for what they send.

Cover letters are important to me because they give us an idea of who the author is, what the framework of the project is, and it also helps us know if the author understands our mission.

We know within a few lines if we're interested in reading more. Once one of us is hooked, we tend to read to the end, unless something changes our minds. For example, I've read work with an outstanding first twenty pages, but the following pages aren't as strong. If the writing is strong and the issue is structural, I'm more prone to work with them; however, if it seems like the author has lost the love for the writing along the way, I'm prone to release it back to the author so they can find another home for it. In these cases, I will offer some notes to the author and give the option to resubmit the work. If the work is designed to change, say the language matures with the subject (character or speaker), then I would like to know this in the letter (this is why letters are important).

We tend to think about whether we can serve the book best. We've passed on work we loved because we thought they could go with someone who could better serve the work.

We are all volunteers, so we all work full-time jobs (typically in academia). My work as a professor of English often dictates my availability. I work on the press after a long day of work, so I'm often up late reading, designing, editing, or handling business requests.

Our acquiring editors think about the big picture and I think about the line. We have a proofreader who works with us, but we offer the author time to proofread during the editing process too. We are kind editors and we work with the authors to create the best version of their work. Sometimes we have tough conversations about editorial choices, but respect is always the core of our process.

We do occasionally.

We receive a very modest amount from the university, but much of the publishing company is self funded. We are fortunate to have enough readers to keep us in operation, and we believe this speaks to the quality of the literature we publish.

We contact reviewers and have a strong social media presence. Most of our sales seem to come from word of mouth rather than from reviews or ads.