Preview of Garth Risk Hallberg's A FIELD GUIDE TO THE NORTH AMERICAN FAMILY

I thought this book would be an interesting one with which to start the collection. One of the nice things about small presses is that they can specialize. I don't have numbers to back it up but I would expect, for instance, that most new poetry that is published is published by small presses. There's not a mass market for new poetry but for those firms that specialize in it, they can focus their marketing and publishing efforts on those readers.

Garth Risk Hallberg's book could possibly fall under the realm of short stories but I think they're too short to even be labeled that. The back cover calls them "interlinked fictional vignettes" of which there are 63 with 63 photos included. The book can be read in any order, making it seem like a Choose Your Own Adventure book (which the back cover also makes mention of. We think alike.).

I enjoyed reading this interview that Hallberg did with The Faster Times and that helped prompt the decision to acquire the book. Even more so, I've enjoyed his writings at The Millions.

One other note to make about this book...it is a really lovely book. There are a ton of photographs and has a very unique design to it. Definitely the prettiest book of the dozen with which we've started.

Preview of Vanessa Veselka's ZAZEN

The first thing I can recall reading about Vanessa Veselka's Zazen was this review on my favorite website about books, The Millions. To be honest, it was probably the book that triggered the whole concept of having this small press collection.

Zazen was published by Red Lemonade which is the newest publishing venture from Richard Eoin Nash. Nash ran the excellent Soft Skull Press throughout the first decade of this millennium, even after he sold it to Counterpoint Press. There are few people as passionate about independent publishing as Nash is. I find him to be inspiring in his passion and am glad we can support his efforts.

Lo and behold, in the midst of my writing this blog post, my second favorite website about books, The Next Best Book Blog, ran this review of Red Lemonade. It talks a bit more about Nash and Red Lemonade.

Getting back to the book itself, the author, Vanessa Veselka, celebrated her book release in an unusual way. She went out and got a tattoo on her arm of the lion in front of the New York Public Library with the Library of Congress catalog number below it. Her author blurb on Zazen states "She has been, at various times, a teenage runaway, a sex-worker, a union organizer, a student of paleontology, an expatriate, an independent record label owner, a train-hopper, a waitress, and a mother.". And now she can add author of a well-received book to the list.

I'm looking forward to reading this book (and, hopefully, every other book that is added to the collection). I also hope this post gave you some links so that you can learn more about independent/small publishers and their books.

Welcome

Welcome to the blog of the new Strasburg-Heisler Library Small Press Collection. In this space we will look at the books that we will be adding to the collection as well as other things related to small publishing presses (to be determined).