Bookmarks

In the Looped
Things are looking rosy up in Evanston. Agate Publishing just got the second print run of Andy Winston's Looped off the presses after the sprawling Chicago novel sold out its original 3,000-copy run. It's not bad for a first run, though not surprising, either, given the flood of good reviews (including one in Time Out Chicago's first issue).

The good news continues for Agate, which just learned its nonfiction title The Real Lives of Black Women will be its third release to make ESSENCE magazine's best-seller list (Jill Nelson's novel Sexual Healing also made the list and won a 2004 PEN Oakland literary award).

Agate is an intriguing specimen in little-guy publishing: While most small presses find their niche and plug away at building an audience, Agate is all over the map. Originally publishing nonfiction African-American and business titles, it now includes a broader range of work, like Winston's novel.

"We've expanded a lot; the big challenge now is to find equilibrium at this level of putting out a new book every month," says Doug Seibold, Agate's president and founder. "We're still looking to expand a bit, that's for sure."

Agate will also be the first small press to be featured in a new program at Barbara's Bookstores. In June, each store will showcase Agate's list, culminating with a party at the end of the month, when the press will celebrate its second anniversary with a band and readings from its local authors.

"The relationship between a small press and the independent bookstore is such an important one," says Lynda Fitzgerald, assistant general manager of Barbara's. "Agate's a great publisher to start with because they're new and local and have a variety of titles."

Over the edge
Fractal Edge Press, the local poetry chapbook publisher, is also throwing a party for a slew of its local authors. DvA Gallery will be filled to the brim with too many poets to be named here, but it's a testament to Fractal Edge's live-to-print ethic that the majority of readers come from the open mike and slam scene here.

"I could have as many as six books there that night," says Wayne Jones, FEP's publisher. "It's turning into a real jam."

FEP will release at least two books that night: Beatriz Badikian Gartler's novel, Old Gloves, and Charlie Newman's second poetry chapbook, deadmachinecity.

If you can't fit into the gallery because of all the poets in attendance, you can catch the live broadcast by newbie online literary magazine ink(&)ashes at www.inkandashes.com.

Broader field of vision
The Myopic Poetry Series, one of the city's best and most experimental, is switching up its format a bit. Curator Chuck Stebelton has invited storysmith Adam Levin to put together a fiction reading the first Sunday of every month. Levin, who won lit mag Tin House's Summer Literary Seminar's contest in 2003 for his story "Frankenwittgenstein," read at Myopic in April. The idea to do fiction was floated by Stebelton in a bar after the reading, as most of these things happen.

"I'd been intending to farm some of this out, and I don't know what's being published in contemporary fiction right now," Stebelton says. "Part of my motivation for doing the series is to get exposure to work I wouldn't normally get exposure to, and fiction is definitely a part of that."

The series will kick off Sunday 5 with a reading from Charles Blackstone (author of The Week You Weren't Here) and, because the Myopic fellas book further in advance than the Olympics, they already have their schedule filled through October.—Jonathan Messinger

For more info on the FEP and Myopic readings.