Libby Hart: The biggest risk is something I try to attempt again and again. It is to let go of the wheel when I begin to write a poem in order for the creative process to take over. It’s at this point that I fully accept writing is often communion with the unknown.

John Newman:  For me writing is the risk, and if you’re writing and your heart isn’t beating faster, then what you’re actually doing is typing. Everything I write begins with a tiny explosion in my brain that coughs up an image, a character, a first line. And I can see it, and I can feel it and hear and smell it. And I close my eyes for just a moment and the whole thing happens right there inside me; I see it all from beginning to end and it’s so fucking perfect. And then...well, I have to somehow put down that story in words. I have to reach inside and pull it out intact, without breaking it, without my great clumsy paws warping it beyond recognition. And I know it’s impossible.

LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is a vocalist, writer, and sound artist who publishes and performs extensively. She is one of twenty-nine authors from around the world whose work appears in the new anthology Writing That Risks: New Work from Beyond the Mainstream from Red Bridge Press.

Seth Amos: Your poem in the anthology, “bacche kā pōtRā,” is a golden shovel, a form created by Terrance Hayes when he used a line from Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “We Real Cool.” Why did you decide to use this form, and how do you approach form for other poems?

LaTasha Diggs: I was invited to submit to another anthology that was focusing on the form. Before that time, I knew nothing about the golden shovel. But upon reading Terrance's poem and understanding how it was constructed, it made me curious. I ended up writing about eight within a week. Most loosely stuck to the formula. I don’t consider myself a formalist. When I decide to play with one, often it has to do with examining a language and finding ways in which my interests in using multiple languages can be juxtaposed against a form. Basically, I give myself a bigger headache.

Seth Amos: What was the moment or event that made you realize you wanted to be a writer? Was it a different one that made you want to write poetry?

Michelle S. Lee: I have been writing stories in one form or another since I was a kid. I still have the small, stapled pages that tell the tale of a lemon meringue pie who just wanted to be eaten. When I was a little older, I sent a query letter to a publisher of Beatrix Potter books, believing I also had, in a manuscript pecked out on a typewriter, captured the lively happenstances of mannerly and quite moral field animals.

[A poem] is a pinhole for the reader: he/she peeks through, squints,
into this tight space and sees an entire world that will only last a second.

David Ellis Dickerson’s story “Display Wings” opens the forthcoming Red Bridge Press anthology Writing That Risks. It’s a whimsical and poignant piece about a museum docent desperately trying to reorganize the museum’s collections according to a new system of categorization while a rebel army might or might not be on its way to burn the place down. Dickerson is a regular contributor to This American Life on NPR, and has published a memoir, multiple works of short fiction, and essays in places as diverse as The Atlantic Monthly and Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. He teaches composition, creative writing, and African-American literature, and also draws comics.

Deborah Steinberg: Your memoir, House of Cards, is about working as a greeting card writer for Hallmark as a young MFA graduate. Since then, you’ve been a frequent contributor to NPR’s This American Life and you draw comics. How do these more mainstream pursuits relate to your interest in experimental fiction?

David Dickerson: The uniting element is surprisingly simple: humor. I got into greeting cards because I liked drawing cartoons and writing light verse. I got into telling funny stories on the radio in the same way. And my favorite experimental fiction authors are the ones who are funny, from the classic purveyors like Italo Calvino and Donald Barthelme to modern geniuses like Aimee Bender and Karen Russell. To my mind, a well-executed experimental fiction is a sort of joke or puzzle that exists to satirize readerly conventions.

The other way the mainstream pursuits relate to experimental fiction is a little sadder: they fund it. Experimental fiction rarely hits the bestseller lists. Those of us who love it have to pursue it as a sideline, and I’m very fortunate that most of my sidelines also involve writing.

Jacob hits a button on the Astrovan’s radio. Dusty Stump’s favorite song, “Life Is a Highway,” is playing as we approach the sign that reads: LEAVING THE RESERVATION: THE ERIE IS COMING.
     On the Rez, where fireworks are legal, Jeff Sky Hawk, an Erie, mixed gunpowder—and nitrates and different compositions to give colors—with Dusty’s ashes into assorted fireworks. The flashy red box filled with rockets sits way in the back of the extended Astrovan that contains generations of Erie children. I am driving. I am the Matriarch of the Erie. I connect all Erie.
     Everyone is Erie.
     Erie mental structuring is not in linear form, but rather holographic: Each contains the whole. And the whole contains each Erie. The Erie is capable of immediate connection with the sacred: Consciousness unconfined by space. Or time. Or a physical being. Free. The essence of our being is unconditional love. As the Erie say, Love, without reservation. 
     Beside me in the passenger seat is Dusty’s son, Jacob Stump, age 13. His dark hair covers his face to avoid intimacy. Jacob resembles his father, but he has my blue eyes. My long black hair is streaked white from sorrow; it has never been cut.
     Jacob warns me urgently, “You’re going too fast, Grandma.”
     Lightning turns the world brilliant; thunder shakes the earth. The atmosphere is white, then black. We pass over the border of the sovereign nation, where fireworks are legal—then they are not!

The house was packed, and the words flowed with the wine, as poets and fiction writers hailing from NYC, LA, and the Bay Area performed to a standing-room-only crowd in San Francisco’s Mission District. It was the first event for Red Bridge Press and a wonderful night of literary mash-ups, with people who genuinely love writing that ranges far afield from the ordinary. PEN Oakland Award winner Mary Mackey was in the audience and expressed sentiments shared by many:

"The Small Press Love Fest transported me back to a time when writers wrote because they wanted to be interesting, edgy, risk-taking, ecstatic--because, in short, they loved to write. I haven't heard so much interesting work in a long time."

Each press brought its own style and swagger: from New York City’s great weather for MEDIA to Corium Magazine’s online elegance; from the Beat-influenced Ambush Review to the byte-inspired Red Bridge Press. And the large gallery space at Alley Cat Books set the mood and allowed us all to share the love. RBP’s own Deborah Steinberg emceed the night’s literary flirtations. No eyes were averted as east met west in a beautiful public display of affection. Each author molded and mixed language into a cadence all their own. Readers included R. Nemo Hill, Richard Loranger, and Kit Kennedy, and a special guest appearance from Christian Georgescu.

Liana Holmberg introduced three authors featured in Red Bridge Press' forthcoming anthology: Jenny Bitner, Jordan Reynolds, and Olga Zilberbourg. Each perfectly exemplified the boldness, creativity, and originality that we love to read and publish.

Olga Zilberbourg read from her story, “From Here to the Moon,” about a young man traveling in London who receives a message from an alien hologram, a message that may contain a key to easing the grief of loss—and a clue to altering time.

Jordan Reynolds had everyone intrigued as he first explained his “progressive translation” of Jack Spicer’s “Ballad of the Little Girl Who Invented the Universe,” then read both the original and his own curious “translation,” which he accomplished by using a combination of speech dictation software set to Spanish and Google Translate.

Jenny Bitner perfectly wrapped the evening up with her story “We ♥ Shapes,” about a mother dealing with the peculiar needs of her shape-shifting son. In an utterly convincing voice, the mother draws us into her world of playdates gone way, way off the rails.

These three pieces will appear alongside many others by talented writers from around the world in Red Bridge Press' premier publication of Writing That Risks.

Sign up for our email newsletter and you’ll be the first to know when the book becomes available!

Small Press Love Fest on 2/23
If you’ll be in the San Francisco Bay Area on Saturday, February 23rd, join us for the Small Press Love Fest. This event brings together 4 small publishers from the East and West Coasts for an evening of fantastic author readings and Q&A with editors. You’ll get to hear a few of the local Writing That Risks authors as well as many others. Check out author bios and details on the event page. You can also see who’s going and RSVP on the Facebook event. This is our Valentine to you. We hope to see you there!

Writing That Risks, vol. 1
We received a ton of wonderful submissions to our first anthology, and it was an honor and a pleasure to read them. Out of that wealth of creativity, we selected 30 remarkable works of literature that explore the boundaries of content and style. They range from a ghost story set to blues chords to a love story set in a museum that may or may not be under attack by an angry mob; from a found poem that begins with a grocery receipt to a multi-part exploration of motherhood in verse. These pieces explore the gamut of human experience with humor and insight. Our authors hail from 6 countries and include multiple-award winners as well as new voices. Without further ado, I present to you the authors of Writing That Risks:

aJbishop, Catie Jarvis, Christina Olson, C. Lee Colvin, Dan Sklar,
David Ellis Dickerson, Edmund Zagorin, Erin Fitzgerald, Jenny Bitner, Joanne Clarkson,
John Newman, Jønathan Lyons, Jordan Reynolds, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs,  Libby Hart,
Mariev Finnegan, Michelle S. Lee, Molly English, Norman Lock, Olga Zilberbourg,
Patrick Cole, Rachel Yoder, Robert Neilson, Sharif Shakhshir,
Soren Gauger, Steve Castro, Wendy Williams, xTx, Zach Powers

This book is due out in April 2013. Stay tuned to hear more about how you can get your copy of the print or ebook.

P.S. You may have noticed that the headline above says Writing That Risks, vol. 1. That’s because we’re having so much fun with this anthology that we plan to do one every year.
P.P.S. Also, along with working on volume 1 of the anthology, we are now getting ready to select our first single author book. We’ll be posting an update on that call for submissions soon.

Due to Hurricane Sandy, we're extending our deadline until Monday, Nov. 5th at midnight PST, in order to give our friends in the East some time to recharge their computers and their spirits.

Thank you to everyone who has submitted work so far. We are amazed and honored by the number and quality of submissions. We've received work from around the world, from new and established writers, and from across the spectrum of genre and style. The editorial team has already begun reading, and we plan to make final selections by the end of November.

Since the press launched on September 17th, we have received an outpouring of encouragement from writers, booksellers, technologists, educators, and the publishing community. Today, I'll be continuing the "thank you Thursdays" theme started on our Twitter stream and sending some shout-outs to folks who've been especially generous with their time and support. Not just today but every day, we are tremendously grateful to each and every one of you who believe in the future of books and the mission of Red Bridge Press. Happy reading.