DoubleCrossed

New books (finally) available!

2011-06-19T21:20:00.001-07:00

Hi friends! The new issue of We Are So Happy to Know Something and the final book of the Single Sheet Series (Brandon Shimoda's The Grave on the Wall) are finally up on the website, available for purchase! We've had these available at AWP and the CUNY chapbook festival, but we've been slow in finishing the edition binding. But we finally got a nice little stockpile of both, and are ready to get them into your waiting hands!

In the meantime, MC finished her MFA in Book Arts by making a whole heck of a lot of broadsides on handmade paper:

And Jeff designed a bunch of book covers (to be added in a later post, because he hasn't emailed them to me, MC, yet)!

Summer DoubleCross projects:

-finishing with the binding of both editions of We Are So Happy To Know Something
-finishing the printing/binding of a fancy fine-press chapbook of poems from Ashley McWaters' Whitework
-a letterpress comic by John Dermot Woods
-design for the fall's chapbooks
-soliciting essays on book-making from poets/book artists/micropress publishers
-beginning work on the next series, Tiny Broadside of the Month Club

The binding end of all these projects means lots of re-watching episodes of 30 Rock (because MC can't watch anything for the first time while bookbinding). Good thing it's been a rainy summer in Minneapolis!

No, really, we've been doing stuff!

2011-01-10T22:30:00.001-08:00

NEW GOODIES

2010-04-27T09:54:00.001-07:00

(at last! buy them here.)

Back from AWP, new books, and more!

2010-04-15T11:07:00.000-07:00

I'm slowly recovering from this year's AWP conference, where DoubleCross Press and Projective Industries teamed up for another year of table-sharing and hijinks. I should be all caught up on book orders and correspondence by the weekend, and I'll soon have 3 new titles up in the shop. Yay!

So: coming soon (I'll link to them once they're in the shop):

Sextuplets Are Not That Heavy - Danielle Roderick (Single Sheet Series #4)
Museum Armor - Lily Brown (Single Sheet Series #6)

and (!)

We Are So Happy To Know Something, a handmade poetry magazine produced in collaboration with Projective Industries

The final chapbook from the Single Sheet Series, Brandon Shimoda's The Grave On The Wall, should be out by the summer--stay tuned for upcoming books and projects!

AWP: DoubleCross, Lame House, & Slash Pine Presents

2010-02-21T19:24:00.000-08:00

Date: April 7th, 2010
Time: 4-8:30 p.m.
Location: Rackhouse Pub, 208 S. Kalamath St. Denver

If Wednesday afternoon at AWP finds you looking for some fun, come join us at this low-key and off-the-convention-path poetry mini-marathon. Whether just for a happy hour of local microbrews or distilled CO whiskey, a good pub dinner, or the entire reading, we’d love to share your company.

Readers thus far include Abraham Smith, Kate Greenstreet, Anne Shaw, Malachai Black, Mike Sikemma, Jen Tynes, John Dermot Woods, Daniela Olszewska, Patti White, Gina Myers/Nate Pritts, Matt Hart, Claire Becker, Matt Rasmussen, Brian Oliu, MC Hyland, Nathan Hauke, Joseph P. Wood, Dolly Lemke, Jeremy Hawkins, francine j. harris, and more.

It is 8 minutes by cab or driving. Here’s a Google map for your assistance.

If taking light rail, walk to the Theater District/Convention Center train station. Take the D-Line toward Mineral and get off at Alameda Station. From Alameda Station, head north on S. Cherokee toward W. Alameda Rd. Take a left on W. Alameda and follow for.25 miles. Take a right on S. Kalamath and follow for .5 mile. Bank on 20-25 minutes.

For more information about the restaurant, go to www.rackhousepub.com. Listen to some diverse and terrific poetry, and enjoy the selection of locally-made adult beverages.

A new year at DoubleCross Press

2010-01-02T16:36:00.000-08:00

Hello friends!

I tapered off in the press-blogging in 2009; while 2010 is fresh and new, I'm going to make an effort to improve. It's a time of resolutions!

Good things have been afoot here at DoubleCross Press, even though they haven't made it to this little blog. For one thing, there's the Pocket Lab Reading Series, a bi-monthly series of readings and performances by poets and like-minded others we've been curating at Rogue Buddha Gallery in Northeast Minneapolis. We've got a reading coming up this week: Local poets Amara Hartman, Brad Liening, and Juliet Patterson, plus the tireless Syracuse-based Nate Pritts and musical guest Eliza Blue.

And, yes, I did say "we." There's been an addition to DoubleCross Personnel: Jeff Peterson, who designs the retro-scientific Pocket Lab fliers, has agreed to come on board as a collaborator. He'll be doing a lot of the artwork for the upcoming books: right now, he's working on a screenprint design for Danielle Roderick's Sextuplets Are Not That Heavy, to be finished by the end of the month (I hope).

I've also begun working a 20-hour-a-week administrative job at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, which has kept me a bit busier, but also allows me to form a closer relationship with an amazing community of studio artists. I run the adult programs: classes, tours, etc. If you're curious about MCBA, check out their website here, or drop me a line at my fancy new work email: mchyland@mnbookarts.org.

Another Word is out!

2009-12-07T11:18:00.000-08:00

It's been a while, but look what I'm holding in my hand! An all-finished copy of Another Word, by Matthew Henriksen! Go buy one here!

Back on the press (with collaborators!)

2009-03-16T21:56:00.000-07:00

Ok, so after a month or so of intensive writing/teaching and little-to-no book progress, I finally got back on the press this weekend to take some proofs for Matt Henriksen's Another Word. Which, friends, let me tell you, is a heck of a poem. And now that I'm rolling again, I'm totally freaking psyched about this book. Because not only is the poem great, but the book is also going to have as a cover image a beautiful photo by awesome Minneapolis photographer/all-around cool guy Rich Fleischman. And I've also commissioned a screenprint from letterpress intern/screenprinting aficionado/tornado of fun Jeff Peterson for the book itself. It's gonna be pretty. In fact, it's gonna knock your socks off. More images to come, but in the meantime, I'll leave you with the picture Jeff took of me in the letterpress studio at MCBA. Printing with other people=pictures of something besides my hands! Documentation! (Isn't the MCBA studio sweet, by the way? Look at all those presses!)

AWP!

2009-02-18T12:19:00.000-08:00

Somehow, I forgot to take pictures of the table at AWP, but big thanks to the lovely Stephanie Anderson of Projective Industries (go buy their books here!) for this photo. It's one of three from the last day, and may be the photo in which we look the most alert. (Note to self: never again allow pictures to be taken on the last day of AWP. I think I may have just finished drinking a Sparks, or I may be drinking it and hiding the can under the table.) At least I was doing better than Sam (the other half of Projective Industries, on the left), who was apparently whisked away in the whiskey-filled (fueled?) Forklift, Ohio limo the night before.

While I'm telling you to go buy books, buy some from Matt & Katy Henriksen, the fearless leaders of Cannibal Books Nation. They are prolific, flawless in their taste, unfailingly generous, and snappily dressed. You may not be able to tell from the photo, but Matt's shirt in this picture is velour. Fancy!

GO TEAM BOOKBINDER!

2009-02-09T20:14:00.000-08:00

Big thanks to fabulous bookbinding volunteers Eliza (Blue) Bonacci, Emma & Lauren Allen, Anna Drennan, and Baker Lawley for turning the piles of tiny papers in my living room into the above: 95 copies of Edgar Huntly and 65 (with more to come as soon as I print more labels) of Hotel Winter. AWP, here I come!

"Sweet, I know"

2009-02-04T10:43:00.001-08:00

A long night of printing last night (3 runs: 2 on one book, and 1 on the other). Here's an early photo of the drying rack, with the single sheets from Hotel Winter drying in it.

Something I've been thinking about a lot with these books is how to incorporate imagery that feels appropriate to the poem without being overly illustrative of it: I don't want Hotel Winter to resemble a hotel room in any way, but I want there to be a clear and organic relationship between the poem and the book (why else go to the trouble of making books this way?)

So here's a bit about my thought process. In both of these books, I've focused mostly on book materials as imagery--for Edgar Huntly, that meant using graph paper and maps as materials to bring out the sense of restless movement through the city (coupled with a semi-translucent endsheet with a squiggly line printed on it from a linocut). My original vision of the book involved all sorts of decorative sewing (using the sewing machine instead of the press to make the squiggly lines denoting movement), but then that felt like too many mixed messages (and too done--and I didn't have a good enough reason for using both). I'm still binding the books with a sewing machine, though: I want there to be a trace of that thought process left in them.

Hotel Winter took me a little longer to figure out. Since it's such a short poem, with no stanza breaks, my initial thought was that the book should be a little mini-broadside with a wrapper. I kept thinking that (I even bought some chipboard to print it on, thinking that would give it some sturdiness) until I took a proof of the text on some Frankfurt paper and fell in love with the whiteness of the paper and the blackness of the text. So, a new vision: no hotel in the book, but lots of winter--crisp, snowy-white paper in a cover that looks like a starry winter night. (I knew from pretty early on that I wanted to use Cave Paper's "Galaxy" for the cover--a beautiful black flax paper with flakes of mica or silver leaf.) And it seemed only right to take the "image" on the would-be title page from the language of the poem itself, which transforms the word "zero" in beautiful ways. (Hence the drying rack full of zeroes, from the biggest wood type I could find.) Presto! While I was taking proofs of the book, I folded one down and trimmed it to the actual size the final pamphlet will be, and just about melted at how sweet it looks. More pictures to come...

Single Sheet Series: Printing

2009-02-02T12:02:00.001-08:00

Some shots from the current printing bonanza. Above, I go by Edgar Huntly now; below, the sweet Vandercook Universal 1 press at MCBA (mid-Edgar Huntly) and the type from Hotel Winter's title. As of right now, I have 2 runs left on each book. Well, maybe 3 on Hotel Winter. But they're getting there.

ps- I've been spending a lot of time with these poems lately, and they are both amazing. Like, I keep finding new things in them. You're going to love them. Yes: you.

SSS Update (or: Single Sheet Series gets real)

2009-01-27T09:38:00.000-08:00

Hello friends!

The Single Sheet Series is underway! Huzzah! I am near the end of printing for book #1 ("I go by Edgar Huntly now," by Joshua Marie Wilkinson). The first 6 books of the series are, in this order:

1- "I go by Edgar Huntly now" - JMW
2- "Hotel Winter" - Sarah Green
3- "Another Word" - Matt Henriksen
4- "Sextuplets Are Not That Heavy" - Danielle Roderick
5- "The Grave on the Wall" - Brandon Shimoda
6- "Museum Armor" - Lily Brown

I'm planning to have books 1 & 2 finished by AWP, where the fantastic folks of Cannibal Books & Projective Industries have kindly allowed me to join their table. Please come stop by!

2009: the year of mini-chaps

2009-01-13T07:59:00.000-08:00

(Though not, as yet, the kind worn by mini-cowboys...)

Greetings, friends! I've been on a long blogging sabbatical (mostly filled with reading manuscripts, learning my way around my no-longer-quite-so-new city, and holiday-related slacking/cookie-making). But it's a new year, and time to get started on new projects.

I'm still in correspondence with a couple folks on single-sheet series manuscripts (if you haven't heard from me yet, you will by the end of the week), but I plan to have a final list of titles soon! As I've already said, I'm really impressed by the work people sent: much of it was by writers I've admired for a while now, and I'm honored to get to work with such great material.

I've been having some software problems (anyone have an extra copy of Adobe Design Suite they'd like to let me use?), so have decided to make (or at least start) the single-sheet series with hand-set type. Here I am, setting JMW's "I go by Edgar Huntly now" at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts:

More to come soon! Keep it real, folks.

Screenprints, Single Sheet Series Update

2008-12-07T20:54:00.000-08:00

I finished my first-ever screenprints this week (thanks to Sara Parr, my lovely and patient screenprinting instructor at Minnesota Center for Book Arts). Here they are! I named them "Dexter/Sinister," after a line by my dear friend, poet Elizabeth Wade. (We had a long phone chat about poems in the middle of my day of printing, so it seemed only right...)

Working with this new (to me) process was informative: while several of my classmates were frustrated with the process, and a few felt like they didn't get the prints they wanted, I was thrilled with the whole endeavor. I didn't really have a clear vision when I started of what I was going for, so I kept tweaking the prints all the way to the end: fooling around with the colors and arrangement; finally cropping off all the white space at the edges. Screenprinting opened my eyes to my practice in other fields: I realized that I'm never fully able to visualize a book, broadside, or poem before it's done, so the making process is always, for me, a process of discovery.

Speaking of discovery, I've been having a genuinely thrilling time reading submissions for the Single Sheet Series. I've already accepted a handful of manuscripts, and I have a few more awesome ones waiting in my inbox for a day when I can sit down and give them my full attention (tomorrow, I hope?). It's been wonderful to get to read such varied and interesting projects, from friends old and new. Thanks to all who've sent work! Slated for publication, as of now, are:

Lily Brown-"Museum Armor"
Sarah Green-"Hotel Winter"
Danielle Roderick-"Sextuplets Are Not That Heavy"
Brandon Shimoda-"The Grave on the Wall"
Joshua Marie Wilkinson-"I go by Edgar Huntly now"

They are all truly awesome pieces, and I couldn't be more excited to work with them. I'm still taking submissions until the end of the month. Keep it coming, writers!

Naked Writing: fancy letterpress edition

2008-12-03T10:59:00.000-08:00

It's taken me a while to put these pictures up, but here they are! This is the all-letterpress edition of Naked Writing. It's inspired by artist Mirjana Ugrinov's installation: she hand-lettered these poems onto huge sheets of translucent mylar (the kind architects used before CAD programs existed), which were then hung sculpturally from the walls of the gallery. The book's design takes its inspiration from the clean materials and cool colors of the mylar sheets, but uses more organic elements (handmade paper, linen thread, extremely thin/translucent sheets of paper from the Philippines). I'm still binding copies: I'm at about # 10 of 40, and looking forward to some frosty nights of slotting covers and sewing in the next few weeks.

Robin Behn's Naked Writing for sale!

2008-11-14T07:22:00.000-08:00

Hello, blog friends! Robin Behn's Naked Writing, a lyric poem in three voices, is up for sale. I designed this handbound book with letterpress covers in collaboration with an installation by Behn and artist Mirjana Ugrinov at Chicago's ARC gallery last February. I also made a fine-press version of the book on handmade cotton-linen and super-pretty translucent papers--I'll post some pictures of that version soon!

When you order your copy, specify whether you'd like the first edition (shown below, with lace blouse image on the cover) or the second (shown two posts down, text-only). Either way, it's $12.

Call for Submissions: SINGLE SHEET SERIES

2008-11-11T16:02:00.000-08:00

From now until the end of December, I'll be taking submissions for a new series of mini-chapbooks: the DoubleCross SINGLE SHEET SERIES. These mini-chaps will be printed (at least in theory) on a single sheet of paper each, which may then be cut, folded, sewn, or otherwise re-assembled.

So: send me poetry, your short-short fictions, your comics, your literary hybrids, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. One to five pages of them. I like things that are visual, that light up new neural passageways, that ask big questions or answer questions heretofore unasked. Inspirations might include: Cole Swensen, Brenda Hillman, Italo Calvino, Jean Valentine, Sun Yung Shin, Tom Phillips, Harryette Mullen, Inger Christensen, Milorad Pavic, Elizabeth Willis, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Anna Moschovakis, Fanny Howe, or Umberto Eco. Or something else. Surprise and excite me.

Send submissions as attachments (Word or PDF) to: doublecrosspress@gmail.com

Yes, please. Thank you.

Shiny newness: Post-election cards, new books, come see me!

2008-11-11T13:03:00.000-08:00

Hello, Blog friends! It's good to see you!

1. Post-election cards! The great Black Warrior Review (check them out here) held its annual fundraising auction last night. I donated a set of custom letterpress notecards--and last Wednesday, I printed some samples: Obama victory cards! Here's an image of one. I'll be selling some this weekend at Greencup Books--come by and get some! Let's celebrate, people!

2. Robin Behn's Naked Writing. New copies of DoubleCross's first book (shown here), are just waiting to get into your hot little hands! These second-edition copies feature a simplified cover design letterpressed onto an earthy Khadi paper cover. I'm going to put them up for sale on this blog as soon as I get my PayPal account set up: check back soon! In addition to the commercially-printed copy, I've also produced a fancy letterpress edition of (slighty less than) 40 on translucent & handmade papers. They're pretty. I'll put up some pictures soon...

3. DoubleCross hits Alabama. DoubleCross has two appearances coming up in the next few days: come by and say hello!

-Tomorrow afternoon, (Wednesday, Nov. 12) Robin Behn and I (along with Steve Miller of Red Hydra Press and Red Hydra author Cade Collum) will give a talk on writer/book artist collaboration at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. 4:30 in Gorgas Library, room 205. Info here.

-Saturday, Nov. 15, I'll be tabling with poet/letterpress guru Patrick Masterson of The Rest at the Greencup Books Book, Zine, Art, and Music Fair in Birmingham. It's gonna be wicked fun! Come check us out!

First Post: See-through paper, Cave-style

2008-11-01T00:32:00.000-07:00

So I have kind of a thing about see-through paper. I like it. A lot. I like working with it, and I like making it. It's becoming a problem: I recently realized that, of my three full-length books in progress, three use a translucent paper. That's right: 100%.

I made a whole bunch of overbeaten abaca/flax paper this summer at the University of Alabama's Lost Arch Papermill. I love the way it looks, but the process of making it was tricky: the fibers were so broken-down that when I dipped the mould in, most of them just ran right through the laid wires. I had to dip a second time to build up enough fiber to make a sheet. This process felt like a strange hybrid of Asian and European papermaking styles: building up fiber through successive dips, but using a western mould, pulp, and shake.

So, when I asked Bridget O'Malley and Amanda Degener (of Cave Paper, where I've been interning for the last couple months) for their ideas on how to better approach overbeaten fiber, I was thrilled when they suggested a different method: transform the dip mould into a pour mould by placing a cut-to-size sheet of reemay on top of the mould, under the deckle.

So here it is! The secret to turning a dip mould into a pour mould is, of course, duct tape. I taped these two deckles together to give me enough height to keep the liquid from sloshing over the sides when I shook the mould. I cut reemay to size, laid each sheet in a mould, hosed it down with water, and then poured in a bucket of pulp and water (at, I'd guess, about a 1:10 ratio--I slowly built up from one to three cups of pulp per sheet.)

The trickiest part of the process was parting the sheets from the reemay, after they'd been pressed twice (between dry, and then wet, felts): the sheets often stuck and tore a bit in places. But the papers are beautiful: cloud-thin, with a nice rattle when shaken. They remind me a bit of the onionskin you'd see protecting printed plates in old books. Though I didn't end up making a paper that was all that compatible with the one I wanted to accompany (the beater I used at the Cave was way more powerful than the one at Alabama, and the fiber looked and felt different), I may have made some perfect sheets for a future (and to-be-determined) project.