A Publishing Panel Presentation
For writers with a finished manuscript, deciding how to publish, and where to send it, can be daunting. What are your chances of getting it published at a large press? What will the experience of working with an editor/publisher be? What cut will you get from the profits, if any? And with so many presses to choose from, how do you decide the best avenue for publishing? Meet three small Northeastern press publishers who are working hard to get the best work out there.
In this panel, moderated by MWPA Executive Director Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, the 3 panelists—Agnes Bushell of Littoral Books, Valerie Lawson of Resolute Bear Press, and Diane Lockward of Terrapin Books— will discuss how they started their presses, how to write a successful letter of inquiry, whether writers sending to small presses need an agent, what you can expect from a small press vs. a larger one (benefits as well as drawbacks), what they look for when deciding what to publish and what to expect out of the process of publishing a book with a small press. The panel will conclude with a Q&A session.
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Littoral Books is a small press based in Portland, Maine. It was founded in 1975 by members of the Portland Women’s Group for the express purpose of publishing the work of women writers. Littoral Books was one of the founding presses of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, and several of its members served on MWPA’s first board of directors. The press went into hibernation in 1976, but forty-three years later, in 2018, it renewed publication. Littoral Books is now committed to publishing quality books in a variety of genres by writers of all genders from Maine and New England. Agnes Bushell is one of the founders of Littoral Books and is currently its co-director. She is a novelist and Professor Emerita in Liberal Arts at Maine College of Art.
With her husband, Michael Brown, Lawson co-edited Off the Coast literary journal through Resolute Bear Press for eight years. In 2018, Lawson edited 3 Nations Anthology: Native, Canadian & New England Writers published by Resolute Bear which went on to win the Maine Literary Award for anthology in 2018. Resolute Bear released Bear, Coyote, Raven by Jason Grundstrum-Whitney in 2019. Kuhkomossonuk Akonutomuwinokot: Stories Our Grandmothers Told Us, a bilingual Passamaquoddy/English collection of stories edited by Wayne A. Newell and Robert M. Leavitt, and Blues of the Lost Places by Jason Grundstrom-Whitney, were released in 2021. Valerie Lawson’s creative work has been published in Café Review, About Place Journal, The Catch, Maine Farms, and others. Lawson has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize three times. She studied Electronic Publishing and Book Arts at the University of Maine in Machias. Lawson served on the board of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance from 2013-2015.
Terrapin Books is a small press specializing in poetry books. They publish individual authors, an occasional anthology, and a small number of craft books. During over six years of operation, they have published almost three dozen poetry books, three anthologies and four poetry craft books.
Diane Lockward is the editor of The Strategic Poet: Honing the Craft and three earlier craft books: The Practicing Poet: Writing Beyond the Basics (Terrapin Books, 2018), The Crafty Poet II: A Portable Workshop (Terrapin Books, 2016), and The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop (Terrapin Books, rev. ed., 2016). She is also the author of four poetry books, most recently The Uneaten Carrots of Atonement (Wind Publications, 2016). Her awards include the Quentin R. Howard Poetry Prize, a poetry fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and a Woman of Achievement Award. Her poems have been included in such journals as the Harvard Review, Southern Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner. Her work has also been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac, and Ted Kooser's American Life in Poetry. She is the founder and publisher of Terrapin Books.
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