The "We" Page -- A Small Garlic Press HisHerstory

A Small Garlic Press -- The "We" Page... a HisHerstory

A Small Garlic Press,
a 501(c)3 Nonprofit Organization, Chicago, Illinois,
an Illinois not-for-profit corporation,
FEIN #36-4126633

A Small Garlic Press began when Kim and I, Marek, e-met in the 1990s on rec.arts.poems, across 2,000 miles as the Usenet crow e-crows.

Originally designed as a poetry laundering operation for individual poems of high merit and low visibility, ASGP produced its first chapbook on August 15, 1995.

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Others have joined ASGP including LeeAnn, katja and René. Then LeeAnn left, but we found jen. With other volunteers and friends happening along the way, we found ourselves in the thick of electronic publishing and chapbook editing, design and printing. Now, in year 2014, we are reading submissions and thinking about setting up e-commerce payment options in place of the old paper checks made out to A Small Garlic Press drawn on a U.S. bank. :)

Our latest addition is Sheila, who is the public relations hacker, in the distinguished old MIT usage sense of hacker, that of someone who is passionately at something, doing, doing.

We have published nearly 30 titles. We always keep our titles in print, and have reprinted several items. We defiantly stick to the original pricing that shames the readers into buying: $2 USD.

We have gone about creating and continually revising ASGP's artful web pages. We have also launched a very slowly expanding on-line/print literary magazine, Agnieszka's Dowry (AgD) ISSN 1088-4300, with several hundred permanent installations of writing; we also maintain a page of links to poetry resources on the net, though by no means exhaustive or encyclopedic. Kim has undertaken multiple efforts at distributing our poetry in the Pacific Northwest region and networking there. but most of that is in the past tense. We have worked for years with other innovative literary ventures on the net, such as CrossConnect at University of Pennsylvania and the Internet Literary Editors Fellowship. We have other, individual irons in the fire such as translation projects, discussion groups, haiku mailing lists, our personal web pages, serving on standards and charter committees, readings, keeping up our own individual writing, jobs.

ASGP projects are all about volunteered time, effort and equipment: We do all the work ourselves, from evaluating submissions, to editing, to computer geeking, to typography, to layout, to electronic processing of images, to pre-press, to art integration, to, often, drawing the art itself. Then we distribute the book, using Books in Print and ISBN numbers, mostly through our web page and by registering the book with booksellers on-line. We work with our authors editorially and to share the task of distribution. It's all about cooperation over long distance, as we live far apart from one another, connected by the internet.

Agnieszka's Dowry (AgD) ISSN 1088-4300 debuted on 8 March 1996, the UNESCO International Day of the Woman, as an on-line magazine. In December of that year its Issue 1 became a thick 52-page chapbook printed on heavy paper, 39 authors strong. Every poem we accepted on-line was included, the content printed alphabetically by author. This has become our tradition. Issues 11, 12 (special issue on haiku) and 13 are the latest chapbooks, latest dating from ....September 2002. Issue 14 is the open issue, being assembled on-line in full view: We place the pieces as we accept them. Or, more accurately, as we reject the vast, nay, overwhelming majority of them. An issue in progress for 12 years is the very exemplar of fossilization, I say. But we are in no hurry. We have nothing to prove.

We print direct-digital, sending book masters as computer files on removable media or over the network to a Xerox Docutech, the world's best book-making, laser-printing digital press. The books are already laid out for printing, in Postscript language or Portable Document Format (PDF), with text and typefaces and art combined. The Docutechs and similar modern beasts can receive, print, assemble, fold and trim books in one pass, which enables us to obtain inexpensive books of high quality and reprint easily when we run out of copies. Best of all, each page is an original and not a copy -- the blacks are black, the grays are fabulously gray, and the type is sharp and precise.

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We put our resources into fielding good work by new and seasoned writers and illustrators. Poetry first, yes, but likely more. Our chapbooks catalog and our magazine give an idea of what we like, without defining our limits. To those who would like to publish with us: Come, surprise us. For instance, we have had much success with letters as a literary form, specifically letters to Agnieszka. Please see the magazine for examples.

We want to have fun making things which are good to read, both on the screen and as lovingly crafted paper books. We want to have fun at readings and in collaborations with artists. We want to have fun translating poetry and debating merits of same. We want to have fun branching out into new technologies and multi-media. We want to have fun being a community service, now that we incorporated as a 501(c)3 Nonprofit Organization in Illinois. We just want to have fun, oh, we just want to have fun. That's really all we want... :)

To read our on-line magazine, please follow the link and graphical embroidery of our Agnieszka's Dowry page. To read about ordering from us or submitting work, please view our Chapbooks, Policies, and Submitting pages. To read free pamphlets, or broadsides, available for downloading and individual printing, please visit our Broadsides!! page. To go on to other poetry or resources both on-line and in print as seen through the prism of our compiled listings, please examine our Page of Links. To read about the software used for interacting with our pages, please look at our short Software page. To see who we are by name and the role we play at ASGP, or to write to any of us, come to us at the Talk to Us page.

These eight pages are the octant directions of the Compass Rose, the parent of this page, and where we state our mission and offer our welcoming poems.

-- Marek Lugowski, president, director, editor-in-chief, co-editor of Agnieszka's Dowry (AgD) ISSN 1088-4300

the Compass Rose