Learn more about Nightboat Books and their boundary-transcending list.
Q: In your mission statement you note that you aim to ‘develop audiences for writers whose work resists convention and transcends boundaries.’ Why is this so essential within the literary landscape?
A: Nightboat has always been committed to outreach and engagement. We have always wanted our books to reach new readers. Perhaps this is why we publish such a variety of work, because literary expression in writing comprises so many modes and genres. It seems too reductive to think of literature in narrow categories--fiction, poetry--so we have pushed an elastic definition of what a book might look like. I have always loved poetry since it's so malleable and capacious in what it holds. We think sharing this capacious view of literature is key to keeping the ecosystem of writers and readers vibrant and dynamic.
Q: Can you recommend one (or more!) important Nightboat titles to help people get started with your list?
A:Well, I also suggest people start by reading a book by Etel Adnan, the 96-year-old Lebanese-American poet and painter whose work has inspired so many. Her latest book, Shifting the Silence, is a remarkable mediation on mortality, myth, and the tumultuous state of the globe. The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolution written by Larry Mitchell and illustrated by Ned Asta, first published in 1977 and reissued by Nightboat Books in 2019 is a hilarious, trenchant colleciton of parables and fictions inspired by the queer commune Lavendar Hill in Upstate New York. The book is almost a half century old, but feels as sharp and relevant as if it were written today. I'll offer one more: Nepantla: An Anthology For Queer Poets of Color, edited by Christopher Soto, which brings together over 100 queer BIPOC poets ranging from James Baldwin and Natalie Diaz to emerging poets who have yet to publish a book.
Q: Can you share a forthcoming Nightboat title you’re excited about and why?
A:We're really looking forward to Andrea Abi-Karam's Villainy, a second book of poems written in the aftermath of the Muslim Ban and the Ghostship Fire in Oakland, which claimed thirty-six lives, many of them Andrea’s friends and community members. While grieving, the author turned to the radical performance and erasure works of Ana Mendieta, Cecilia Vicuña, and David Wojnarowicz as a scaffolding for surviving as trans and Arab-American. It's a powerful record and an utterly compelling read--the kind of book you read (or want to read) in one sitting.
Q: What are you currently reading, or a recent book you really loved?
A:I've been reading a lot about landscape and architecture, including the work of Bernard Rudofsky, the Austrian-American architect, scholar, and writer best known for Architect Without Architects. I'm also engrossed in Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin, translated by Bonnie Huie.
