Scenes: an interview with Jeanetta Calhoun Mish

Could you briefly describe your press’s history?

Mongrel Empire Press began in 2007 with a conversation over margaritas. Another Oklahoma writer and I were discussing the difficulty of publishing regional, vernacular writing—one could be a regional writer and get published but finding publishers while writing in vernacular combined with writing from flyover country was difficult. We started the Press to publish that writer’s regional, vernacular poetry collection which was too religious for most secular presses and too irreligious for most religious presses. We made the first 200 books on our kitchen table—I’d figured out how to do perfect binding at home. But our first author sold so many books that we quickly moved to a reputable POD printer. We’re a micro-press, usually publishing 6–8 books a year—we recently published our 49th book. Our authors have won the Oklahoma Book Award, the Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, been awarded an Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal, shortlisted for the 2014 International Rubery Book Award for Poetry, feted at the San Antonio and Brownsville Book Festivals, and featured in the Las Comadres and Friends National Latino Book Club “Conversations with…” Series and on Garrison Keillor’s The Writers’ Almanac.

How would you characterize the work you publish?

We’ve published lyric poetry, narrative poetry, nonnarrative (what I refer to as “radically contemporary”) poetry, novels, and essay and short fiction collections. One of the most enjoyable aspects of being the founder, owner, and editor of the press is that I can publish books I like to read— and I have an extremely broad aesthetic range. If a manuscript intrigues me, moves me, makes me ask questions, informs me, or, ideally, all of the above, the manuscript is accepted.

I also call on MEP authors and friends of the press to serve as editorial readers, a practice which modulates the possibility that I’ve missed a great manuscript because my aesthetic wasn’t quite broad enough.

Mongrel Empire Press actively seeks out and develops writers from Oklahoma and the surrounding area, although we’ve also published writers who from California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, New Mexico, Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, New York, and Mississippi.

37% of our authors are people of color, 49% are female and/or LGBTTIQQ2S. All together, 51% of our authors are from groups underrepresented in publishing. And I’m consciously trying to raise those percentages.

Who is your audience, and in what ways are you trying to reach them?

Conscientious, curious readers, many who live in the region, and people who like their books to leave them thinking about what they’ve read for days after the book is closed. MEP tries to reach our readers by publishing the best books we can, by sending out review copies and entering book awards, by keeping up our website and Facebook page, and by attending literary festival and bookfairs when we can. This is the most difficult responsibility for a tiny press—keeping the public relations machine running.

What is your role in the publishing scene?

I have to admit this question made me giggle—I’m not sure I have a role in “the” publishing scene. Nonetheless, I describe my role as advocacy for and development of national and regional small press literature—in many ways, what I do can perhaps best be described as literary citizenship.

Actions and activities toward advocacy and development include extensive, close editorial work with first-book (and some multiple book) authors, networking with Oklahoma and regional writers and publishers, seeking out emerging regional authors by attending, presenting for and sometimes organizing literary activities, publishing essays and giving presentations about regional literature, supporting regional literary magazines, serving on the boards of two Oklahoma literary organizations, offering free workshops and readings to underserved public schools and libraries, teaching in a low-residency MFA program at Oklahoma City University, and, currently, serving as the Oklahoma State Poet Laureate, which offers opportunities to promote Oklahoma literature and writers that I might not otherwise have accessed.