Small Press Night at Brookline Booksmith
Tonight Brookline Booksmith held a talk/reading in honor of small Boston publishers. But not really. Speakers included representatives of Ploughshares, Post Road, Redivider, Salamander, and Quick Fiction, but no one from a press, per se.
As such, the audience was drawn from the unpublished masses—I know that sounds perjorative, but everyone there really did seem to want to know the answers to the most basic lit mag questions: what info should my cover letter include, what about simultaneous submissions, etc.
It also served as an impromptu visual reunion for my Emerson College classmates—none of us had the chance to talk, as Brookline Booksmith is an incredibly cramped, face-forward-or-die kind of venue, nothing like the friendly environment of the Enormous Room during the most recent Four Stories reading.
To have a “small press night” and not have any actual presses says a lot about the Boston literary scene. The scene is very writer-centric, first of all. The ratio of magazines submitted to to magazines subscribed to is probably 10-to-1. And second of all, writers here don’t think in terms of books. Boston writers want to publish poems, stories, and collections. Are we lazy? Are our sights set too low? Whatever it is, it means writers here a) ignore small book publishers, even though it’s easier to turn a small profit in your spare time with a small book press than a small literary magazine and b) forget their role as reader and financial supporter of other writers.
Tomorrow night I’m heading to the Somerville BBQ joint Red Bones (which will be hell during the fast) with Bill to celebrate the paperback release of The Legends of Winter Hill. I don’t know if I’ll know anyone but Bill there, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy the more down-to-earth audience. If you’re a local reader of Fungible Convictions, be sure to make your way to Red Bones at 7:00pm.
