Small books, long echoes

Chapbooks, flash fiction and the lyric essay. Thirty-two pages, hand-sewn, printed in two colours and gone within a year. This is the record of what the small presses made, and how it is done.

32ppthe length a folded signature allows

2 coloursthe riso press most chapbooks are printed on

<1yrhow long a short print run tends to last

A chapbook is usually one or two folded signatures, saddle-stitched with two staples on the spine. That physical limit is why the form runs short.

The shelf

Eight chapbooks published between 2012 and 2015, each recorded here with what it is and where it lives now.

lyric essay · 2012Level EndBrian Oliu. A video game walkthrough written as lyric essay.Read essays · 2012In Defense of MonstersBJ Hollars on the creatures we cannot dismiss.Read short fiction · 2013An Elegy for MathematicsAnne Valente. One of the press’s most reviewed titles.Read flash fiction · 2015Behind This MirrorLena Bertone. Seven sisters and an angry appendage.Read short fiction · 2011PhantomsChad Simpson. Midwestern lives in motion.Read novella · 2013FloaterKate Bernheimer, illustrated by Noah Saterstrom.Read

How it is made

The practical half of the site. What a chapbook is, how to publish one, what a lyric essay is, and where to send short work. Start with what a chapbook actually is.