Augury Books is an independent press based in
Brooklyn, New York. Committed to publishing innovative work from emerging and
established writers, Augury Books seeks to reaffirm the diversity of the
reading public. Our authors have received awards such as the O. Henry Prize for
short fiction, the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s “Discover” Award for
creative nonfiction, and the Tony Quagliano International Poetry Award. Our
authors have also been nominated for the CLMP Firecracker Award, the Lambda
Literary Arts Award, and have been featured on the Poetry Society of America
and the Academy of American Poets’ websites. Founded in 2010, Augury Books has
published and continues to publish outstanding poetry, nonfiction, and fiction
by a diverse range of voices. In late 2017, Augury Books became an imprint of
Brooklyn Arts Press. We are a proud member of CLMP, the Community of Literary
Magazines and Presses. Our titles are distributed by Small Press Distribution
(SPD). Our editorial board is dedicated to fairness and quality of work.
Kate Angus is a founding editor of Augury Books
and the author of So Late to the Party (Negative Capability Press,
2016). Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in The Atlantic, The
Washington Post, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Academy of American Poets’ “Poem-a-Day”
newsletter, Best New Poets 2010 and Best New Poets 2014. She is
the Creative Writing Advisor for the Mayapple Center for Arts and Humanities at
Sarah Lawrence College.
1 – When did Augury Books first start? How have your original
goals as a publisher shifted since you started, if at all? And what have you
learned through the process?
Augury
Books was founded in 2010 with an eye towards publishing innovative and exciting
work from new and emerging writers. That hasn’t changed. But we have expanded!
We started off only publishing poetry, but in 2014 we opened up to short story
collections and creative nonfiction titles. We’ve also had some editorial board
turnover. A few early-days editors (Christine Kanownik and Matthew Cunha)
stepped down due to time constraints, but since 2012-2013 we’ve had a pretty
stable editorial board of myself, Associate Editor Kimberly Steele, and
Assistant Editor Nicolas Amara. And this past November, Augury became an
imprint of Brooklyn Arts Press so now Joe Pan/BAP is our publisher.
I’ve
learned so much! We all had to pick up various business skills (accounting,
marketing, organizing, etc.) on the fly, but what I’m most aware of is how my
approach to editing has evolved. When Augury was a young press, I think I had
the arrogance of youth and felt more inclined to try to impose my aesthetics on
the manuscripts we published; as the press and I have both aged, I find myself
gravitating more towards collaboration, specifically the kind of collaboration
where editorial conversations focus on how to best help our authors shape their
words into the strongest version of what they want to say, rather than
filtering their vision through my personal aesthetic preferences.
2 – What first brought you
to publishing?
Meghan O’Rourke, one of my MFA teachers at The New School, asked me to be her Poetry
Reader at The Paris Review and I also applied to be a fiction reader for
A Public Space. Because of my experiences reading through the slush pile
and learning from editors at both magazines, I felt like I had some small grasp
of how publishing worked. Of course, even though I learned quite a lot at TPR
and APS, I wasn’t even remotely prepared for indie book publishing,
but it was a great start.
3 – What do you consider
the role and responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?
I
think the role of small press publishers is to find, amplify, and nurture
writers who for whatever reason the bigger publishing houses have overlooked.
4 – What do you see your
press doing that no one else is?
I
don’t think there’s anything we’re doing that no one else is. There are so many
great small and micro-presses out there and they are all doing amazing work.
5 – What do you see as the
most effective way to get new books out into the world?
I
don’t really have a good answer—we are constantly revising our strategies for
how to best launch our books so that they can find a wider audience. I think it
has to be a collaboration between author and press. An author can’t carry the
weight of launching their book on their own, but neither can publishers do very
much for authors who won’t reach out to whatever connections they might have.
Publishers need to develop and maintain relationships with reviewers, reading
series curators, institutions, etc., and keep an active presence in the lit
world, but authors also need to do this work as well. I say this as both an
editor and a writer: writers will always be their own best advocate. No matter
how much your publisher loves and believes in your work, you have to go to bat
for yourself over and over again.
Authors
can help by publishing work in multiple genres, for instance, to widen their
readership or doing group interviews or podcasts or writing guest posts for
literary blogs or speaking on panels or guest teaching—really anything that
helps put you and your words in front of a wide variety of people. Doing
readings helps, both conventional readings as well as those in less
conventional spaces. And collaborating with people in other art forms also.
6 – How involved an editor
are you? Do you dig deep into line edits, or do you prefer more of a light
touch?
Both
I think. I certainly take deep dives into the manuscripts we publish, doing
line edits and such, but I offer my edits in the spirit of collaboration, of
conversation, and I believe with the same goal shared by the author: that the
final version of the book is the best possible articulation of their vision. I
hope the writers whose work Augury has published would agree with my assessment
of this process, but you’d have to ask them.
7 – How do your books get distributed? What are your usual print
runs?
Our
books are all distributed by SPD (Small Press Distribution) so they’re
available at many bookstores, as well as online. We do print on demand now so
our print runs vary based on demand.
8 – How many other people
are involved with editing or production? Do you work with other editors, and if
so, how effective do you find it? What are the benefits, drawbacks?
Augury
is my baby in many ways, but also absolutely a group effort. Over the years, I’ve
relied on our Assistant Editor Nicolas Amara and Associate Editor Kimberly
Steele to do much of the production work and help make many decisions. We have
also been blessed in the past with some wonderful design people—Mike Miller who
has done many of our covers, and Isabella Giancarlo who did our most recent
interior work. We’ve also had many great interns along the way. And now that we
are BAP’s imprint, we have a fantastic new publisher: Joe Pan. This press would
not exist without all of these people and the amazing selfless work they have
done over the years and, in many cases, continue to do.
9– How has being an
editor/publisher changed the way you think about your own writing?
I
don’t know that it’s changed how I think about my own writing, but it has made
me much more sanguine about how and when and if my writing gets published. I
know firsthand now how much goes into deciding which manuscripts are chosen and
that quality of work is absolutely paramount but also other things do factor
in: for example, how does this work fit into the press’s overall catalog, how
many books can we afford to publish at this time, is this book too similar in
some ways to something else we have recently published or, conversely, is it
too dissonant with the rest of our catalog, etc. My role at Augury has allowed
me to accept my own rejections more easily, and not flagellate myself as much.
I now understand better that often a “No” doesn’t mean the work is bad—often it
just isn’t right for that press at that time or for that issue of a journal.
10– How do you approach
the idea of publishing your own writing? Some, such as Gary Geddes when he
still ran Cormorant, refused such, yet various Coach House Press’ editors had
titles during their tenures as editors for the press, including Victor Coleman
and bpNichol. What do you think of the arguments for or against, or do you see
the whole question as irrelevant?
I
guess for me it’s irrelevant. I understand the arguments for it and against it
and I think it’s a choice every editor/publisher needs to make for themselves
and there aren’t any wrong answers—it’s just individual preference. Before my
first book was published, I wanted it to come out on someone else’s press—both
to have their support and structure, as well as their editorial input, and also
I guess to have a kind of outside seal of approval, a feeling of validation
from another editor and press that said “Yes, we believe in you and your work.”
And I got all those things and so much more with Sue Walker at Negative Capability Press. For me it was important to have that experience of being
published by someone else and I will always be grateful to Sue and Megan and
the other folks at Negative Capability Press for believing in me and in So
Late to the Party. But I don’t know how I will feel when my second book is
done—I might, at that point, want to maintain control over the rights to my
book, the distribution, being able to make e-books, etc. instead. All of that
is so far away right now: I just want to concentrate on writing my next book
rather than trying to predict what model of publication I’ll want to follow
once it is written.
11– How do you see Augury
Books evolving?
Well,
we just made a really big change a few months ago. This past fall, we became an
imprint of Brooklyn Arts Press. The transition from being fully-independent
into being nurtured as a small wing of a larger press has been very smooth and
we all (Augury and BAP) are really excited about our future collaborations with
the books we’ll be publishing!
12– What, as a publisher,
are you most proud of accomplishing? What do you think people have overlooked
about your publications? What is your biggest frustration?
I
am so proud of all the books we have brought out into the world. My biggest
frustration is figuring out how to find a wider audience for our authors.
13– Who were your early
publishing models when starting out?
We
definitely admire Wave Books, Slope Editions, Octopus Books, Flood Editions and
Milkweed Editions, Ugly Duckling Presse, Four Way Books, Alice James Books, and
others like them. I don’t know that we modeled ourselves on any of them
precisely; rather, we loved the work they were publishing and felt inspired to—like
them—help bring beautiful books out into the world.
14– How does Augury Books
work to engage with your immediate literary community, and community at large?
What journals or presses do you see Augury Books in dialogue with? How
important do you see those dialogues, those conversations?
I
don’t know that I see us as being in any specific dialogue, although I guess on
a certain level all presses and journals are engaged in a larger conversation
with each other and with writers and readers. We do seek to support and
collaborate with other presses, and with writers and editors we aren’t formally
affiliated with. I think the most obvious example of this is our new
affiliation with Brooklyn Arts Press—as BAP’s imprint, we are collaborating
with them through conversations, through sharing resources and ideas and
networks and events, and through sharing table space at AWP and other
conferences. We’ll also be participating in an offsite reading at AWP this year
organized by Switchback Books that also involves BAP, Saturnalia, and Black Ocean. And Augury Books is also part of the Small Press Union, a wonderful
resource-sharing and support network
created by Lynne DeSilva-Johnson of The Operating System. I think that it’s an
absolute imperative for small presses to be supportive of each other, and there
are many ways of doing this: we can be supportive of each other by organizing
and/or attending events, by purchasing each other’s books, by helping publicize
things (events, publications, reading periods, fund raisers, etc.) for each
other and by offering practical help by working tables for each other or doing
shipping or paying more of the table costs if we’re not able to be there in
person. There are a lot of ways of being part of the literary community—we’re
all in this together, although we all also have our own individual responsibilities
and constraints so we may not be able to be in it together in exactly the same
ways.
15– Do you hold regular or
occasional readings or launches? How important do you see public readings and
other events?
We
definitely hold launch parties for all of our new titles and we try to do
readings occasionally for other things as well—collaborative readings offsite
at AWP and the occasional showcase reading when we have enough Augury authors
in the same place at the same time. I love launch parties: they’re like a
wedding or a baby shower—a wonderful way of celebrating something new and
beautiful and welcoming it to the world. While I do like public readings both
to hear work in the author’s own voice and also as a social occasion, I admit I
engage more deeply when I’m reading a book alone as a silent solitary act
rather than being in a crowd where the work is read aloud to me.
16– How do you utilize the
internet, if at all, to further your goals?
Our
titles can be purchased online so the Internet is part of our distribution. And
we accept only accept submissions online so the Internet is also how we find
new books to publish.
17– Do you take
submissions? If so, what aren’t you looking for?
Yes
we do! In fact, we have an open reading period during January this year. We
aren’t able to accept anthologies or works in translation, for various business
reasons, nor do we accept novels (I love novels but don’t feel qualified to
edit or market one), but other than that we are open to submissions from
writers at any stage of their career.
18– Tell me about three of
your most recent titles, and why they’re special.
It’s
hard to narrow down our catalog to just three books, but I’ll talk about a
recent title in each of the three genres that we publish.
Poetry:
Arisa White’s You’re the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened, a Lambda
Literary Award Finalist for Lesbian Poetry, is one of our titles dearest to my
heart. I’ll quote Christopher Soto’s lovely review of this collection for Lamba
Literary where he calls this book “a love letter to our shared queer of color
community” and notes that “titles of many poems in the collection are literal
translations of the word gay. Many of the original words, before being
translated, are derogatory in their original language. Thus, Arisa White
repurposes that pain and inscribes it with love, tenderness, poetry. ‘You’ becomes
witness to the beauty held in what was once called derogatory. ‘You’ is able to
witness the act of reclaiming language.”
Fiction:
Sara Schaff’s Say Something Nice About Me, a finalist for CLMP’s
Firecracker Award for Fiction, is a fantastic collection. Sara’s prose is
luminous and sharp, and the stories in the collection explore the risks taken—and
illusions created—by her characters at turning points in their lives, trying to
grapple with how to live in the unknown. I’ll quote Dan Choan’s assessment of
her work her, as he says “The stories…intertwine in complex and fascinating
patterns. They are all explorations of the meaning of human connection…Say
Something Nice About me is a thoughtful and provoking book, the beginning
to a great career!”
Creative
Nonfiction: Randall Horton’s Hook, the winner of the Great Lakes
Colleges Association’s (GLCA) 2016 “Discover” Prize for Creative Nonfiction, is
a gripping story of transformation. This memoir by the poet, musician (Heroes
Are Gang Leaders) and educator Randall Horton charts his early years as an
unassuming Howard University student turned homeless drug addict, international
cocaine smuggler, and incarcerated felon, and the redemption he found through
writing. The book is structured as a multilayered narrative bridging both past
and present through Horton’s memories, as well as his correspondence in letters
with the anonymous Lxxxx, a Latina woman awaiting trial. To quote the GLCA
judges, “Randall Horton delivers careful rough-hewn, poetically-charged
language at the service of a memoir that runs against the grain of a typical ‘recovery’
narrative. What results is searing commentary, social critique under the guise
of a memoir within a memoir…[T]his text has the potential to speak to people
for generations.”
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