Tupelo Press Expands Beyond PoetryBy Andy McKeever, iBerkshires Staff
11:09AM / Monday, November 29, 2010 | |
 Tupelo Press in the Eclipse Mill is marking 10 years and is publishing its 100th book. |
The people who make it happen at Tupelo: Rose Carlson, left, administrative director; Jeffrey Levine, publisher and editor-in-chief; Kimberly Capriola, administrative assistant; and David Rossitter, fulfillment coordinator. |
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — With its most ambitious list of books to print in 2011, Tupelo Press won a $20,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts last Tuesday.
"This is not our first grant, they have been really supportive to the press," press founder and Editor Jeffrey Levine said on Friday. "Last year, only three or four nonprofits in the area got a grant. It's a big thing for Western Mass to be recognized by the NEA."
More signficant is those three other grant winners were Clark Art Institute, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and Jacob's Pillow. Tupelo Press keeps high company.
Levine founded the nonprofit press in 1999 in Dorset, Vt. When it outgrew its location, he moved it into the Eclipse Mill on Route 2 in 2008. Historically publishing mostly poetry, the grant is helping Tupelo extend into essays, memoirs and fiction.
"It's always been a part of our mission but we've gotten to add two people to go through all the tremendous amount of manuscripts that we get," Levine said. "This grant application was for a project that includes nine books of poetry, two of prose and two creative nonfiction."
The literary press typically publishes nine to 12 books a year with 10 last year. Tupelo hopes to increase that to 14 this year.
"We've published 100 books in 10 years," Levine said. "It's very ambitious for us. We've got a $300,000 budget so there is still a lot to be raised and some of that will come from book sales."
The poet founded the press just a year after earning his master's in fine arts. "I thought it would be fun," he said on Monday, to publish a couple books on poetry. "I never expected it to grow to this extent and this size so quickly."
Part of that may be because of the publisher's distribution network. Levine believes Tupelo is the only independent publisher distributing its own work. Like other small presses, it had been part of a consortium (in this case, CBSD Inc.) that distributed its books but a consolidation of several distributors a few years ago, including CBSD, led Tupelo to strike out on its own.
Its name and reputation certainly paved the way. "We had no trouble at all assembling a really good team," he said, which includes Marie Gauthier, director of sales and marketing, and representatives in the nation's four regions. It's books can be found at both independent booksellers and in chain bookstores.
Tupelo is now the third- or fourth-most productive press in the nation, said Levine, and most of the books are first or second works of emerging authors, along with well-known authors. It receives some 4,000 manuscripts a year.
"We try to discover talent that flew under the radar of the major presses," he said. "We have an open list. Anybody can submit."
The authors whose books will be released by Tupelo Press during 2011 are poets Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Daniel Khalastchi, Joshua Corey, Dan Beachy-Quick, Geri Doran, Carol Ann Davis, Brandon Som, Marc Gaba and Larissa Szporluk; fiction writers Floyd Skloot and James Friel; and two writers of memoirs, Kazim Ali and Paisley Rekdal.
The manuscripts are chosen, edited and the final product is designed at the mill site but printing is done off-site.
"We pay a lot of attention to design. What we are noted for is the beauty of our books," Levine said.
He sees poetry as "ennobling and uplifting," a source for changing people's lives. But it's a tough business, Levine admitted. "So many people see poetry as that dark matter behind the difficult door. ... It's a hard sell."
NEA will distribute $26.68 million in grants to 1,057 organizations nationwide in its first round of 2011 grants.
Updated and edited on Monday, Nov. 29, 2010.
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