Book Publishers :: NewPages Guide

CALYX Books

PO Box B

Corvallis, OR 97339

Phone: (541) 753-9384 Fax: (541) 753-0515

E-mail: calyx <at> proaxis.com

Reading period: currently closed for unsolicited manuscripts (see website) Payment: depends on grants, always receive copies (see website) Founded: 1976 Distributors: Ingram Periodicals, Small Press Dist., Small Changes

Publisher's description: We at CALYX are activists, and we believe in the power of the written word. For 33 years we have provided a forum for over 3600 women’s voices by publishing writing and art that would not be published by commercial presses. Being a non-profit organization means CALYX is able to prioritize literary value and diversity. But the face of the publishing world has changed, and superstores and Internet booksellers are dominating bookselling. They have forced many independent stores into closing, and a very important link between a reader and books—especially the unusual, complex, literary titles published by small presses—is being lost.

Independent booksellers have always provided connections between a community of readers and unknown authors—not only is this relationship at risk, but diversity and independent thought are threatened as well. We urge you to support your independent bookstores and independent publishers. In the eloquent words of Barbara Kingsolver, without independents, we’d lose “color and diversity, poetry, the outside chance, the underdog’s story, the heretical questions.” If you crave “honest reading,” fight for independents.

Recent titles:
Humming the Blues: Inspired by Nin-me-sar-ra
Enheduanna's Song to Inanna
by Cass Dalglish
2008, $14.95
The first signed literature in the world is on cuneiform tablets written in 2350 BCE in Sumeria, and it is by a woman. Dr. Cass Dalglish translated the cuneiform of Enheduanna. She was a powerful Sumerian prince in 2350 BCE and her work, Nin-me-sar-ra, begged the god Inanna (who was the first to enter the underworld and return from the dead) for help overcoming an usurper. Adopting a jazz aesthetic, Dalglish improvises on her translations; re-examining the cuneiform through feminist lenses.

Far Beyond Triage
by Sarah Lantz
2007, $14.95
This first collection of deeply spiritual poetry explores the longings of the soul and tests the penetrable boundary between the living world and the ethereal. Sarah Lantz articulates complex emotions in a manner that makes poetry accessible while remaining elusive, heartbreaking and yet hopeful, romantic yet startlingly real. She creates a world in which small, ordinary moments posses elements of divinity, moving through time and space to discover “all I knew before I was born.” Lantz explores her past and the past of the family members killed in the holocaust while working to make sense of the present.

Storytelling in Cambodia
by Willa Schneberg
2006, $13.95
This moving, rich cycle of linked poems journeys from Cambodia’s ancient mythic times to the killing fields and to the U.N. presence during Cambodia’s first free elections. It bears witness to the plight of the Cambodian people and to all who have endured holocausts. The reader viscerally experiences the sweet-sour tastes both of jungle fruits and of blackened, dead potato patches; the sights and sounds of the bombed Cambodian countryside and of its fecund cities – as well as the humanity of others and ourselves.