My LITTLE APOCALYPSE book has been picked up by Noctuary Press and will be released in early 2018. It’s all about post-atomic living, underground houses, and zombie girls. Below is a little sampling what to expect. I can’t wait to show it to you...
from apocalypse theory: a reader
My apocalypse theory is patient, but only so far as I keep to the itinerary and don't complain about the nausea Mostly, I'm troubled by bridges and faulty ball bearings. Obsessed with braided objects, broken machinery. I keep losing my shoes along the sides of roads we never return to. My apocalypse theory talks about plastics and nuclear energy as if they matter anymore, but really he's saying I love you with his eyes. With his dirty fingers. He's a little amazed when I walk into traffic. And still a little amazed when I walk out alive without a scratch.
By: Molly O'Brien
When I was wee, I learned that a good intrepid reporter focuses on the Ws. The who, what, when, where, how and why. The big questions. The questions that get at the nitty-gritty of a thing’s existence in the world.
So when it came time to parse Noctuary Press—a relatively new and wonderfully enigmatic publishing house focusing on female writers and cross-genre prose forms—I knew the investigation had to be thorough.
After all, this is a press whose website is dark and mysterious, decorated with a photo of a long chandelier’d marble hallway. This is a press that has already published two genre-bending works—Eva Heisler’s Drawing Water, a prose-y, poemish meditation on art, words, and the difference between seeing and knowing; and Carol Guess’ F IN, a ghost story that’s actually an “erasure” of a previously longer ghost story, making it, in effect, a ghost of a ghost story.
This was heavy, heady stuff. I had to investigate Kristina Marie Darling, who helms the Noctuary operation, as a good old-school investigative reporter would.
I donned my newsboy cap. I realized that newsboy caps are worn by those who deliver the news, not those who write it. I threw my newsboy cap away. And I asked Darling a bunch of W questions about her press.
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Who are you, Kristina Marie Darling?
I'm a poet who works with cross-genre prose forms: footnotes, endnotes, glossaries, prose poems, flash fictions, you name it. I'm also a Ph.D. student in the Poetics Program at S.U.N.Y.-Buffalo, where my research interests include experimental women's writing, feminist literary theory, and Modernist poetry.
You run Noctuary Press. Is this a solitary effort? How much time does this take? How do you balance running a small press with studies, your own writing, etc?
I pride myself a great deal on actively seeking input from authors about what artwork would best suit their writing. Kristy Bowen, whose book will be published soon by Noctuary Press, actually suggested her own magnificent artwork for the cover, which worked perfectly. Once I've discussed the cover art with the author, I work with David McNamara on the cover design. I'll usually make suggestions about what the finished product will be like, but he does the hard stuff involving software and technology. I'm very grateful for his expertise in that regard. With that said, I also am responsible for the interior layout of most of the books. When designing books, I value a matching of form and content. I see the cover design, typesetting, and layout as an extension of the work itself.
Noctuary prints "formally inventive" work. What are the boundaries of innovation and invention in prose, for you? What's too safe? What's maybe too experimental? Is there such a thing as too experimental?
For me, formal innovation ceases to be compelling when the work becomes opaque, impenetrable. Or when the work requires the poet to be there to explain it. With that in mind, a text becomes too experimental when the poet has created a vast theoretical apparatus to justify and explain their work, but none of this meaning is conveyed by the work itself. I'm a strong believer in a text that stands on its own, apart from the writer, as a meaningful work. This quality is absent quite frequently from contemporary experimental writing. And if I know what's going to happen on the next page, it's definitely too safe.
Regarding both Drawing Water and F IN—what stood out for you in each work? What makes them worthy of publication, for you?
What I loved most about Carol Guess' F IN was her ability to simultaneously evoke and undermine readerly expectations of genre fiction. The work is an erasure of a young adult mystery novella. So much of the time, genre fiction fosters passivity on the part of the reader. They frequently know from the beginning what's coming. Although Guess' work frequently alludes to the tropes of the genre, her book's fragmented form and spare lyricism calls for a more active role on the part of the reader than any reader of YA fiction has likely ever encountered.
Eva Heisler's Drawing Water is equally remarkable, but in a quite different way. Heisler's book-length meditation on the artistic process presents a beautiful matching of form and content. Her formal choices enact, illuminate, and complicate the work itself. Her voice is singular, unique, and compelling, informed by her eclectic, wide-ranging reading in poetry and an intelligent, perceptive approach to the visual arts.
What are the challenges you've experienced in running this press? Any true horror stories? Any particular moments of sheer publishing-related elation?
Although we haven't had any major disasters yet, I feel like I'm still learning a great deal in terms of marketing and sales. In short, I'd love for you to purchase some of our lovely books! I'm proud to say that we've been featured online at The Best American Poetry, Delirious Hem, PANK Magazine, and VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts. And the reviews of Carol Guess' F IN have been fantastic. I appreciate everyone who has supported us thus far!
What have you read recently that inspires your work or your goals at Noctuary?
Danielle Pafunda's Manhater, Simone Muench's Orange Crush, and Jenny Boully's Book of Beginnings and Endings have definitely sparked an interest in publishing book-length projects and linked collections of poetry and/or flash fiction.
When are more presses going to start publishing more women?—obviously this is somewhat unanswerable but I'd love to hear your thoughts on gender, publishing, and your choice to focus on women writers.
I think that so much of the problem lies within how femininity is constructed in our culture. Women are taught to be passive, and ambition is generally not encouraged. At least this has been my experience. I once had a professor tell me to drop out of school, get married, and start a family as soon as I could. Men, on the other hand, are encouraged to be aggressive with seeking out opportunities for their careers. I feel like these attitudes often prevent women from pursuing publication, as it's not "feminine" to demand someone's attention. With that in mind, I'm so proud that Noctuary Press presents a public forum for women writers, and showcases their work in a professional manner.
You operate out of Buffalo. What kind of literary scene or community is there?
Buffalo has a vibrant small press community. The city is home to my all-time favorite press, BlazeVOX Books, as well as Starcherone Books and a number of grad student publications in the English Department at S.U.N.Y.-Buffalo. I'm grateful for not only the sense of community in Buffalo, but the presence of great role models as I develop my own press.
How do you challenge genre in your publications? How would you describe the genres (or lack thereof) in the works you already have published or plan on publishing? Or is that sort of a moot point if you're trying to subvert the politics related to strict adherence to genre?
Most of the work that we've published so far exhibits an intelligent awareness of genre, its conventions, and its gender politics, but doesn't allow the writing to be limited by these established conventions. As Adrienne Rich once said, and I'm paraphrasing here, how can women write in forms that have been hostile to them, that don't fit their experience? It's difficult to simply forget genre, but I love that Carol Guess, Eva Heisler, and Kristy Bowen have actively sought alternative modes of thinking and writing.
How are things going, in general, with Noctuary? What are you satisfied with? What do you want more of? What can be changed? What are you learning?
I'm thrilled that the critical response to Noctuary Press has been supportive, intelligent, and encouraging. I'm happy that the authors are happy. But I'd love to get more books into the hands of readers.
Why books? Why printed pages and not ebooks, Kindle editions, .pdf chapbooks? Basically—why should the book, as you print it for Noctuary, continue to live on?
I regard Noctuary Press as an intervention into the various hierarchies that have been been imposed upon literary writing. We tend to think of printed books as more prestigious, more legitimate, etc., but all too often, this mode of dissemination is only available to writers working within more traditional frameworks. The mark of legitimacy for a poet, the printed, perfect bound book, with spine text, is much less accessible to women writers, particularly those working outside of received literary forms. Noctuary Press is an effort to present women's writing that takes formal risks as not only legitimate, but in every way equal to other books that are printed, bound, and professionally presented to their readers.
Kristina Marie Darling is the editor and founder of woman-centered Noctuary Press.
S/tick: Tell us a bit about yourself and your background as a woman writer or women's advocate.
Kristina: I'm a poet and fiction writer who works primarily with hybrid genre prose forms. While I usually incorporate autobiography and other subjective material into my writing, most of my projects use appropriated academic forms (such as footnotes, glossaries, indexes, and appendices).
I'm very interested in using the appropriation of these forms to disrupt the hierarchies that we tend to impose on different types of language, such as the authority that we invest in academic language. I love to interrogate the assumptions behind this textual authority and to work toward making academic language more inclusive.
S/tick: What more specifically inspired you to start a woman-centered press?
Kristina: As a female writer working with prose forms, I'm very interested in what types of cross-genre writing are being disseminated. But I always felt like something was missing from the contemporary literary landscape. Most of the cross-genre writing that's currently being published merely rejects the notion of genre without interrogating it in a meaningful way. I wanted to start a press that would promote dialogue about what purpose genre categories serve within the literary community, and perhaps more importantly, who they serve.
Genre categories frequently function as a means to exclude writing that doesn't fit within their paradigm. So much of the time, writing that doesn't fit within existing genre categories is "othered," and the writing that's most frequently "othered" is women's writing. I started a woman-centered press in order to provide a place to dialogue about the gender politics of genre categories.
S/tick: How does Noctuary Press's mission help move forward some of the goals of feminism or womanism as you understand these ideas and their associated movements?
Kristina: I'm very interested in the ways gender shapes our use of language. All too often, gender inequalities are reflected in the hierarchies that we impose on different types of language. Academic modes of writing, much like scientific discourses, are treated as more valuable than more "subjective" types of writing. And these disciplines are almost always considered male domains. Along these lines, writing that fits within the academy's genre categories are almost always perceived as more "legitimate" than other modes of writing. Noctuary Press attempts to jostle and destabilize these hierarchies, to illustrate the ways in which women's modes of writing and thinking can illuminate and complicate one another.
S/tick: How can genre be restrictive for women writers in particular? What do you think the prescriptions of genre say about broader sociocultural ideas surrounding gender?
Kristina: So much of the time, the categories that we impose upon language reflect cultural assumptions about which kinds of language are valuable, credible, and legitimate. But women often refuse to write in forms of discourse that are hostile to them, that don't reflect their experiences or serve their interests. Women's efforts to challenge masculine hegemony are best crafted outside of received forms, as these traditional forms reflect hierarchies of thought that are created by (and perpetuated by) culturally dominant groups. Because these unclassifiable texts don't fit within established genre categories, they become difficult to disseminate. Noctuary Press hopes to create a record of, and give visibility to, these efforts to interrogate genre categories.
S/tick: Starting a woman-centered press is a courageous act in our eyes. What are some of the unique challenges for a woman-centered press? How does Noctuary Press plan to negotiate these challenges?
Kristina: Noctuary Press has been very fortunate in terms of finances, since the press is funded by the generosity of the University at Buffalo English Department. I'd have to say that one of the biggest challenges I've encountered is the assumption that the press is for an exclusively female audience. I'm very interested in building a diverse readership for the press, and hope to overcome this obstacle through my use of social media, and by reaching out to the literary community. We released our first title in February, and I look forward to continuing to promote these wonderful writers' work.
If you would like to be considered for an interview, e-mail us at [email protected]. And don't forget to visit Kristina at Noctuary Press!
