Les Figues Press

Vanessa Place, Pam Ore, and Teresa Carmody founded Les Figues Press in late 2004. There was no reason for us to do so. The American people had just reelected George W. Bush, indicating an arguable majority preference for simple explanations in complex times. We were at war then, as we still are. Trench art is art made from the detritus of war; our TrenchArt series is our primary publishing project, and we have promised to continue publishing the series as long as the US is at war. Each annual series consists of five books, curated around an aesthetic consideration: e.g., feminism and avant-forms (Tracer series), the recombinatory (Maneuvers series), the frame (Casements series). Neither books nor presses exist outside of a social, i.e. political, context. On our website, we say, "The Press resists basic market-driven standards of quality, morality and political identity found in the tried and untrue sectors of mainstream publishing and the current après-garde, and to this end, is perfectly happy to slit its own throat." If one believes that literature is also art and not purely a commercial enterprise, then the small press must exist for that is where art begins. And begins with the question, what is literary art? Art may be that which is agreed upon as art, as in the work of Paul Hoover and Kim Rosenfield, two Les Figues poets who enjoy reputations as literary artists, or Alta Ifland and Urs Allemann, both of whom have won international prizes for their work. Art may be that which is hotly contested, or that which is simply unknown, such as Christine Wertheim's opus, previously thought unpublishable, or less known, such as Axel Thormählen's stories, previously available only in German.

Because art does not exist outside of its context, every writer in the TrenchArt series must write an aesthetic statement, separately published. This is an aesthetic movement with an ethical imperative: the artists must be willing to define their work, to call the shot, to say what it is they want to do and how they propose to do it. In short, to justify their existence in retrospect, which is the only way art is ever justified. Small presses have the luxury of worrying about the quality of production rather than the quantity of consumption. No small press needs to come into being. But then there might be no James Joyce, no Gertrude Stein, no Christine Wertheim, no Urs Allemann for non-Germans. We wanted our press to be a gate, not a gatekeeper. Five years later, we have acquitted ourselves on that ground: larger presses are publishing some of our finds, just as more readers and writers are finding us. We've published twenty-six titles to date, and continue to add to the body of literature that is art, expanding our list to include some non-TrenchArt titles, such as the Feminaissance anthology (2010), and the upcoming anthology of women's conceptual writing, titles which we believe also expand contemporary literary conversations. For the fact is, literature as art would not be art without the small press that insists on its gratuitous existence.