BACKWORDS Press: The Future
Tonight, at the lucky hour of 7 p.m. we’ll officially launch BACKWORDS Press and release our inaugural issue featuring our three writers: Elaina Ellis, Ocean Vuong, and Kevin Sampsell. As we scramble with all the pre-event setup, we’re also imagining the future. It was dreaming that got us here, and it will be dreaming that will keep this press innovative, engaging, ever-evolving, and supportive of our non-lit and lit-communities alike.
We wanted to share with you our thoughts for the future:
To place value on, and encourage the public to support, the work of artists;
To provide high-quality t-shirts in a variety of colors and styles;
To sell more t-shirts, so that we can significantly support our writers;
To change the moment of encounter: to have a long-lasting and transformative impact on the way people engage with poetry, redefining the relationship between reader and work;
Reimagining the intimacy of engaging with poetry and prose;
To make poetry and prose accessible outside of literary circles;
To pay our first-place contest winners $1,000, our second-place winners $500, and our third-place winners $250;
To fulfill our mission of community engagement, to represent diverse voices in the work we publish;
If this press is as successful as we think it will be, then everything above and more is possible. If you share in our vision, please consider supporting us through Kickstarter by searching for “BACKWORDS Press,” or clicking here.
Stay backwords,
Jenny M. Chu, Phillip Trey, and Matthew D. Kulisch
