Some close friends of mine are among the founding members behind a nifty new indie publishing venture: a print-on-demand collective whose goals are “to nurture and promote distinctive authorial voices, especially those that fall outside of commercially acceptable notions of literature, and to do everything we can to bring those writers to the largest possible audience.”
The collective came together in response to the increasingly homogenized books that corporate publishers and chain retailers have determined will sell the most copies. “We recognize that there are readers who want to be challenged instead of placated.” Founded by Lisa Dierbeck, Joshua Furst, DW Gibson, Dale Peck and Choire Sicha, Mischief + Mayhem intends to “promulgate writing unconcerned with having to please conservative editorial boards or corporate bookstore executives. It will also help writers earn a living wage without compromising their radical aesthetics.”
I’m genuinely sorry to have missed the launch party, which reputedly featured a burlesque dancer with a dress made from the pages of a book and a raffle whose prizes included a graffiti kit (stencils, spraypaint, and a wild rag to conceal your identity). Wild Rag being the name of their blog and webzine whose regular contributors include “such well-respected writers as New Yorker editor Ben Greenman, journalist and editor Zia Jaffrey, and New York Times art critic Martha Schwendener, each of whom will offer a challenging, rambunctious perspective on things literary, cultural, and political. Additionally, the company plans to host readings, performances and other social gatherings in order to build a literary community in the real world as well as online.”
And yeah, I’ll be blogging for them too! On translation, fabulism, genre, forgotten authors, the occasional “Letter from Brussels”… So go like M+M on Facebook!
From their press release: » Read the rest of this entry «