We're really happy that you're all are here.
Thank you again for coming.
This is the near beginning of our spring season at the Poetry
Center.
The Poetry Center has an exciting slate
of offerings that are happening throughout the spring season.
If you have not yet picked up one
of these beautiful calendars that tells you everything
that we're up to this season, I wish that you will.
And it's over they're available on the table on my right side
as you leave.
So grab one of these.
They look beautiful on your refrigerators.
And we would welcome them into your homes.
You may have noticed that you have something lovely
on your seat in front of you.
And this is a card from Ander Monson.
And so just be excited about what this is.
And I think Ander will say more about what this is when
he's up here talking about it.
But this is a piece of the book.
It's in addition to, I think, some of the things that--
I think it's an extra essay.
Is that right?
It's in the hardcover.
Right.
But it also exists in this format as well.
And you'll be able to take it with you.
And so that's a gift from him to you.
So please be excited.
[LAUGHTER]
I will quickly introduce--
or not.
But be excited.
Why wouldn't you be excited?
[LAUGHTER]
It's a gift from Ander, and he makes beautiful things.
It's actually-- beautiful pieces.
So enjoy, please.
I will introduce the two editors who are here visiting us,
and then I will get out of the way.
And they will introduce the two writers that they both
publish on their presses.
And it's an exciting thing for us
to welcome them into this space who made an effort
to be here for this and to connect us to, I think,
that other half of what writing is.
We have writers who often come and read here.
We don't always have publishers who are here presenting.
And it's an exciting thing for us
to connect both sides of it-- all sides of it.
The book ecosystem includes a lot of people,
and it's more than just writers.
And so we're very happy to have publishers
who are doing significant work in the publishing sphere
to help introduce, and talk, and be with us,
and think about books and how they happen.
Kate Dublinski is here.
She serves as an associate editor at Graywolf Press, where
she considers titles for Graywolf's fiction
and nonfiction lists.
She's worked with such authors as Robert Boswell, Alyson Hagy,
and someone named Ander Monson.
And she's been with Graywolf since 1997.
Chris Fischbach is here as well.
And he is the publisher at Coffee House
Press and an acquiring editor.
He started as a letterpress intern there in 1994.
And he's acquired and edited Ben Lerner, Valeria Luiselli,
Eimear McBride, Kate Bernheimer, Eleni Sikelianos,
Patricia Smith, JM Ledgard, Anne Waldman, Laird Hunt,
and many more.
Along with Milkweed Editions, I think that these three
represent the great northern literary publishers--
the triumvirate of the North, doing really important work
in that part of the country in significant and in marked ways
that matter--
that have mattered to us as collectors of great work
at the Poetry Center, but I think matter to readers
and to writers all over.
And you can tell this, we're happy to have them represented
in the house tonight.
But each of them both also have titles
that are up for the National Book Critics Circle Award
this year.
Coffee House has Saeed Jones, who's up for Prelude to Bruise.
And Graywolf has Claudia Rankine,
who's up in two categories for her book Citizen.
This is exciting.
These are people who are doing work
that matters in continuous, and sustained, and exciting ways.
I was excited that both of these editors
had started working at these presses in the mid 1990s.
And in particular, I was excited to go back to archive.org
and look at the Wayback Machine, which will give you--
if you go there--
what websites looked like back in earlier times.
[LAUGHTER]
So it's archive.org, and it's called the Wayback Machine.
And you put in the URL of the website,
and you can see what was happening.
And so, amazing things were happening.
[LAUGHTER]
In 1994, it appears Coffee House was still thinking
about its internet presence.
[LAUGHTER]
But by 1999, they came to the fore.
And again, let's think about that-- this predates
most of the phones in our pockets, and some of the sites
we maybe visit regularly, and certainly
most of the internet efforts we maybe make daily about how
we connect with the world.
This was a different era.
But Coffee House's site back then
even then included the iconic coffee cup
with its steaming ephemera coming out of it in GIF
or GIF format.
So you could see the steam--
[LAUGHTER]
--coming out, which is beautiful.
And that activity maybe doesn't continue,
but the logo is still there in a beautiful way, as well
as the tagline, "Where good books are brewing."
And I appreciate that that endures.
And that's one of the, I think, the themes of these two presses
is that the good work that they do endures, and it matters.
Graywolf was a different thing in many ways.
In 1997, their site included these wonderful section titles,
including-- and this is Graywolf Press--
"Pick of the Litter," "Making Tracks," "The Food Chain,"
"A Rare Breed," "Join the Pack," and "Books
to Sink Your Teeth Into."
[LAUGHTER]
And we can smirk and laugh.
But also, again, these are two presses
that have done beautiful things that have endured.
They have come a really long way both of them as presses.
They've done a lot of work over an extended period of time
that I think we can all celebrate and be excited
about both enduring, and in innovating, and challenging,
and doing exciting things.