Via Jule Gardner of the Washington City Paper. Posted May 10, 2007.

Laura Brylawski-Miller is not exactly the picture of a struggling writer. She answers the door of her corner penthouse in Rosslyn impeccably dressed in a brown wrap dress, artful jewelry, her silver bob cut by someone who knows her way around a pair of scissors.

“They say you get tired of the view,” she says with an Italian accent, in the center of her glassed-in living room. “But I don’t think that’s possible.”

Brylawski-Miller, in her 70s, is the author of two novels and a book of poetry published through the Washington Writers’ Publishing House (WWPH), a small press collective that chooses two books—one novel and one book of poetry—each year.

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , spotlights New York's Turtle Point Press:

This has come to be the season of the small press, at least as far as this column is concerned. Several months ago, I initiated a series of articles about Dryad Press, which is run out of Maryland by poet Merrill Leffler pretty much all by himself.

Then, when I was in the midst of reading, writing about and glorying in those titles, I was contacted by the public relations organization that represents Turtle Point Press, another small operation run out of a tiny office in New York City pretty much singlehandedly by Jonathan D. Rabinowitz. He identifies himself on his business card as publisher, but he manages to do just about everything else when it comes to his extraordinary line of books.

Rabinowitz, who is in his early 60s, but who sounds on the phone like a man in his 30s, with all the spirit and energy that that implies, fell into publishing -- head first, you might say. He began his working life at his family's chemical company in his home state of New Jersey not long after his graduation from Columbia University, where he'd majored in art history. He and one of his brothers had each inherited a portion of the business in 1966 after their mother's death. (The business had been founded by his father and an uncle).

Kate Casper of The Daily Iowan examines Iowa City's Impetus Press. Impetus Press is the brainchild of Willy Blackmore and Jennifer Banash, located in Iowa City, IA. They publish serious literary fiction with a pop edge that falls in-between the worlds of experimental and commercial publishing.

Jennifer Banash and Willy Blackmore have taken their small publishing house from an unknown, shoestring concern to an independent press that attracts half a dozen unsolicited manuscripts from across the country every day. Impetus Press, founded in August 2005, will even host a reading this month in Manhattan and another that will be broadcast May 29 on satellite radio.

With a lust for literary pop fiction, a great-grandfather's legacy, and fresh voices to be heard, Banash's and Blackmore's press is proving itself after a difficult first year in business. In January, Impetus passed a key small-press benchmark by signing on with a national distributor specializing in books from independent imprints, Biblio Distribution. The distributor handles storage, shipping, and bookstore marketing.

Nationwide distribution also brought Impetus attention on the literary scene. Across the country and on the Internet, book reviews, interviews, and features on Banash and Blackmore have drawn attention to this Iowa City press.

Writers' Notes announces the winners of the 2007 Eric Hoffer Award for Books, defining excellence in independent publishing.

Each year, The Eric Hoffer Book Award (formerly The Writers' Notes Book Award) seeks excellence in independent publishing. Entries come from academic, small, and micro presses, as well as self-published authors.

"We are very excited about using our international award program to honor the memory of one of America's greatest freethinkers," Christopher Klim said from his New Jersey office. "The Hoffer estate gave us their full blessing."

Klim is the senior editor of Writers' Notes, the international free resource tool at Writer's Notes that facilitates the annual Hoffer Award. He is also the praised author of several novels (Jesus Lives in Trenton, The Winners Circle, etc.). His upcoming novel, Idiot! (Fall 2007), has garnered high praise and competitive interest in Hollywood.

"Due to the economics, many publishers have simply given up on worthy books," said Klim. "An increasing number fall to independent presses. These presses are filling a void, no longer rivaling the larger presses."

While there is little question that larger book releases have become generic, independent press books are typically viewed on only a regional basis. Writers' Notes helps to introduce new titles to the larger reading public.

i.e. Press is a new press based in Los Angeles which will publish and distribute worldwide writing and visual art books which appeal to the eye and ear.

Its first book is Maryrose Larkin's THE BOOK OF OCEAN, which is available at http://iepress.blogspot.com at a discount -- $10.00 including US shipping -- until the book is available through Baker & Taylor, Amazon, and Small Press Distribution.

Advance Praise for The Book of Ocean:

… Her language is luminous, astonishing in its range, transcendent. Time conflates, narrative breaks through, language is the connective by which vastly disparate concepts – love, snow, mathematics, gravity – flow one to another, reported with meticulous grace.

Judith Roitman

… Larkin has pulsed the pattern of her words with poised delays & intervals, with the understanding that poetry is an art of passage, powered by surgence & pause: “ life lined blue words deep / sea of circumstance.” This work is informed by a counterpoint of time & vision … a poetry of arabesque, which presents a perfect, & perhaps paradoxical, synthesis of enthusiasm & irony.

Andrew Joron