Episode 29: Nick Sturm - “Small Press Histories, or The Productivity of Friction”
We’re joined by the literary scholar, educator, and poet Nick Sturm for a pretty incredible conversation on small press historiography, alternative/oppositional publishing practices, and the radical potential of small press pedagogy. Nick guides us through periods of post-World War II small press history, from the New York School to Newt Gingrich and beyond, getting into the heterogeneity of “small press,” its institutions and anti-institutionalisms, its professionalization wars, its ongoing productive frictions, what we can learn from the past, and what work happens beyond the horizon of the canonical. We talk about success vs. legibility, growing larger vs. staying smaller for longer, the difference between “do it yourself” and “do it now.” We think about what it could mean to embrace an “organizational fervor” and to un-invisibilize administrative work.
Many things get mentioned including Annulet magazine (check out episode 25 for our interview with Alicia Wright), the New Orleans Poetry Festival, and George’s, which is a bar in Iowa City where we hope you are right now.
Look out for Nick’s book Publishing the New York School: Small Press Communities and American Poetry, forthcoming in 2027 from Columbia University Press.
The mysterious book Nick and Zach talk about without ever naming is Green Isle in the Sea: An Informal History of the Alternative Press, 1960–85, ed. Diane Kruchkow and Curt Johnson.