Reading Local Seattle

{ Lynne Breedlove on Manic D: One Freak Show }

Jen Joseph from Manic D was nice enough to take some time to answer some Reading Local questions via e-mail last week. She will be at Bumbersoot this year for a twenty-five year anniversary reading for a press that has published writers such as Michelle Tea, Francesca Lia Block, and Beth Lisick. At twenty-five Manic D has become one of the West Coast’s great independent presses, such as Mercury House, Black Heron Press, Future Tense Press, and the late Black Sparrow Press. About surviving twenty-five years, Joseph said, “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

Joseph will introduce authors Amber Tamblyn (Bang Ditto), Lynn Breedlove (Lynn Breedlove’s One Freak Show), Bruce Jackson (Growing Up Free in America), and Jon Longhi (The Rise and Fall of Third Leg) . They will be on the Literary Arts Stage Monday 9/7 at 1:45 p.m.

(Interview after the break.)

Reading Local: What happened in 1984 that made you start the press? I suppose nothing might have caused you to start a press, but even nothing is something when it comes to doing something, I think.

Jen Joseph: George Orwell’s 1984 is an awesome literary classic so being in the right time and space to start a publishing company in 1984 was just too perfect to miss out on. Plus, I was 23 when I started Manic D (which began as an art project to publish my own first poetry book, The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be) and had no idea that it would become a real company.

RL: Who were some of your contemporary small presses in San Francisco in the early days? Are there any lost presses that you recall from that time?

JJ: Zeigeist Press, run by Bruce Isaacson, came out of the Cafe Babar poetry scene and published many talented folks. Bruce lives in Vegas and is still publisher at Zeitgeist. Now-defunct Black Sparrow Press was a great influence, publishing Bukowski et al in beautiful paperback editions, they’re still missed. High Risk Books, as US imprint of UK Serpent’s Tail, put out some great books in the ’90s.

RL: How do you think a book should be designed?

JJ: A book should be designed with the reader in mind. Reading should be effortless. The best designed books are the ones where you get so lost in the story that you forget that you’re reading. Or you finish reading a poem, and go back and read it again. And again. Covers should be compelling and make you want to pick up the book. Manic D has won several awards for its cover designs from the  AIGA and Print magazine.

RL: Of course a lot has changed in the technology of publication since the days of the Publish it Yourself Handbook. How did you design, and produce, The Future Isn’t What is Used to Be? How does that compare to say, Cheryl Klein’s recent 352 page book, Lilac Mines?

JJ: The first two Manic D books were before computers were invented so they were typeset and laid out on boards using a hot wax roller. Fun! Where’s my T-square? I still have that around here somewhere. Then the books were sent to a book manufacturer in the Midwest. The first Manic D book was typeset by Chris Carlsson who published a zine called Processed World. Books didn’t need barcodes then, either. Nowadays, Manic D books are designed in InDesign, converted to PDFs, which are uploaded to a Midwest book manufacturer’s FTP site.

RL: Do you have any recommendations about how to books or handbooks for people interested in starting a press?

JJ: There’s a lot of information online about this–Dan Poynter’s Para Publishing website is a good place to start.

RL: What have been some of the key moments in Manic D history?

JJ: Co-sponsoring the National Poetry Slam in San Francisco in 1993 was fun: great writers like Reg E. Gaines, Patricia Smith, Maggie Estep, Jeffrey McDaniel, Matt Cook, Hal Sirowitz, Marci Blackman, and many others participated … it was phenomenal.

Touring with Lollapalooza in 1994 was also amazing: the 3rd stage was dedicated to poetry and spoken word. The bands – Beastie Boys, George Clinton + Parliment, L7, the Breeders, Shonen Knife, The Boredoms, Nick Cave, Green Day, Stereolab – were terrific. The Manic D crew did 7 or 8 shows, I think.

As publisher of Manic D, I was invited to participate in a small conference on the East Coast in 1996 and met the President (Bill Clinton), and gave a copy of Bruce Jackson’s Growing Up Free in America to Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer. That was cool.

Manic D author Amber Tamblyn is going to be on Regis on September 10th, which is wacky …

Morty Diamond’s anthology, From the Inside Out: Radical Gender Transformation, has been taught at Harvard. The Hillman’s award-winning book, Intersex (For Lack of a Better Word) is being taught at Princeton this semester.

And, of course, nothing’s ever better than hearing from readers that a Manic D book changed their lives.

RL: 25 years is a long time to do anything, much less run a small press on the West Coast of the United States. Do you have any general recommendations for would be publishers?

JJ: Stay focused and be who you are. Apply creativity to every aspect of the business. Don’t let the bastards get you down.

RL: I heard that you read your slush pile. That a person actually reads what is sent to Manic D press, or makes a reasonable attempt to do this. A slush pile seems like one of those intractable and odd points of connection between a press and an author and every press kind of deals with it in a different way. Some presses just don’t deal with slush at all. Some pretend to deal with it, but don’t really. How do you deal the manuscripts? How many are there?

JJ: Manic D publishes fewer than 10 titles each year … sometimes only six. We received hundreds of manuscripts annually. Over the years, I’ve gotten to the point where I can figure out quickly if a manuscript really stands out and needs to be part of our catalog. Many writers have 20 very good poems but a book needs to be at least 64 pages. It’s not easy to have 50 very good poems. Same with fiction. Or anything.

RL: What’s next for your press?

JJ: Great books coming out this fall: Bang Ditto, poetry by Amber Tamblyn (a great poet with an awesome day job) and Lynnee Breedlove’s One Freak Show by Lynn Breedlove (radical humor redefining what it means to be human). Also, a 200-page woodcut graphic novel, Walking Shadows, by Neil Bousfield, and Women of the Undergound: Music, interviews by Zora von Burden, featuring Laurie Anderson, Moe Tucker, Wanda Jackson, Jarboe, Kembra, and lots more.

Jen Joseph will be on the Literary Arts Stage Monday 9/7 at 1:45 p.m.

Author: Reading Local: Seattle

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