This term, the CALYX team is already making a lot of headway. The publicity and launch for this book should be pretty smooth if our marketing research continues the way it has, and while we don’t have a full manuscript yet, at the beginning of the term we received a working list of the authors that were chosen to be included in the anthology! This was a very exciting moment because until then we were working with a lot of assumptions and no certainties. Since then, we’ve combed through the list and started drafting small author bios for all 55 of the potential authors and poets. We’ve also started to gather contacts, affiliations, and other potential avenues for publicity–a task that will certainly continue through the end of the school year.

This week we are also starting to think about how the book will be designed. We’re looking at how other feminist literature and poetry anthologies are constructed to see what elements we want to include. The genre has been around for so many decades, and many of the covers that we’re looking at certainly reflect that. On the one hand, we want to craft a more modern cover, but on the other, we’ll be balancing that by keeping some of the more traditional CALYX elements that have been so closely associated with the press over the past 40 years. There is a lot to do, and we are fortunate to have plenty of time to do it.

Welcome to the newest project at Ooligan! Even at a press that has published a wide variety of genres and forms, from literary fiction all the way to translated Czech poetry, this newest acquisition is definitely different. Ooligan is excited to be partnering with CALYX, the very well established feminist literary press, to publish their 40th Anniversary Anthology! This seemingly strange partnership has taken place because, while CALYX has a phenomenal editorial board, it consists entirely of volunteers (except for the director). The (wo)manpower is simply not there to design, market, and publish this book the way that they want to, and that’s where we get to step in.

This project is just getting its legs under it, so to begin with our team is doing a lot of market research and establishing a social media presence, while the CALYX team mines through its enormous backlist. Look for upcoming Pinterest boards, Tumblr posts, and Facebook page that will keep you updated on this project as it progresses to its launch at AWP LA in 2016!