Letras Latinas, Part 9: A Conversation with Maria Melendez Kelson

Listen in to an oral history conversation with poet Maria Melendez Kelson, interviewed by poet Steven Cordova, as part of the Letras Latinas Oral History Project. Though Melendez Kelson’s most recent work is the contemporary mystery novel Not the Killing Kind, this conversation uncovers her artistic life as a poet in the period before she embarked on her career as a novelist. Melendez Kelson discusses how her mother’s imaginative summer incentive to pay her for childhood poems with ice cream gave her an early knowledge that writing could be a calling or vocation, how the solitude of wildlife biology fieldwork led her to befriend her writing, and her mission to share the important contributions of Latino and Latina poets to the body of works that advocate for honoring nature and our environment.

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Transcript

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Francisco, we're having a retrospective conversation about Momo Tombo Press indeed. And, the work we're going to discuss spans, an inception of 2000 and an actual realization of the year 2001, all the way through to the last publication date, 2009 to 2009. And here we are in 2013, looking back. On, basically a 10, I say 10 years, yeah, around 10 years total effort, of, a press that was born out of our time together at UC Davis. Momotomba Press, which I should probably start by saying something about the name of the press. Momotomba Press, the name was inspired by the volcano in Nicaragua. Called Momotombo, and, I wanted to infuse a bit of Nicaraguan ness into the gesture. And why is that? I'm throwing you a softball. Because my, my, my parents came to California in the late fifties from Nicaragua, so I'm of Nicaraguan origin. So Momotombo, the volcano in Nicaragua, became The talisman. Exactly. And the name. Yeah. Yeah. do you want to tell, our audience of the future about what were some of the things that inspired you to start a press in the first place? I think what would be useful is for us to talk about the context. huh. First of all, how we met and where we were when the press was started. We were both at UC Davis. In 1998, just as young and cute as we are now. And I think, one of the things I often say when asked about what inspired the press is I talk about, even before we talked about what happened at Davis, the experience of being published in the Chicano chapbook series with Gary Soto, which did happen in 1999 while I was at UC Davis. And that was light yogurt, strawberry milk. Was that your chapbook? yeah, light yogurt, strawberry milk. Gary, as you may know, was the founder and editor of the Chicano Chatbook series, which had two waves, one in the late 70s, which included such people as, Sandra Cisneros, Alberto Rios, and others, and then he interrupted the series and restarted it in the late 90s, and in the second wave of the series, he included such writers as Rigoberto Gonzalez, Richard Yanez, and others. Thanks. Myself, John Olivares Espinoza. So this is late 90s, for the most part? Yeah. huh. Yeah. One of the things about the, and then shortly after he did my chapbook, he stopped. He decided that the gesture had been done. And so there was a vacuum. There was a vacuum. So I think that vacuum coupled with our small press experiences at UC Davis is what created the fertile ground to start something, such as when we were in the class with Sandra McPherson. In fact, you can talk, I'd be interested to know about Swanside Press because that was such a, I think, an important part of this incipient story. Sure. Sure. They have a kind of a twin genesis in a way, Swanside Press and Momotombo Press. And my memories of Our time at UC Davis are in both Gary Snyder's classes and Sandra McPherson's classes, they would bring in, old boxes just loaded with this material richness, chapbooks from the seventies, from the sixties, from the eighties, chapbook after chapbook that they had been collecting over the years to represent this kind of homegrown yet, highly artisanal, tradition in publishing. and so at one point, I, Sandra McPherson was my thesis advisor and she was known to say, I wish I could start a press, someone should start a press, there are so many good poets out there who are struggling to be published, and so one day I said to her, let's do it. Let's start a press. I said, you get me a graduate assistantship and I'll work for you to launch a press. And so she said, Oh, okay. So she secured a one semester assistantship for me and we founded Swan Scythe Press, which had a mission to publish exclusively poetry at that time. And that was before the prize, before the Swan Scythe Prize, then it launched a poetry chapbook prize. Which was where we had the class, I think. There was also the class Eventually, yeah, eventually having the press bond, a small press publishing class, where graduate students all had a hands on experience running the contest, selecting the winner. And I was in that class, I remember. Yes, Meanwhile, as Sandy McPherson and I are forming Swanside, meanwhile Across town in the mind of Francisco Aragón. the experience. So the experience of having my chapbook published with Gary Soto, continuing that story, having the physical chapbook in hand, having something in hand became like a calling card. And I remember that a number of the poems from the chapbook went on to get published in a number of anthologies. In fact, in some ways, I'm actually it at this institution because of that chat book, because, when it was published, it occurred to me to ask if I could give a reading at the, conference of the, the Knox conference in Portland, Oregon in the spring, Knox being National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies. So it was having that chat book, which landed me a reading. At the Knox conference in Portland, which is how I met, Gil Cárdenas. Oh, okay. And Gil Cárdenas was the director here. He was the founding director of the Institute for Latino Studies. So having that chapbook was really empowering. Yeah. And when it shut down, when the Chicano chapbook series shut down. I remember thinking, that it would be nice to do that for my peers. And I think it's important to say at this point that the first iteration of Momotombo Press was not a Latino centric project. Mark my words, five emerging poets. And as you can see, the people who were published. In the first, in the inaugural volume of Momentuma Press were all people who were pursuing, M. A. s at UC Davis. the Momotombo ended up with a mission to publish Latino poets, and as you say, this first volume, though, didn't necessarily have that emphasis, but you came out of the tradition of the Chicano Chapbook series, and I remember when you approached me to be in this, edition, I was lucky enough to be one of your five. And you said, I've decided I'm publishing five poets from the program, and I would like two of them to be Latinas. And that was part of your early vision. You were very, I don't remember saying that. Pleased. You were very pleased that you could have a, 40 percent Latina representation in your first volume. And so that would be Angela Garcia is the other poet. I was just trying to think, one of the other things that I remember about the press. that sort of distinguished it from the Chicano chapbook series was this idea of having more established writers. The brief introduction. But I don't remember why I decided to do that. You had a model and I don't remember what it was either. You had a model. We had seen somewhere where that had happened. I think it was Penny Whistle Press and Francisco Alarcón had published. In that press, and I believe that Juan Felipe Herrera may have written, but that would be peer to peer, not established. Yeah, not established as a mentoring gesture. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm, I don't recall. I think you had a model, but I don't remember what it was. as one of the first authors, as one of the first authors, in the series, do you have any recollections about the process of how that. I think that you had copies of the, nearly the entire thesis manuscript for each of those folks and that you made selections. I don't remember particularly suggesting one poem over another. I think you, you applied a sense of vision or a sense of unity or extracting something from each poet. I do recall now that you mentioned it in my introduction. That I basically culled a chapbook length manuscript from each thesis, from your thesis, basically. yeah. Yeah, that was an interesting effort. And of course, completely gratifying for me to see what other readers. Responded to see what you responded to as an editor. were you trying to distill a representative, bit from each one or did you look for more thematic? There was a combination of that, but also, and this is getting back to the context specifically, It wasn't until taking Sondra McPherson's class, which was the occasion for that prize, when they did this one sided press prize. That I began to think of the chat book as this sort of coherent whole, and I remember that when we were reading and critiquing the contest entries, we would have discussions about manuscripts that had very strong poetry in them, but that somehow didn't add up, weren't coherent in a satisfying way. And so I think that was part of the thinking that went into choosing the poems that I chose. Whether or not readers, leave it up to readers to decide if in fact they cohered in that way. But I remember I was thinking that as a direct result of being in Saundra's. So you were seeking a kind of aesthetic unity, or if not unity, maybe that's overstating it, but a kind of aesthetic relationship within each poet's work. A kind of, this would be the Lisa Sperber chapbook like unit, and this would be the Sean McDonald chapbook like unit, yeah. Maybe we should say for the sake of the record that. The five authors who were in the inaugural volume were Lisa Sperber, Sean McDonald, Angela Garcia, Eric Goodis, and yourself. And I should also mention that Eric Goodis was the person who handled the book design. For that volume. And I think I didn't remember that. Yeah, he did the book design. huh. And then the formatting. Oh, interesting. for this volume. And he was a graduate student with us at the time. And I think this might be a good time to talk a little bit about The influence, because I do remember it had an influence, of being in Gary Snyder's workshop and what he had to say about small press publishing. And what I took away from his influence was the notion of two things. Starting small on a modest scale, which might include even self publishing And starting Putting that work out for your immediate community, for your immediate community, which might even be, just to give away to your friends. That's right. Do you remember that? Do you remember that? That's true. He did emphasize that sense of, cultivating the audience that was literally at hand, down the street, the cafes in your neighborhood. 300 copy or 500 copy? I think it was 500 copies. I think that it was. And I think I even mentioned, in fact, I think I even mentioned the very, yeah, the very, in the very first sentence in the spring of 1999, Gary Snyder devoted a session in his poetry workshop and small press publishing, sharing with the students how rip rap first got into print. Oh yeah. And so I remember him using that as an example that here was a rip rap, which was a tiny small press limited edition run. And it wasn't until later that it had its own sort of trade publishing iteration. Oh, okay. Yeah, I had forgotten that story of his. I think what I took away from his class was the sense of the poetry world as being really a DIY kind of place, really a do it yourself kind of place, and that that the role of the poet includes audience cultivation and, experiments with the actual material production of work. some students were taking a bookmaking class at that time. There was just an atmosphere in our cohort of, taking the reins of the entire process of creation and dissemination. And I think another instrumental experience that also involves Gary. Was the class, I think you were in that class, the class that we took on the San Francisco Renaissance. And I remember for that class my semester project was Jack Spicer. And so I read Poet Be Like God, his biography, and read through all his work. And anyone who's familiar with Jack Spicer's biography knows that all his books were published in the small press, white rabbit press, and he insisted that they be published. By small local presses, he was actually very adamant about not being published in presses that had wide distribution. He wanted them published in small local presses. So I remember that caused a great impact. The idea of someone like Jack Spicer's stature wanting to start, do something really small. And to stick with it as his practice. And there were other things happening concurrently, which I've mentioned in some of the prefaces over the course of the titles. There was, the Berklee poet. Jim Powell, who was a graduate student at UC Berkeley when I was an undergrad and who had won a MacArthur fellow and fellowship and had published a book with the University of Chicago Press and had published his Sappho translations with Farrar Strauss, and then he won the MacArthur, and then he decided to publish, self publish These, chapbooks of his, which he called them, wrote it down here, sage, where does it go with and penny Royal? Yeah, sage and penny Royal. And I remember, they were very modestly produced and he would sell them for 15 and his rationale was. That this is, that's what it costs to buy a CD of music at that time. Oh, okay. That was his CD. Oh. And I remember being struck by the whole notion that if a MacArthur fellow can self publish his chat book and sell it for 15, then why can't we do something like that on a small scale as well? Yeah, so this is a little bit off book off of our cheat sheet here, but, I am interested in that relationship between, self publishing and small press publishing, as distinct, but maybe cousin efforts. And meanwhile, at this time, at the time that you're starting your work as an editor and a publisher, you also are continuing to send your own work out. You're pulling together your own next book at that time. so what, did you ever feel any tension between those two activities? Did you ever think if I wasn't doing so much darn editing, I could get more writing done or did you feel they were complimentary efforts? goes back and forth. I think over time, as I got more and more engaged. With the editing and the publishing aspect of the field, which necessarily takes time away from cultivating your own art making, I reconciled myself to the notion of, that activity was just a complimentary or supplementary activity. I remember. Eric Goodis made a very flattering remark, when we launched, Mark My Words, and he brought up the example of James Laughlin at New Directions, and how James Laughlin started New Directions with money he inherited from his father. And that became a good part of his identity as the publisher of New Directions, but then he was also a poet himself. So you found that a good model. Yeah. Yeah. And in terms of self publishing or small press publishing, I was engaged with both notions and I put down on the cheat sheet, because I remember, Thomas Kinsella in Ireland had pepper canister press, which would be his own work in chapbook increments that he would self publish and you can find them in bookstores. And then eventually they would become, but they'd start off as these self published chapbooks. Huh. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. So they are related, related efforts. do you want to talk any more about some of these influences, otherwise I have some more questions. Sure. I think that it might be interesting to hear about the actual, flow of money and materials in terms of generating these and how that shifted over time with your institutional affiliation change. Sure. Sure. yeah, the way momotoma press got started money wise, was pretty straightforward and I had no idea what I was doing. but in essence, I put together a proposal, which included writing samples from the five of you, and the proposal may have been about a page. And I sent that proposal, hard copy. Mailed it to let's call it 30 people who I would describe as family and friends and very specific. I asked, I described the project and I asked for anywhere between 50. And 300, and so I actually put a ceiling on it and, and from that first gesture, I raised roughly, I raised about 6, 000. Wow. And so that pretty much bankrolled the first two volumes, Mark My Words and Banking. Oh, okay. I covered both. It covered Mark My Words, and it covered Volume 2, which was The Land of Give and Take. Oh, Christopher Since, yeah. And what I remember about that experience, because it was my first foray into fundraising, two things I remember. One thing is that, which shows how little I knew about fundraising. Cause in my pitch letter, I said, I'm not going to ask you for money. I'm only going to ask you this one time, which of course, you never would say again, the rest of your fundraising career. And the second thing that was interesting is that even as I was going down the list of people, I in my own mind, would have a little guesstimate of how much this person would give, how much this person would give, and I would think, oh, this person's gonna give me 300, this person's gonna give me 50, this person's gonna give me 100, and I was correct about 50 percent of the time. And so there were people who I thought were good for 50 who gave me 300 people who I thought were good for 300 who gave me 50. yeah. So it began to it was really interesting to see, and one person ignored my ceiling and just gave me 500. huh. Yeah. Wow. And the other thing I remember, about that experience, which I did take with me, As I began to raise money for other projects was that there were a number of people who explicitly thanked me. Thanked me for inviting them To be a part of this project, and so they didn't really view it as me hitting them up for money. As much as me inviting them. Inviting them to become part of something special. Yeah. Which I hadn't. which is a really good lesson. It is such an important distinction that, that the Momotomo supporters can be proud of, promoting literature in this way. And as you say, that it's not necessarily. a matter of a begging bowl as it is an invitation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. should we start moving through the titles and as we do, you can describe the evolution of your institutional affiliation. You're still at Davis when this one comes out, right? I'm actually Are you in Spain? No, when, so Christopher, we should say something about Christopher Sint. Christopher Sint was a graduate student at UC Davis. In literature. In literature. Though I think he had done the MA and then he that's right, he had stayed on. Went into the PhD program. And the interesting thing about him is that I think shortly after, his book came out, he went to St. Mary's, and I'll tell you why that's important in a minute. But actually, I think Christopher's book came out Shortly after I got to Notre Dame to start my MFA, which would have been the fall of 2001. Yeah. And now I should say that, just to give credit where credit is due. His book was designed and formatted by Lisa Gonzalez, who went on to become a Momotoba Press author after it became Latino Central. And just for the sake of documentation, I think we'd before, we should also just mentioned who the, we should probably say who introduced each one. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So you were introduced by. Gary Snyder, my mentor, one of my mentors. And, Sean McDonnell was introduced by Bruce Weigel. Eric Goodis was introduced by Jack Marshall. Lisa Sperber was introduced by Alan Williamson and Angela Garcia was introduced by Robert Vazquez. And of course, that's significant because Robert was the inaugural judge of the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize. And only two of those are on the faculty at UC Davis. So you pull from poets all in, all throughout California, basically. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. and Christopher's chat book was introduced by Brenda Hillman and blurbed by Michael Palmer and Jane Hirshfield. I remember him telling me. when he found out that I landed the two blurbs with Jane Hirshfield and Michael Palmer, and when Brendan Hillman had said, yes, he goes, I can die now. Yes, that would be California poetry nirvana. The reason why I bring up Christopher Sitton, how important he was, is because shortly after that book came out, he began teaching at St. Mary's College in Moraga. And I knew that in order to sustain the press and at least in the beginning, I thought, at some point. I'd like to have access to grant money and in order to do that, I would need an institutional affiliation. And so what happened was that Mombotomba Press, for a brief period of time, was officially housed at St. Mary's College in Morocco. I forgot about that phase. That's right. In Chris Stent's office, essentially, right? He, by having it housed there, When I began to fundraise for subsequent titles, checks would be made out to St. Mary's College. So he set up an account for us. Huh, that's gonna be a fiscal agent. Yeah. And the titles that were published during that iteration would include our other Davis colleague, Wednesday Carlton, who was she living in France when that one came out? I think she may have already moved to graduated with us. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then, Kathy garlic Chatbook, the listening world with a wonderful introduction by Adam Zakajewski. Adam Zakajewski introduced, her book. She was a student at Houston, and she was a friend of Eric Goodis, and she was trying to get work published, and she wasn't going to get it, so this was this title was curated by Eric, and also designed by Eric, and Wednesday's chapbook was introduced by Alan Williamson, and the last title, While the press was still housed at St. Mary's was the first Latino title. Oh, okay, Stephen, where at, in that point you still didn't necessarily have an all Latino emphasis. It just happened that this was your, so let's look at the full array of Momotombo 1. 0. Yeah, pre Latino emphasis. Yes. In which there happens to be two Latinas and one Latino, Stephen Cordova. And this one, what year did his come out? His check. That was, yeah. 2003. Oh, 10 years ago. Okay, then you come here. I was actually No, I actually came here in 2001, so I was, I'm actually, oh, I'm actually, oh, this is actually during your years as a graduate student. Yeah. you're continuing with this in essence. Yeah. In essence, continuing with this process. Where's the money coming from? the money is still coming from small fundraising, Uhhuh, but checks are being made out to St. Mary's College. Oh, okay. Checks are being out at that time, being made outta St. Mary's College. Okay. And then it was after Steven's Chatbook? After Steven's Chatbook came out. 2003 is a key year, because that's the year that I began working. And so at that point, I realized that I had to create a literary program here, I had this press, which was going to be Latino centric, starting with Steven, but it was housed at St. Mary's. And I thought, no, I need to bring, I need to bring the press to Notre Dame. So was your decision to convert it to a Latino centric press? Was that part of getting hired at Institute for Latino Studies, or that was a decision that kind of, you settled on after Steven's book came out? I was. Before you started working for ILM. Yeah, I was hired in, in, in July of 2003. Right after I completed my MFA here, there was no literary component to speak of at the Institute. And so I was charged in essence with creating one. And one of the first things we did was the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize. But then after Stephen's chapbook came out, then I realized, okay. I, the way I thought of it was, at that time, Momotomo Press was a hobby. So the idea was to convert that hobby into part of my job. Into part of my job. Yeah, to integrate these parts of your life. And so that meant, to bring the press to Notre Dame, and so two things had to happen. One, I had to, Pitch the idea to my immediate supervisor at the time, and then we jointly had to pitch the idea to Gil Cardenas and then he had to sign off on that. That was the first thing that had to happen. The second thing that had to happen, which is actually a real key, key thing, is that I had to figure out a way. To fiscally house the press here. And so I managed into this day, I don't remember exactly how I managed, but I managed to speak to someone in development who agreed to create an account for Momo Tompo press. That was the excuse to create an account in development. Where checks would be mailed out to Notre Dame was specifically for the Pratt. Wow. But then as Letras Latinas began to grow, that account became a Letras Latinas. Oh, okay. Okay. And you ended up Fundraising for Into that account for your public programming, your programming in schools. So Mabo Tbo Press allowed me to create an account Uhhuh with the development, right? And so whenever I'd get checks, I'd walk them over to Donna Snyder and she would, deposit. Huh. So Mabo tbo press in essence, allowed. Latinas to become a fiscal entity in many respects, right? And let Latinas today is the literary division of ILS. That includes the chat books, book prizes. when mom press was still up and running, it included the cha, it included the press, uhhuh, it included the book prizes, uhhuh, it included lots of public programming. What, what does included Yes, our collaboration, with St. Mary's. So once I decided to bring the press to Notre Dame, then of course the next question became, who will be? the next, and this actually brings up an interesting discussion when we started talking about this book, right? so Lisa Gonzalez, as you recall, was our colleague, UC Davis. It's interesting how these Davis connections continue. And Shortly after I began working here, Lisa Gonzalez enrolled in the creative writing program here at Notre Dame. Oh, okay. About 2003. I'm gonna say Maybe 2002. No, because we weren't here. I was already working at the ILS. So let's see, when this came out, she was a student here. So this came out in 2004. So she may have been in her first year here and I was already working here for a year. Okay. huh. But the interesting thing about this chat book is that I remember I was always a big admirer of Lisa's work, but it never occurred to me. That she would consider herself a Latina writer. And one time we were having a conversation and she just brought it up and she said, can I, couldn't I publish a Mamontone book? Yes, she did. And I said, do you consider yourself a Latina writer? And she said, let's see, I was born and raised in California. the first writer who spoke to me in any substantive way was Sandra Cisneros. All my best friends were Chicana. I was subjected to the same racial epithets that they were. I come from a big Catholic family. Yes. And she's ethnically Portuguese. So in California, you wouldn't find a generation or two behind us, anyone ethnically Portuguese aligning themselves with Chicanos and Latino population. So I actually, when she said that I thought, yeah, I'd like to publish you. And this is distinct from what came before in another way in that it's prose. Exactly. Yeah. This is our first prose title. And I'm very proud of this chat book for a couple of reasons. We were able to get a beautiful introduction by Elena Maria Vida Montes. And the other thing I'll say about This is that this was designed, one of the things about being at Notre Dame, one of my cohorts here was a Filipino poet named Charles Valley. And while we were here, we started a journals, a student journal here called Danta. You remember? I remember that. Yeah. Which is Irish for poetry. he taught himself book design. And so for the next several titles, in fact. Charles Valley became the official designer of Momotomba Press. Oh, okay. So this was his first design effort, your first prose chapbook. and look who blurbed Lisa's chapbook. Well known Portuguese American writer, Catherine Vaz. Catherine Vaz and M. Evelina Galang. huh, M. Evelina Galang. And then of course, once the press was housed at Notre Dame, visually anyway, we had to come up with a new logo. And so the logo is the sunburst. the ILS sunburst with the silhouette of the volcano embedded. So we went from the simple line drawing of the press of the volcano's silhouette to the sunburst. Combining it with the ILS logo. And I guess the other thing I would say is it choosing to publish Lisa brought to the fore, this whole question of who's Latino, who's not Latino. Because, actually choosing the publisher, I remember, cost a little, cost a few. Raised a few eyebrows. And in fact, I remember asking someone for a blurb and that person declining to blurb Lisa, because she wasn't a real Latina. yeah, I wanted to start thinking of those controversies and those interpersonal conflicts because they make such good stories. then the more, the more time goes by, the more good work you do. Haters be hatin the more there. The more there is, occasion to talk about what should have happened or what didn't happen and so many people like to have an opinion about something they're not involved in. But would you say this was the first, this was the first sort of momotombo controversy or the first time you encountered a less than pleasant experience as a publisher in that dialogue about, about being criticized for having published a Portuguese writer? Was that the first time you felt like, Oh, it's getting a little lonely at the top? I think, yeah, I think you're right. Yeah. Yeah. I would say. Yeah. it wasn't, it just made me aware. It made me aware. In some ways, that, the publication of that chapbook was a cross, was a fork in the road. In terms of the publishing philosophy and also the whole debate about Latinidad as well. Yeah. Is it, are we going, I'm going to go down, what do I believe? do I err on the side of inclusion or err on the side of exclusion? And so that was my, that was when I decided, I err on the side of inclusion. That was you standing on the side of inclusion. And in fact. Your early experience being published in a chapbook series reflected that inclusion as well, because it was the Chicano chapbook series, which may or may not be an inclusive sort of Pan American identity. I remember, I'm glad you brought that up because one of the things that we did, at some point, I don't remember when it might've been in 2006 when we were well into our trajectory. we did an interview. I did an online interview with Gary Soto to talk about the history of the Chicano chapbook series in more detail. And I remember specifically asking him, so Gary, why did you publish me? Because as I'm not Chicano. And his response was, he used an interesting term. He said, Oh, but you're Raza. You're Raza. You grew up in the mission district. And that was his inclusive conception. Yeah. You grew up in the mission and yeah, much like Lisa's self conception. I grew up in California in these, Latino communities and. Yeah. Or with, at least with Latino peers. All right. So here's a material question. So here's a flyleaf, this is a nice gold flyleaf, and here's a blue one. who made all of those decisions and what were your, all of the fine tuning? Design decisions, I would have set general parameters. Like I knew I wanted a flyleaf and wanting a flyleaf goes back to our experience with Swanside Press, and then I would just tell the designer that I want a flyleaf and the designer would pick the colors, run things by me, but primarily I just knew that I wanted a flyleaf because I just thought flyleaves are nice. So this is Charles. As your designer, and this one's also Charles? Yes. Oh, okay. All right. Should we move on to Brenda or do you want to talk about Momotombito in the meantime? Let's move on to Brenda. Move on to Brenda. Is this your first Midwestern writer? That might be the first one. although Lisa lived in the Midwest when hers came out, but she's a Californian. I'm trying to remember how I, do you remember? Cause you, you edited Brenda. I did. But I'm trying to remember why Brenda even. How you first met her? I think, no, I think what happened with Brenda. Here's what happened with Brenda. I'm remembering it now. Let me just see the year. So one thing to perhaps mention. To talk about context. Yeah. So in, in the summer of 2004, I was putting together the proposal for the wind shifts. And I remember that I needed 2004. Okay. And I remember that I needed some Latinas from the Midwest. Oh, okay. And I discovered Brenda Cárdenas's edited volume, I forget what it's called. It was published by Carlos Cumpián's March at Brussels Press. And she was living in Chicago at the time. It was co edited by her and Yohani Vázquez Paz. That's right. And from that anthology, I plucked Brenda. Vanessa Fuentes, who lives out in Minneapolis, and then I contacted Brenda to get work from her for The Wind Shifts. And it was that experience of reading her work for The Wind Shifts that made me think, I want to do a chapbook for work. huh. Oh, lovely. And so that's how Brenda became a momotembo. So her book came out in 2005. Yeah. And the wind shifts eventually came out in 2009, seven, seven. Oh, okay. That was the university of Arizona press anthology that you edited. 15. Do you remember how you came to be the editor of this volume? I think that you just were at a time where, your roles Letras Latinas here, and you thought, it might be nice to have some. some help to have a right hand gal, I think Was that you were, your plate was getting very full as I recall. And I was in South Bend by then, I think is the other significant note by then. I had ended up in South Bend as well, to my delight, working. So what year did Across the street from, so what year did you get to South? Good. 2003, I became a faculty fellow with the Center for Women's Intercultural Leadership across the street at St. Mary's. You were already here, here at Notre Dame. And so that was a nice chance to reconnect. And what do you remember about editing Brenda's manuscript? we spent a lot of time on the phone. I remember we spent a lot of time on the phone and there were, I was probably a little saucier than, I think, We, she had sent a book length, she had sent me at least one book length manuscript from which I could pull different poems. And some of the poems I pulled didn't include some that she had been reading for years and years that had gone over well with live audiences. And, sometimes we would have to agree to disagree on what should be in there, but more often than not, she was, amenable to some of my suggestions. I had, I was very hands on. I had a lot of changes that I had suggested to her and a lot of reordering and. A lot of questions for her about how did this work and why did this work? And I think I brought, of course, my own preferences to the work too. The first one here, Medicine, I think she never thought of that as a poem that might open the book. But to me, it just, It's so heavy on mythology and of course, very lush, natural imagery, which I love that I advocated it for the first one. And she agreed. So there was, it was a very dynamic process and I definitely did not hold back in terms of my ideas. And for the most part, she was very receptive. And when she wasn't, she was comfortable saying that too. She was comfortable expressing her horror about some of my ideas. I remember during that. Cause sometimes you would, we would email. Yes. And we would debrief. One of the things I remember was that she would have a poem, for example, that Juan Felipe Herrera liked a lot. And that would, so that would be her reason for wanting to include it. Or, and then you didn't say something cheeky to you. Juan Felipe Herrera is not your editor. That was just as debriefing. I never said that to her face, but sorry, Brenda. How did, how did we decide to, include? These woodcuts by what's his name? That was a friend of hers. I think she had been kind of Jeff Abbey Maldonado lino cuts. Yeah, she I think had been involved with some of the galleries in Chicago in particular Mexican Fine Arts Museum. Yeah. Yeah in Pilsen I think she had been involved with some of the arts scene the Chicano arts scene and Wanted to include those that was her idea and I suppose we should say that This from the tongues of brick and stone was introduced by Maurice Kilwin Cuevara, and blurb by Demetria Martinez and Juan Felipe. I think this is a good moment to also begin to talk about, because I think this title and the next two, meaning these two were probably the titles, we'll say what they were, Tongues from the Brick and Stone, Malinche's Daughter, by Michelle Otero with an introduction by Lisa D. Chavez. and pepper spray back to poetry by Paul Martinez Pampa and introduced by Luis Rodriguez. These three titles were probably the three titles that were most adopted in classrooms. Oh, okay. And they sold. I kept getting Brenda sold out. Brenda sold out. But it was, it sold out because it was getting adopted. It was getting adopted. And that's from a run of 300? No, these are 500 now. Actually, let me check. Yeah, Brenda. Yeah, these are, this was 500. This was 500. And they were selling so well. this was a thousand. No kidding. And this one actually went into a second printing. Huh. Because it was selling so well. Yeah. And Paul's was 500 and it sold out. And it was being, so I found myself oftentimes filling out book orders and that began, I began to realize that, that I probably needed more help because I found myself a lot of my time was spent filling out book orders. And the nice thing about, Michelle Otero's collection of nonfiction, it's sold so, and she was really good about pushing it. She gave tons of readings. And she was actually able to get her Harvard classmates to bankroll the second printing. And I suppose we should also say, I should say, That Michelle Otero's collection, her work was brought to my attention by Richard Yanez. Oh, okay. Yeah. Who had been at St. Mary's across the street from 2000 until 2003. Yeah. Yeah. And Paul's work, like Brenda's work, came to my attention, Because of the work I was carrying out for the Institute, in this case specifically, the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize, Pauls submitted a full length manuscript to the first edition of the prize. And that's how I first became acquainted with his work. Oh, okay. And so I, so the first edition of the prize was in 2004. huh. The book came out in 2005. And so he immediately became a candidate, not only for The Wind Shifts, But also for, for the press and I would say that I would put Chicago and he's in Chicago as well. and I would put Kevin A. Gonzalez in the same category. Kevin A. Gonzalez also submitted a full length manuscript to the first edition of the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize. Oh, okay. So that made him a candidate for the Wayne Schiff's and also, Momotombo Prize. Okay. In particular after they didn't necessarily win that competition, but then. They still had this unpublished manuscript that you had significant interest in. Yeah. Are you, are these all the same designer Charles? These are all Charles. Okay. These are all Charles. Yeah. Yeah. I like this one. I like the, this one strikes me as hearkening back to those chatbooks from the sixties. I think what we were trying to go for there was to a play bill. A play bill of a boxing. Of a boxing, yeah. Match. Yeah. It's great. I love it. Yeah. And this one of course was introduced by Ter Terrence Hayes, Uhhuh And blurb by Jim Daniels and Paul's chapbook was introduced by, Luis. Luis Rodriguez. That's right. That's right. Wow. That's a lot of work. And yet you kept going. I suppose I could say something about Momotombito before, before we, before, before we wind down. Yeah. one time I was wandering through the stacks here at Hesburgh Library. huh. In fact, I'm just going to, I was wandering through the stacks of Hesburgh Library. And I came across a little chat book that was published by Robert Ha. In fact, I include that here. I don't think I remember hearing about that. Oh yeah, I was at Bob. I said, it's okay. let me just see if I can say this. I'll just say it. Yeah. When John Matthias expressed interest in publishing something with Momotombito, an informal imprint of Momotombo Press, I couldn't help but feel honored. Unbeknownst to him at the time, his two poems, an eight page chat book printed in England, In 1997, which I discovered in the stacks of Hesburgh Library, had, with its simple grey cover, served as a model for the design of In Praise of Cities, the inaugural volume of this imprint. One of his two poems is dedicated to Bob Haas, the Bay Area based writer, who, as it happens, was the first contemporary poet I read. As a senior in high school in San Francisco, and so that experience, for these, for that experience, made me think that I could create this space for two kinds of gestures, one. Is to publish something by someone who doesn't mind paying the bills, but who wants something, but who does not want to outright self, so it's a form of self publishing because you are paying, you're paying the bills, but. Within this creative space within an imprint that you Yeah. Which was what this was. Oh, that's the John Messiahs book. Yeah. Okay. But I had not, but the second gesture was for those people who had no qualms about paying the bill, even for themselves, Uhhuh So MoMA, so in Praise of Cities, was, a gesture that I did on, on, on the heels of nine 11 in two. There are three poems. One is a newer poem about 9 11. And I decided to foot the bill myself. And, and again, I was being inspired by the things that we've talked about before small press publishing pepper canister press. so I created this. And then once I created this, I remember giving a copy of it to John Mathias and him really liking it. and then he's the one who approached me about doing this and I had to reiterate to him, but you have to pay for it. Yeah. That's fine. Yeah. And you knew him already through. John Mathias was my first poetry teacher here at Notre Dame. Okay. and I think I mentioned the Bob Haas connection because he. Bob Hass, Robert Pinsky, James McMichael, and John Peck, cohorts at Stanford in the late 60s, and they all studied together under Ivory Winters. Yeah. Huh. Yeah. And the, like anything, one of the things, one of the things you'll see that on the, in the back of the first one, I write here, it just goes to show that sometimes you have projects in mind that don't come to pass. Yeah. I have here, in Praise of Cities, the inaugural chapbook of Mamotanbito. And then I have a little paragraph here that says Chicano writer Richard Yanez is the next author slated for publication in the Momotombito series. His first collection of stories, El Paso del Norte, will be published in 2003. So we were going to do a Momotombito chapbook with Richard Yanez, but I don't remember what happened. Let's do the We Were Gonna Do's. Exactly. The ghost chapbook. This is a good time. That you don't see. The We Were Gonna Do's. We have two of them. We have three, if you include Rich's, that we don't even remember what the heck happened. Well, Rich's is going to be Momotombito, but let's talk about the first. because this, during this period, you bring me on as associate editor. These other books come out. I'm still associate editor, but no one would know it because no books come out that I've actually edited. so how did we, we're talking about Gabe Gomez, right? Yes. So Gabe Gomez, whose book, The Outer Bands won the, Montoya prize. The second Montoya prize. The second Montoya prize in 2000 and. The prize would have been held. It would have, he would have won it. In 2006, the book would have came out in 2007. Oh, it was way off. 2007. But how did we meet, Kate? He had blind submitted. We had some kind of call somewhere. I don't know. We had a call. ha. For submission somehow, somewhere. And you had a kind of a stack of submissions from folks you didn't know? I think I know it. Okay. Good. It may have been good because I don't, in your condition as associate editor, I gave you a small Yes. Stack of manuscripts. I said that you had been and I said choose one. Yeah. And you were gonna, I think you were gonna exercise your associate editorship, right? By choosing one. Yeah. And you picked Gabe? I did. I picked Gomez. I picked Gabe Gomez. I did. But where did you get that stack just from your travels around the country talking about Mamatombo and people would pass them to you? Neither of us knew him before. It may have been him just blind submitting. I think it was him blind submitting because by then you have at least some or all of these books. So it was gaining some visibility in the poetry world and you had the Latino mission. There weren't any other chap publishers that had a Latino mission at the time. So Gabe Gomez, he, I, he is ethnically Mexican American from El Paso from Texas. That's right. And, his poetics is more on the non narrative experimental side. And I did, I selected his manuscript and called him up. And it Katrina had just happened maybe two weeks before. And I saw this, New Orleans address and phone number. Luckily it was a cell phone. It was still working. I called him up and I said, this is Maria from Otomo Press. Yes. First of all, are you okay? Yes. And in fact, they had lost everything, but they themselves had evacuated and were safe. But, he and his wife and, so then I said, I'd like to, we'd like to publish your book. And he, of course, he said, this is the best news I've had all month. so I selected some poems and then we spent a lot of time on the phone, as well as I had with Brenda, with me being very hands on and him also being very willing to just dive back in and revise. I really have to credit the willingness of these poets to re examine work that they may have spent time, so much time with already, through readings and through submissions to magazines. we had a very hands on process, created a chapbook, created an order. Did we have a title? I don't know. It may have been called the Outer Bounds. I don't remember because it had some Katrina focused poems and the Outer Bounds refers to the Outer Bounds of our hurricane. so maybe it was called the Outer Bounds. I don't remember, but we had the whole thing. We had the order. We had all the revisions sewn up and tied with a bow. and then concurrently, the second edition of the Andres Montoya poetry prize was underway. Valerie Martinez was the final judge. I would have called 20 finalists manuscripts and sent them to her. And we were getting around the time where she was going to have to announce who the winner was. And the interesting thing about it is that when she finally communicated to me. That the winner personally, she communicated to me that the winner was Gabriel Gomez. I was slated to go to the Border Book Festival in a couple of weeks. And she was in New Mexico and I pitched the idea to her. What if we make the official announcement of the winner of the Andrés Montero Poetry Prize at the Border Book Festival? There's gonna be a session there with Emi Pérez and I was gonna be So that would have been the summer? spring. Spring of 2007. the book came out in 2007. This would have been Spring of 2006. Spring of 2006. Okay. And so here's what we did. but we wanted to let Gabe know, right? So we wanted to have an official announcement of the prize. But we wanted Gabe obviously to know, so I had Gabe's cell phone number. We're in the parking lot. We're walking to the session where we're going to make the announcement. And we call up Gabe on the cell phone. And I give the cell phone to Valerie Martinez. And Valerie Martinez lets Gabe know that he's the winner. Wow. And then we go to the session. And Valerie reads her statement, which eventually became the introduction to the book. Oh, okay. Interesting. And so I guess at that point, I'm not sure when we began to think, Oh God, now what do we do about the Momotoma Christmas? I think it was a little awkward because, I think the concern was that it would just seem they'd be competing with one another. Yeah, they would be competing with one another and one might wonder, Gomez society? He brought out his chapbook, he brought out his book. I think we, I just, I don't know how I just, we can't do both. In other words, you won the prize. It just didn't seem yeah, it didn't, yeah, they would be competing. They would be parallel gestures. And most of the books in the chapbook were in the book manuscript. So they went on to have a life of their own in his book, The Outer Bands. so now do you have any graduate student help at this point, before we go to the final titles, did you have students working for you or no other assistants? No, just, at that point you were still the acquiring editor. I, RRI Rich was an acquiring editor in That's right. In some ways, because That's right. He helped with, he helped. And he was also, he had a project that he was trying to work on, which never came to fruition. I don't even remember. It might've been a former student of his. It was a former student. I remember that. That was another we didn't do. Yes. Because she kept revising and revising. And nothing ever happened. We never got the final manuscript. She may still be revising it to this day. But he added to this one. Malinche's daughter. And I should say that we do have one exception here. In a sense that the mission of Momotomo Press was to publish emerging voices, new voices in Latino literature in the chapbook format. We broke that mold for one title, and that was Braille for the Heart by Robert Vasquez, introduced by Diana Marie Delgado. Here we have the idea of the mentee introducing the mentor, poetically speaking, and blurbed by another mentee, Eduardo Corral. So Eduardo and Diana both were big admirers of Robert's work. And this was actually an example of an experiment that didn't really bear the fruit that I'd hoped it would. And Robert consented to having a chat book of his work published. And the objective was going to be that this was going to be a limited edition chat book to raise money. And I think we published, we printed, I think like 300 of them. And the idea was that we were going to sell all 300 for 30 and make whatever that math is. And it just didn't quite get off the ground. Yeah. It was a limited edition that was a, as a published as a fundraiser. I remember that. and it didn't, Nothing ever slowed you down though. You never said, you know what, if this didn't work and I'm just so discouraged, so hang it all anyway. What do you think, what do you think that was in you? That just, if there was a, if there was a roadblock, you just would make a slight change in course and keep moving. by that time, certainly the fact that this was a fundraiser. meant that I was in full swing here at my job at Letras Latinas at Notre Dame, that I had to raise money. It was part of my job description. That was part of your job, your mandate. It was part of my job description. Yeah. So try, if something didn't work, trying the next thing was a natural part of your job. You're a professional station here, basically. And the last two titles before we talk about the final title that wasn't, because that was going to be the final title that wasn't. That's right. Yeah. yeah. So Scott and Guito. Another, back to California. Yeah, Scott and Guito was a really interesting, relationship in that I was a student here, a graduate student at Notre Dame. And he was applying to MFA programs, including Notre Dame, and he got accepted and he actually came for a campus visit, but in the end, he ended up going to Iowa, but he had done his undergraduate degree at San Francisco State, where he studied with D. A. Powell. And he was along with Rosa Alcala was one of the two poets who I felt were the more experimental poets of the wind shifts. And I knew that he had this series called Dear Jack. And I think over time, I decided that I wanted to try to publish. a more experimental title and I approached him about doing a collection and we had Craig Santos Perez, who's from Guam, do the introduction and D. A. Powell did the blurb. So this ends up being the first title that's more firmly in that experimental tradition. It might've been Gabe's, but it ends up being Scott's. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And you say, yeah, so now let's think about a sort of breadth and depth. So you said, I wanted to publish a more experimental title. So you wanted a kind of a breadth in aesthetics. At some point we had the gender balance conversation. and that was what led us to our final title that wasn't because, I think we were, we both agreed that it was time to try and reset the numbers, which is interesting because one of the, one of the things that I, that, that I noticed about the Chicano chapbook series was how unbalanced it was predominantly male, maybe like Sanchez and snails and maybe two other people. and this one, not to the same degree. But I began to notice that it was listing to one side. And so at some point we were talking about publishing Pat Mora's daughter. What's her name? Oh, yes. Libby. Libby. That was another possible. We were talking. That's right. We were talking about Libby Martinez. That's right. And then I guess, this is part of Momotomo's history when you went to the, when you went to the Latino Writers Conference in New Mexico. That's right. That's right. we had a chapbook panel. We had a chapbook panel. That you were on. Yes. By then I had managed to bring another book to print. I had And at the time we didn't know this was going to be our final title. Yes. I had just finished editing this one. This one had just come out. So I think I had this one to promote at the conference and was sharing it around. And that's Octavio R. Gonzalez from New York City, and he's a writer that had was put on my radar by Rigoberto Gonzalez. And one of the things I will say about Octavio is that he was very good. About sending me emails every now and then just to keep me abreast of what was going on in his writing life. huh. And he would do it like once or twice a year for a few years. Yeah. And I eventually thought, okay, it's time. huh. We need to do a chapter by him. Yeah. And then I asked you if you would look at his work. Yeah, and I loved editing his book. I thought it was really fun to work on that book. and Rigoberto wrote a nice introduction. Yeah, he did. Now, and so now I'm wondering too, before we get to the last one that wasn't, thinking about the idea of balance and we had a gender balance and then you wanted to have aesthetic diversity and you have gay poets and you have straight poets. I wonder if we have religious diversity. I'm not sure, you have a straight women and we had a lesbian poet scheduled for the end, Kathy Arellano. How did you met her at the, and I met her at the, National Hispanic. National Latino Writers Conference at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. That's right. And I had a context was that cause you were there for a panel. Yeah. And I, and they set me up with little 20 minute consult slots. And so anyone could sign up to have a consult with the acquiring editor for a moment. I'm oppressed, which was kicked because it was just me. and so she brought her manuscript and of the ones that I saw there, I was most impressed with hers and I was also touched by her sense of place, her place rootedness. She grew up in the mission and a lot of her poems were about having lived through the first wave, maybe of gentrification in the mission where established families couldn't afford their renting longer or were getting evicted because they're. units were getting converted to upscale condos and, and you grew up in the mission. So I thought, Oh, I bet Francesco will be pleased that we have a writer who's really emphasizing this cultural history of the mission. so I really liked that sense of place that she had in being from the San Francisco Bay Area myself. And so you worked with her, right? Yeah. I said, let's do this book together. Now, are we, did we use contracts at any point? I don't think. We did not because we just never got around to that level of formality. We never got to that level of formality. And up until that moment, that had never caused a problem. in hindsight. It perhaps could have avoided some things. Yeah. but it was always just, to use a sexist term, a gentleman's agreement, a smile and a handshake would get you a chapbook. yeah, and so I'm smiling about it now because the whole thing fell apart at some point or another, but we got as far as, having created two chapbooks, we created one together where I suggested selections and she suggested modifications and we had started editing, we had been through one pass of edits and she withdrew that whole thing and said, I've completely reconceived my work. I really want to, instead of option A, I want to do option B that has. Distinct thematic emphases, will you please look at this instead? So then I got a new batch of poetry and looked at that new batch and we worked together to create the conception of a chapbook for option B and Shuri Moraga was set to write the introduction. And I think she wrote it. I don't think we ever had quite gotten it from her. I don't think she ever wrote it. I never saw it. If she wrote, I think I'm going to have to check. Yeah. There may, it may not have, it had an introducer, if not an introduction. Yeah. I think she wrote it because I do know we eventually got a cover. it was an image of a photograph that she took of mission. The cover was designed, the selections were made, the last edits were in the process. I also remember, and this is one of the things that, you know, as we wind that wind down. I do remember the experience of choosing, choosing the cover and that was, it was a lot of back and forth and I had to let her know that, this is our, that this part of the process is the publisher's domain, because she was suggesting many different covers, but we ended up having a really beautiful cover of Mission High School and by that time the designer was a guy named Chris Shackman. Yes. Which was his first title. This one. Yeah. Wasn't it? Yeah. No, you know what, I just realized something and I'm glad I remembered right now. We actually have, we're actually missing a title. Oh. Yeah. Aaron Morales. Aaron Morales, the fiction writer. Oh gosh, which also sold out, didn't it? No. No, it didn't sell out. There was high hopes for it to sell out. Oh, okay. But anyway, Aaron Morales. It was Aaron Morales who brought us on to the last, designer. Oh, okay. But we should say that, yeah, Aaron Morales. Chris Jackman's first book with Momotombo. But Aaron Morales wrote a fiction chapbook, which was actually an excerpt from his novel. That's right. Drowning in Tucson, I believe. Which was published by Coffeehouse Press. And it was actually, it was a beautiful chapter. Yes. For some reason, I didn't find a copy of it, although I do have copies in my office. That's right. So that was two chap, two fictions, one nonfiction and the rest poetry. That was close. we almost, one memoir basically is, yeah. Michelle's as memoir. So we had this beautiful cover. Close. yeah. we had this beautiful cover of Mission High School. yes, we had to cover, and I think what happened was, and this gets back to the contractual issue, before we get, let's delay the, let's delay the mystery, one more moment and say, by now we knew this would be the last one. That's right. That's right. We, yeah, we were gonna, we were gonna, we knew time had come, all things had their season. This had a, and it seemed like a nice place to end. Given that it was gonna be about the Mission District, and would it have been the 10th title that in the Latino mission? I think perhaps that I don't remember. Yeah, we can actually count him up. Listen. 1, 2, 3, 4. I don't remember. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. And Aaron. Nine, Aaron, 11. It would have been 11. Okay. So maybe we weren't counting, Robert Vasquez, cause I had it in my head. Possibly. Of course he's Chicano, but his was a special edition for fundraising. So it would have been our 10th. It would have been our 10th regular standard Momotomo Publishing. It was going to work to recant the, reset the, not recant, but reset the gender balance. It was going to be someone with ties to your hometown. Do you remember the title? Our first, probably our first lesbian writer. What title did we do? I don't remember because it changed a couple times. I was really excited about the work and it had alternating prose and poetry, which was a nice, also a nice, it was multi genre, yeah, multi genre, a nice, turn. Before we close out, I should say that Erin Morales chat book was From Here You Can See the End of the Desert. That's right. And it had a beautiful introduction by Luis Alberto Urrea. Yes, that was a really nice introduction. Yeah, so there we have Kathy's cover. We have her introducer selected. We have a selection. We're in the last round of edits. And what would you describe happened next? I think what happened was, no, not what I think. So she sent me what she felt was a version of a, of an agreement, a contract for whatever it's worth. And there were certain things that she wanted. That she had generated? Yeah, it was, yeah. And I basically went point by point. And accepted some things, even improved some things, and categorically, in her favor. Yeah, and in other cases, said, no, this is not the domain of the author, it's the domain of the publisher. And in essence, I sent the rev, revised contract back to her, which in my view improved, the conditions, but, she withdrew. That's right. She withdrew. Yeah. Rather than continue negotiations. Yeah. and that, and then we said, should we try to replace it? Should we? We talked about Libby Martinez, who is a, a good writer. She lives in Colorado Springs. I live in Pueblo. She's Pat Mora's daughter, but she's also, she has her own identity as a writer. And then we started to realize, we're tired. We're tired. Wasn't that, is that an accurate sort of description? I'm sure there's a brighter note you can put on it. No, I think I just felt at that point that the publishing bug had run its course. huh. Cause even by then my role was publisher, not editor. huh. huh. I was paying the bills. Yeah. And other people were doing the editing. And you had a good, solid, at least dozen other projects going by then. Probably. Yeah. If not two dozens. and I by then was editing a periodical. I was editing Pilgrimage Magazine that came out three times a year. we were both stretched pretty thin probably. Time. yeah, I, and I think I, I felt projects of this nature have their natural life cycle. That's right. That's right. Just like Chicano chatbook series didn't last forever, but was impactful while it was here. And one of the most gratifying things about a lot of the writers that we published, because the mission was to publish writers who did not yet have a full length book. That's important to remember as a, I don't think we mentioned that as a boost. Yeah. To them that was, it, was that the niche was very specific. Writers who did not yet publish a full length book. So we forgot to mention that Paul Martinez Pompa went on to win the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize. The next time he entered. Brenda Cardenas went on to publish her first book, Boomerang, with, Bilingual Press, the Canto Cosa series that I edit. Which you, yeah. Kevin A. Gonzalez went on to publish his first book with Carnegie Mellon Press. Stephen Cordova went on to publish his first book with Bilingual Press, which was also part of the Canto Mundo series. And were anyone else, I think that's it in terms of people who went on to publish. I think so. was, did Aaron, Michael Morales went on to publish his novel with, Coffeehouse Press. And me. That's right. I went on to publish with University of Arizona. And Eric Goodis went on to win a first book prize in California. That's right. I believe. That's right. So mission accomplished. Wouldn't you say? I don't know. What do you think? Not the firm answer I was expecting. We, can I tell about our witness? We have our friend Blas Baukner here off camera. As our witness. we had him here in case we got into any awkward silences. He Did you have something that you thought we didn't cover? I wrote several questions down and you answered them all. And the last one I had, which I wasn't sure of your answer. So what made you decide to wrap it up? yeah. I guess it's, we were intending to end it with Kathy's chat box, so we, so in that sense. We decided we were going to end it. It just turns out that it ended with hobbies instead. So talk to you about time takeaways, life lessons, deep insight. So one of them. That I think we both came away from, was distilled in this conversation you had with Tree Swenson. And Tree Swenson introduced a new term to you. She, didn't she say something like, there's a difference between publishing and privishing? Yes. Yes. Do you want to talk about some of your takeaways? Some of your life lessons? it's her term privishing. What happens when you privish, if I remember correctly, is that you actually produce the physical book. But then if you don't have an infrastructure in place to disseminate, it sits in boxes. And I would say that it's been a mixed bag with Momotomo brands, and a lot of it has had to do with how active the authors were in promoting their books. So there were cases of authors who promised to really push And that promise fell short. There were cases of authors who really went above and beyond, probably, and I have no qualms about saying this, the person who, who went above and beyond, Brenda, but also Michelle Otero. Remember her? And Michelle. Her, we did two. Yeah, that's pretty significant for a small press, And she sold out both print runs. and Brenda and Paul did great in the sense that their books got adopted in classrooms. huh. that was really. That was important. Yeah. And there were other authors who, this is something that's perennial, perennial in poetry publishing. That if the author doesn't go and get out there and push the book, it can languish. Yeah. That's true. That we just found that as a cold hard truth. And often I've heard graduate students have this nail biting anxiety of, Oh, if I can't do the promotion thing, or if I can't get into POBIS, I'll never get anywhere. And fundamentally it's, dazzling work that gets advanced and that gets, gets those wheels turning on a writer's visibility. On the one hand, on the other hand, we ended up that we couldn't ignore whether we thought someone could promote a book or not so that by the, by these last three or four titles, we would have conversations during the acquisition phase. do you think this person can give a reading? Do you think this person can go out and seek, yeah, stir their own pot. And if yes, then that was taken into consideration because we didn't have the resources because we didn't have the resources. And not that we, this was taken into consideration after we. We had found work that we like after we found work that we were excited about. Sometimes beginning poets worry that there's all this crappy work out there getting visibility just because someone knows how to do a Facebook post or something, and that's not true. it's that there's so much good work competing with each other that the only sort of factor that can set one above the fray of many excellent, contemporary titles is, are you willing to build an audience yourself? And we would have to have those explicit conversations by the end of it. Not at the beginning. I don't think, I don't, I think we just thought let's give it a try with the early ones. And you were very trusting of us, of the five of us. you early on said to the five of us in an email in the Mark my words, you said, This is your book now, so I'm trusting you to promote it and get some readings. And so I think that, that bore fruit through the rest of the Momotombo. Anytime that did happen, those were the books that, that did well. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Publishing versus privationing. I guess that's a wrap, isn't it? That's a wrap. thank you for doing this. This was fun.