The Second Annual Independent Publishing Conference at Berea College...

...took place last weekend, and was hosted once again by Loreal Bell (in the purple shirt) and Vicky Hayes (in the plaid) of the college Learning Center, and it featured more presses than last year, including Sarabande represented by Caroline Casey (in the stripes) below:
There was a poetry slam held in a converted movie theatre, which Abby and Kathleen helped judge...
..and afterwards, there was rollerskating (with glowsticks), along with Anthony DiFiore of InGroup Press:
On Saturday, Abby taught a seminar about the various types of editing and how to find careers in the field..

...and Kathleen taught one on assorted kinds of hybridity making innovations in the publishing field:

Thanks to the students for attending...

...and the Learning Center for hosting!

Mel Bosworth of Outsider Writers Collective and Press..

..completely gets the choose-your-own-adventure structure and charm of I Take Back the Sponge Cake by Loren Erdrich and Sierra Nelson. See?

"At the end of each poem and image pairing, the reader is presented with a fill-in-the-blank sentence and must choose between two homonyms to determine the next step of the experience. The construct is clever, not to mention relevant and culturally adaptive in this age of hyperlinks and touch-screen devices, and the worn interface of printed page and reader is injected with new life. The book is looping and fast, two traits that lend to its compulsive readability and also to its power to move the reader to begin again and again, hungry to try different routes."

Read the whole review here. Thanks, Mel!

Ploughshares likes The Louisiana Purchase by Jim Goar...

Reviewer Shannon Wagner likes it so much, in fact, that she compares Goar's book to "an enormous macaroni necklace," and says:

Goar’s young America exists as lore. By calling on a time when vast areas of the country were unexplored, Goar is free to mythologize America and create a country in his mind.

Read the whole smart and hilarious write-up here. Thanks, Shannon!

AWP Chicago Recap

Rose Metal Press spent February 29 through March 3 rocking AWP Chicago! It was a great week and we loved getting to see so many of our friends, authors, and other small presses in the underground maze of the bookfair and at offsite readings and events.

Thanks to all the RMP readers old and new who stopped by our bookfair table to pick up copies of our books! Here's us and our table on Day 1, all bright and shiny (On Day 4 our table was still bright and shiny, but us, less so.)

We were excited to have FOUR news books since last year's AWP: They Could No Longer Contain Themselves, Betty Superman, The Louisiana Purchase, and the brand-new-launching-at-AWP I Take Back the Sponge Cake.

Rose Metal Press authors participated in 3 offsite readings and 4 book signings at the table.

On Wednesday, February 29, Tiff Holland, author of Betty Superman, and Loren Erdrich and Sierra Nelson, authors of I Take Back the Sponge Cake read at Weeds Tavern as part of a joint reading with Lowbrow Press and Hopewell Editions. Upcoming RMP author Nicelle Davis also read at the event.

Here's a photo of Loren and Sierra reading collaboratively and showing off the book's artwork. They had the audience vote on which choose-your-own-adventure word to pick and the journey continued on from there.
This is a video of part of that reading's audience adventure!


On Thursday night, March 1, Sean Lovelace and John Jodzio of They Could No Longer Contain Themselves read at Simone's Bar with readers from Bateau Press, Burnside Review, Slope, Interrupture, and Versal. Here are a couple photos from the reading and a video of part of Sean's flash story about Memphis.




Saturday night, March 3, Adam Golaski, author of Color Plates, and Loren Erdrich, one half of the collaborative genius behind I Take Back the Sponge Cake read at The Beauty Bar with readers from Gigantic Sequins, Big Lucks, Knee-Jerk, and Magic Helicopter. Here's Loren at the Beauty Bar with the newly launched Sponge Cake!

All the readings were terrific and we send out big thanks to all the presses and journals that organized and participated in the readings!

We had a busy Friday and Saturday--we participated in a well-attended 9 a.m. panel on fiction chapbooks on Friday morning, and met up at various times with exciting new RMP authors Aaron Teel (author of chapbook winner Shampoo Horns, due out this summer), Dinty W. Moore (editor of The RMP Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction, due out in September), and Kelcey Parker (author of the novella-in-flash Liliane's Balcony, publishing fall 2013), as well as hanging around through those last frantic hours of the bookfair on Saturday. Things get pretty crazy there at the end, with broke writers running wild beneath the fluorescent lights trying to find books they promised themselves they'd buy before they left. We took cover behind the table and offered up our new credit card scanner!

Thanks also to everyone who stopped by our table to say hello, check out our books, snag some of our sweet new buttons, and find out about Rose Metal Press! We miss you all already! See you in Boston next year if not before!

Spencer Hendrixson reviews The Louisiana Purchase in the Rumpus...

...and he has this to say about it:

"As much as Goar makes the reader chant yes-yes-yes and what-the-fuck (the good kind of what-the-fuck) simultaneously, he also inspires on to crack open one's old AP U.S. History notes: "Iowa 1806," was that what the Louisiana Purchase was called? Additionally, he sends the reader searching through baseball lore: Phil Niekro, the famous knuckle-baller--did he doctor his pitches? Goar is, in some sense, who Ken Burns would be if Burns wrote poems, writing about what makes people feel good about America, but also causing the reader to question what they really know..."

Read the whole review here, and order Jim Goar's book here. Thanks, Spencer!