2016 to 2017: Janus? or Castor and Pollux?

February 4, 2017

I WANT OUR READERS, NEW AND FAMILIAR, TO KNOW WHAT WONDERFUL THINGS ARE COMING IN 2017! (Or in the remainder of 2016?)

2016 was a mighty year for a little press, but even as I write this post to tell your about our publishing plans for 2017, I have to admit that in publishing, imprints are a very simplistic way to tell time. Books gestate in many dimensions. Publication is merely the delivery date and marks the end of the hard and complex labor.

Louise Farmer Smith

In calendar 2016, Upper Hand Press published Zach Snyder's Clyde Doesn't Go Outside, the second edition of Louise Farmer Smith's One Hundred Years of Marriage and her short story collection, Cadillac, Oklahoma. We published first novels from Rhonda G. Williams (The Naming of Girl) and Herta Feely (Saving Phoebe Murrow). That's five fine books from a one-woman, scrappy micro-press. I will allow myself a little swagger here. Not only did we manage to work through all the details of design, typesetting, printing, and promoting on each, but these wonderful writers agreed to work with me! 

Rhonda G. Williams

So 2016 is far from over, and 2017 began months ago. Janus looking backwards and forwards at once? Or the Dioscuri answering our prayers for favorable winds? 

Herta Feely

2017 began back when poets Ann Cefola and Jonathan Bracker submitted manuscripts to me (Free Ferry and Concerning Poetry), and when Nicholas Bradley persisted with ever-more polished and poignant revisions of Rickie Trujillo, which we will bring out this fall. She Can Find Her Way: Women Travelers at Their Best, a twenty-six-essay anthology of writing by solo women travelers, has been in the works for many months: from an initial call for submissions almost a year ago through cover design and typesetting the first of five volumes, which are in the works at the moment. These four 2017 books began in 2016 or 2015—though the authors will surely laugh or groan, knowing how their works were germs in their imaginations for years before I ever heard of them!

Jonathan Bracker

Ann Cefola

In larger companies, books are published in seasons, to be on the market in time for holiday sales, etc. While appreciating the importance of seasonal timing, Upper Hand Press hopes its readers will join us in appreciating a seasonless approach to good books too. 

"I do think that rereading is the test of literature: A book or poem or story that can be fully appreciated on one reading is entertainment," says a friend of mine. We celebrate every new book we publish and hope you anticipate each of our new titles in 2017.But you'll find that we never stop reminding you about the books we've published before. Every book we publish should stand the test of time, call your back and be well worth discovering again and again.

Zach Snyder

So here's to a great new year at Upper Hand Press for all readers; and here, too, is to the continuum, where new and old look forward and back at once, and blow favorable breezes to keep us moving ahead!

--Ann Starr, Publisher and Editor

PS: Until Valentine's Day, 2017, our entire stock
is 50% off!