What is Empty City Press?
A Purpose:
Empty City Press is a micro/small press publishing house (est. 2007) dedicated to the publication and proliferation of Speculative and Alternative Literary Fiction, Poetry, and socially progressive Non-Fiction. We are interested in work that pushes boundaries both textually and culturally, while keeping a thorough, intellectually rigorous approach. Literature itself (particularly in a digital/visual age) can be a transgressive and effective means of social change; thus, our dedication is to work that forces the reader to reorient and reimagine the world. It is not enough to merely carry a radical agenda and proliferate it, nor to intellectually challenge our community and ourselves; as global participants in the human condition, we must strive to leave every empty page with the 'footprints' of our passing. We must all guide one another through the labyrinth.
An Ethic:
Empty City Press is committed to a strict DIY and community model. Our collaborations with authors and contributers are always on absolutely equal terms--this means all production, all fulfillment, and all promotion/performance is negotiated with every author as a true partnership. We consider ourselves facilitators of the publishing and marketing process, not as delineators or disseminators of artists' hard work. Standard publishing models (indeed most models within the art world) separate the producer and audience by creating an architecture, a system designed to break down that connection for the purpose of making money at each increment of separation--money that ultimately never truly applies to the producers--the authors themselves. We at Empty City Press are dedicated to publishing books that matter, not making money. Every publication helps to fund the next. We exist to help authors of like mind and purpose to reach a wider audience and to collaborate with a growing collective of peers.
A Goal:
Our immediate goal at Empty City Press is to connect and communicate with a community of like-minded authors and readers. In the short-term this means working with individual authors to best achieve their vision for their work, whether that be a small localized release accompanied by salon-style readings, or a larger release alongside a book tour. In the long term, we hope to further cultivate a DIY ethic in the publishing/literary community--to once again return power and choice to authors and contributers, to build an environment that empowers readers to take a more active role and encourages them to connect more fully to authors, and to change our communities, one book at a time.
Interested Authors and Contributers can contact us at the following street and email addresses:
Empty City Press
1109 Rayville Rd
Parkton MD 21120
emptycitypress@gmail.com
Please refer to our 'submissions' page for current submission guidelines, updated regularly.