Q & A: Chapbook Publishers

I was first introduced to chapbooks in college. One of my first poetry professors, Jeffrey McDaniel at Sarah Lawrence College, brought a few from his personal collection into one of our workshops. What I loved most about chapbooks right from the start was how different and special they all were. Saddle-stitched, perfect bound, glue-gunned and stapled, you name it. They were everything I loved about books: you could tell they were a real collaboration between the author and the press. There was something immediately special about them.

I've always I loved making little books. It gave me endless pleasure growing up. My family were writers and I wanted to copy them. And the book form was always deeply revered. I never stopped loving making books. I was really into making zines in high school and college. I started making poetry chapbooks and poetry comic chapbooks more regularly as an adult, just to give at readings before I had a book out.

When No, Dear was born, almost eight years ago, we discussed eventually publishing chapbooks in addition to the journal. The conversation always came back to this form. We chatted about it with the brilliant Jen Hyde from Small Anchor Press a few years ago, and decided to collaborate on one. Now we're working on our fourth. We see it as an extension of the work we're already doing to publish emerging poets in New York City.

Chapbooks are perfect introductions to a poet's work. You can get a sense very quickly of what a poet's about. When I decided to start producing chapbooks, I brought an editor & a cover artist to the Poets House in Manhattan. We sat on the floor among the stacks of chapbooks & passed these little books back & forth to each other—several hundred—trying to decide what we liked about the better designed ones.