These are the labors of love for literature.
For these founders of independent literary publications and presses, there is no pay and little glory. Only the promise of long hours and long odds.
There are really no statistics on how many literary magazines and independent presses exist in this country. It is a notoriously ephemeral bunch, many publishing a time or two, or printing a book or two, before fading away long before any official count can be conducted.
But the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses says such endeavors “accomplish the backstage work of American literature: discovering new writers; supporting mid-career writers; publishing the creative voices of communities underrepresented in the mainstream.”
And that’s the intent of these literary laborers. Undeterred, they are publishing their own contributions to the artistic and literary communities of Mankato.
Landlocked
Jacob Downs and Brian Rosemeyer created Landlocked in the kitchen of Pagliai’s Pizza in Mankato.
Last summer, while churning out large sausage and pepperoni pies, the two pizza cooks were also churning out ideas for how they could find an internship to complete their media communications degrees at Minnesota State University.
“We decided to create our own internship,” Downs said. They launched a free literary arts magazine.
Because they need a supervisor to complete their internship, Downs and Rosemeyer first secured oversight from the Midwest Art Catalyst (a nonprofit devoted to providing arts and music opportunities for youth). In return, all revenue from the ads sold in their magazine benefit the organization.
“We kind of realized there’s nothing like this right now,” said Downs, referencing a long list of now-defunct arts and music magazines in Mankato. “And (Midwest Art Catalyst) was very supportive.”
They started working on the first issue in November, bringing it to downtown Mankato newsstands in January.
Their inaugural effort featured a story on the Mankato Brewery and another on Face of Oblivion, a Mankato death metal band recently signed to a record deal. They had a guest contributor, guest artwork for the cover and even a series of guest cartoons.
They designed the magazine piecemeal after college classes and sidejobs, and they hammered out most of their executive decisions at the pizza oven.
“We’d be asking: ‘Is this a sausage or a pepperoni? And, did you get that article done?’” Rosemeyer said.
The pair estimate they’ve both long since topped the 128-hour threshold to satisfy their internship. But they have no intentions of stopping now. They’ve started a Facebook page where people who hit “like” can read the entire magazine online and their second issue is already finished.
They’ve also vowed to keep the magazine free and continue churning out a quality product Ñ despite the stress and long hours.
“Advertisers have trusted us. We want to do it right,” Downs said.
Rosemeyer added: “We’ve had just huge balls of stress about getting this thing out.”
Postcard Press
When Caitlin O’Sullivan got homesick and started sending postcards home, she noticed something unexpected:
“I noticed people were hanging on to them. I thought that was interesting.”
O’Sullivan is a third-year MFA student at Minnesota State University. A talented writer herself who will be reading her own work during the Good Thunder Reading Series in March, O’Sullivan said she started Postcard Press on a whim last spring.
Since then, she’s published almost two dozen pieces of poetry and flash fiction on postcards. Each are accompanied with a photo or graphic illustration she designs in collaboration with a graphic designer friend.
Each is remarkably original. One month a three-paragraph muse on an unsuccessful relationship (“We threw rock-paper-scissors. I vanished.”) Another month, it’s a poem on sasquatch conventions or a poem about a cafe where everyone is in love with someone who loves someone else.
“The terrible thing about literary journals is no one reads them,” O’Sullivan said. “We need to take (poetry and prose) out of the literary journal and make them as accessible as postcards on the fridge.”
When she’s not teaching or attending class, much of the time O’Sullivan spends working on the press is devoted to sifting through the submissions she receives each month -- upward of 75 every 30 days. She started with about 10 subscriptions ($2.50 each or $20 for a year) and now has about 50. The proceeds keep the press profit-neutral and though she doesn’t pay contributors yet, she’d like to in the future.
“As someone who is concerned with finding ways to make literature available to more people, this is sort of my contribution,” she said. “I enjoy sharing these things that ought to be read.”
RockSaw R.I.P.
Jorge Evans is one of those literary laborers who has loved and lost -- temporarily lost anyway.
Last year, after a remarkable two-year run of producing handmade chapbooks, Evans put his RockSaw Press on hiatus. After graduating Minnesota State and heading to Washington state for work, the time and financial commitment of operating an independent press proved a bit too much. Though, Evans swears to bring the press back to life someday.
“It’s not a matter of which I’d rather do,” he wrote from his home while recovering from the flu, “it’s a matter of which is going to keep my bills paid. ... I will bring (RockSaw) back; it’s just a matter of time.”
Evans approached his press like a craftsman approaches a trade.
With his press’ stated mission of producing works that focus on the middle class (hence the name RockSaw: “It’s a melding of machine and intelligence”), Evans hand-produced 13 chapbooks by mostly Midwestern authors. His first runs amounted to 60 books each (upward of 100 hours to complete) with later runs numbering 200.
Publishing the old-fashioned way, he said, preserved the spirit of the process and recalled a time when products were made to last:
“I think of the machines that make the books, the smell of fresh paper, the ink-damp air. ... Of all the tools I have, and I have far too many for someone who lives in an apartment, the one tool that I’ve never had to replace or repair is an Estwing 20-ounce hammer. It was my grandfather’s hammer Ñ made in Rockford, Ill. It’s this toughness, resilience and dependability that I wanted to see in literature.”
Along the way, Evans never turned a profit, though he came close a few times.
While some other presses are content to charge reading fees to submitting writers, the idea was anathema to Evans, even if it meant sustaining his passion, his craft and trade, a while longer.
“The point was never to make money,” he wrote. “The point was to get work out into the world that I admired and thought deserved to be published.”
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