Ander Monson missed Michigan, where he grew up, and “Michigan-ness,” a quality he characterizes as “something weirder, a little beyond boundary, on the edge of something mysterious,” when he founded New Michigan Press in 1999. At the time, he was editing Black Warrior Review, but he wasn’t receiving work that engaged image and text, erasure, or other mixed-media forms. He was fascinated by the page as a visual space and wanted to publish work that transgressed traditional genres. While Monson was studying at Iowa State University in Ames, where he earned an MA in English, his professor Debra Marquart told him that he didn’t need thousands of dollars to start a press; instead, she advised, “Just run a contest. Publish the winner. Treat people well.”
For the past twenty-five years, the press has been steered by this guidance, publishing chapbooks of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid genres, and readers can expect four to six new titles per year. Monson loves the chapbook form: “They’re consumable in a sitting,” he says. “They can be a little elliptical. Chapbooks are a proving ground for writers, a landscape with room for spreading out a project a little bit but not enough to overstay its welcome.” New Michigan Press, which publishes the literary magazine Diagram, also prints a broadside series that commemorates the readings of writers at several universities across the United States where Monson has taught. New Michigan Press considers queries from July to December each year without a fee. The press also runs an annual chapbook contest from January to June with a $25 entry fee. While reading submissions, Monson says he looks for coherence in the manuscript, a sense of identity, and commitment to the project. “Take pleasure in publishing work you love,” he offers as advice to anyone interested in establishing their own press or magazine. “It’s a powerful love letter to writing and to writers to get work that moves you in front of readers. It can turn into a life! It can save a life—others’ but also yours.”
