Lance Olsen and The Difficult Imagination
R. M. Berry and John O'Brien on FC2 and Conceptual Writing: A Dialog posted at Jaded Ibis Productions
R. M. Berry and Jeffrey Di Leo's 12 Theses on the Present of Fiction: Posted at Symploke.org
"Fiction's Present: Essays by Samuel R. Delany, Lidia Yuknavitch, Michael Martone, Carole Maso, Lance Olsen, Leslie Scalapino, Brian Evenson, Ronald Sukenick, Raymond Federman and more, posted at Symploke.org
CLMP.org article about FC2 and the future of independent presses
The Modern Word's spotlight on FC2 and an interview with our own Brenda Mills
R.M. Berry on the politics of alternative writing at Newpages.com
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FC2 Quick Facts:
::A small, independent, not-for-profit press, Fiction Collective Two receives no financial support from government arts councils. Rather, it relies on the generosity of the University of Utah, University of Houston - Victoria, and Illinois State University for in-kind support, and its sources of revenue include contributions from its Board of Directors and Advisory Board, its contest submission fees, and The Writer's Edge conference fees. These sources barely allow it to break even each year.
::FC2 is an imprint of University of Alabama press. Revenues acquired from the sale of FC2 books by the University of Alabama Press are used at UAP's discretion. They are not available for use by FC2's Executive Editor, Board of Directors, or Advisory Board.
::FC2 is committed to finding new innovative work and continuously expanding the membership of the Collective, which has grown from six founding members in 1974 to well over 100 today. FC2 does this through its contest and through member-sponsored submissions.
::The FC2 Board and executive editor make all editorial decisions.
::The Ronald Sukenick American Book Review Innovative Fiction Prize is specifically designed to locate authors outside of the collective who have aesthetics similar to ours.
::FC2 is committed to keeping all of its titles in print.
::Volunteers do most of FC2's editorial work.
::FC2 is happy to answer any further questions you
might have about its structure and operations.
THE FICTION
COLLECTIVE STORY
by Jeffrey DeShell
and R. M. Berry
The Fiction
Collective began in 1973, when Jonathan Baumbach, Peter Spielberg, Mark
Mirsky, Steve Katz, Ronald Sukenick and others (some participating via
phone from California and Colorado) began to meet in Baumbach’s Brooklyn
apartment to discuss the possibility of founding a cooperative fiction
publishing venture. They felt annoyed, dismayed and discouraged by
the severe editorial and marketing limitations of the commercial presses —
what Spielberg calls “literature defined by a committee, books designed by
cereal packagers, marketed by used-car salesmen . . . and ruled or
overruled by accountants”- but they wanted to do something more than just
create another marginalized small press. All present had experienced
the frustration of seeing their critically praised fiction go out of
print, and some were having difficulty finding a publisher for subsequent
books. As Baumbach recalled: "At our early meetings we analyzed the
commercial publishing scene by sharing negative anecdotes....
Fiction that redefined the rules, innovative and experimental work, was
having the most trouble finding a home in what was clearly (though
unacknowledged) a publishing establishment increasingly attuned to the
bottom line." There was broad agreement about the need for writers
to take the authority of publishing into their own hands, but everyone was
worried about the practical obstacles. Finally, after lengthy
discussion, they decided to act. As Katz writes:
This
was going to be a statement, strong writers taking their careers in their
own hands. Blast into the face of the compromised publishing establishment.
If we published our own books we could not be blown out by commercial winds,
the fickleness of popular culture. We could exercise some control over
how our books came into the world. We spent a good deal of time deciding
what to call the enterprise. We didn't want it to seem to be a "cooperative,"
whatever that implied. And we certainly didn't want it to appear as
a vanity press. No vanity, just artistic and editorial rigor.
The idea was to be that we chose to step outside the establishment.
We were going to edit each other's books, a practice that actually went on
for a few years. Help each other. Make a literature. Occasionally
we would publish a promising new writer. We decided on the name "Fiction Collective"
as a kind of compromise. The books would come out in a uniform format,like
Gallimard volumes, or Penguin books. An idea that I liked was that we
originally thought to limit our membership to a modest dozen or so, and encourage
other groups of writers to form their own collectives.
After
the name "Fiction Collective" was chosen, Spielberg and Baumbach met with the
Provost of Brooklyn College to secure office space and mailing privileges.
The group formulated an editorial protocol whereby books would be accepted for
publication by simple majority vote. Six books a year were planned, and
the first three—Museum by B. H. Friedman, Reruns by Baumbach and
Twiddledum Twaddledum by Spielberg—were accepted and edited (Spielberg
edited Baumbach, Baumbach edited Friedman and Friedman edited Spielberg).
An artist was found who designed a logo. Next came the difficult chore
of finding a distributor. As Baumbach tells it:
I
went around with Spielberg (and sometimes with Mark Mirsky and Jerome Charyn)
interviewing potential distributors. The head of one distinguished publishing
house, initially interested in the possibility of distributing our books,
woke up one morning (so it was reported to us) furious at the idea of the
Fiction Collective. “Who do they think they are?” he said, or was reported
to have said. “We publish all the good fiction that comes our way.
There isn’t any worthy fiction not getting published.” It was an attitude
we would encounter, directly and obliquely, again and again.
Ironically,
it was this anger—by writers, editors and publishers—that gave the Fiction
Collective a sense of credibility and importance. There was the feeling
that, if the Collective could inspire such fury, it must be doing something
right. Finally, George Braziller, a small but influential distributor of
European fiction, agreed to distribute the books, and in fall of 1974 the first
Fiction Collective book appeared on the shelf of a bookstore.
In
his New York Times Book Review "Guest Word" for September 15, 1974, early
collectivist Ronald Sukenick explained the group's plan:
The
Fiction Collective will make serious novels and story collections available
in simultaneous hard and quality paper editions...and will keep them in print
permanently. The Collective is not a publishing house, but a "not-for-profit"
cooperative..., the first of its kind in this country, in which writers make
all business decisions and do all editorial and copy work."
Sukenick's
"Guest Word" became a manifesto for the Collective and its supporters. In addition
to explaining the practical operation of the Collective, it offered a diagnosis
of the current publishing industry ("a mass market industry that cannot afford
to produce small, reasonably priced editions of quality fiction") and outlined
the Collectivists' vision of "a community and audience of the kind that has
always sustained poetry." He concluded:
For
American novelists, the publisher has played the role of unacknowledged father,
boss and sugar-daddy, whose recognition legitimizes one's identity as a writer.
The Fiction Collective offers recognition by one's peers. This clear insistence
on the standards of those who, finally, know what the art is all about, opens
a path toward the maturity of the American novel, as well as a way for American
novelists to assume their full prerogatives and responsibilities.
During
the Collective's early years, the critical reception for its books was sometimes
mixed but rarely lukewarm. The first season's offerings received lengthy,
favorable reviews in The New Republic, Newsweek, The Village
Voice, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The
American Poetry Review. The Washington Post listed Baumbach's
Reruns as a notable book of the year, and the Quality Paperback Club
presented the first three Collective books as a Special Selection. Over
forty-five periodicals either reviewed the Fiction Collective's first series
or ran news stories on the Collective itself, and over the next six years lengthy
critical essays on the Collective were published in Contemporary Literature,
Partisan Review, The Chicago Review, and elsewhere. At the
same time negative responses to the Collective or its books were sometimes marked
by extraordinary animus. Michael Mewshaw in the October 13, 1974 New
York Times Book Review, complained about the books' prices, number of pages,
and printing errors, and spent several paragraphs listing phrases Mewshaw considered
"clunkers and cliches." Gene Lyons in a 1978 Triquarterly article
pronounced the Collective a failure, dismissing it as "a well-publicized, tax-supported
vanity press," and a Sewanee Review editorial characterized the collectivists
as a group of naive young writers who "must feed themselves upon the illusion
of heroic struggle." Such polarized responses, often focusing as much
on the Collective itself as on the books it published, would characterize reaction
to the Fiction Collective throughout much of its history.
For
most of its first fifteen years the Fiction Collective published three new works
of non-traditional fiction each fall and spring. Among the books published
by the Collective during this period were: Ronald Sukenick’s 98.6, Russell
Banks’ Searching for Survivors, Marianne Hauser's The Talking Room,
Ursule Molinaro's Encores for a Dilettante, Raymond Federman's Take
It or Leave It, Steve Katz's Stolen Stories, Clarence Major's My
Amputations, Fanny Howe's Holy Smoke, Harold Jaffe's Mole's Pity,
Mark Leyner's I Smell Esther Williams, and Gerald Vizenor's Griever:
An American Monkey King in China. The Collective was praised by Robert
Coover, Anais Nin, Jerome Klinkowitz, and others, and it received regular support
from the New York State Council for the Arts and the NEA. In 1984 co-director
Curtis White organized a national contest to find and publish new writers of
innovative fiction.
II
By
the mid 1980's the Collective had published over forty writers, each subsequently
becoming a member, and this success had ironically made the organization too
cumbersome for collective decision-making and management. Also, reductions
in arts funding during the Reagan administration were making support harder
to find. In 1986 the Collective's grant application to the NEA was denied,
and within a year it began to have difficulty publishing books. As Curt
White and Ronald Sukenick later recalled:
At
this time, the Collective was directed by Mark Leyner, Rachel Salazar, and
Curt White. The involvement of the University of Colorado, Boulder,
was growing through its Nilon Prize for Excellence in Minority Ficiton, as
was the participation of Illinois State University through its National Fiction
Competition. And yet things were not well. The Fiction Collective
had reached a point where it had exhausted most of the collectivist energies
of its origins. The people upon whom most of the responsibilities fell
were becoming more frustrated with their lack of any real authority.
Beyond the contests, the Fiction Collective had essentially ceased to exist.
In
the winter of 1989, Curtis White, Ronald Sukenick, Mark Leyner, Jonathan Baumbach,
B. H. Friedman, and Peter Spielberg met in Spielberg's Brooklyn apartment and,
after lengthy discussion, finally reached the decision to reorganize the press.
The constitution was rewritten, creating Fiction Collective Two, a non-profit,
author-run press under a governing board of directors, with Sukenick as board
chair and White as managing director. Editorial responsibilities were
divided between two offices, one at the University of Colorado at Boulder run
by Don Laing and another at Illinois State University in Normal run by White.
Over
the next years White and Sukenick went to work to professionalize the organization,
creating a better quality book design and making the first systematic efforts
at promotion and marketing. Soon a new imprint was launched, Black Ice
Books, modeled on the Semiotext(e) Autonomedia series, with Mark Amerika’s The
Kafka Chronicles, Cris Mazza’s Revelation Countdown, Samuel Delany's
Hogg, and John Shirley’s New Noir. Designed to be, as White
described it, “a merging of the avant-garde with the popular," Black Ice Books'
"avant-pop" aesthetic was immediately successful, enjoying national review attention
and lively sales. The press also enjoyed the success of several impressive
Nilon Prize winners, such as Diane Glancy (Trigger Dance), Yvonne Sapia
(Valentino's Hair), and Ricardo Cortez Cruz (Straight Outa Comptom).
During the first years of the Clinton administration, the press began once again
to receive generous NEA support, and in 1995 FC2 contracted with Northwestern
University Press for distribution. Later characterizing the early nineties
as a period of financial stability and artistic excitement, White and Sukenick
would emphasize FC2's continuity of purpose with the original Collective: "to
be a showcase for the nonconventional in the context of an aggressive independence
from mainstream publishing."
In
the mid nineties the University of Colorado office closed, and all FC2 operations
were transferred to the Unit for Contemporary Literature at Illinois State University,
a publications center organized by Charles Harris and responsible for The
American Book Review . Curtis White became effective manager of the
press, still under the oversight of a Board of Directors now composed of Sukenick, Robert
Steiner, Richard Grossman, Cris Mazza, and White himself. During this period
the Illinois Arts Council joined the NEA in becoming a major supporter of the
press.
Once
again, however, action by the Republican right jeopardized the press's existence.
In December, 1996, Representative Peter Hoekstra (R., Michigan) obtained a copy
of Chick Lit 2 , an FC2 anthology of new women's writing published with
NEA funds, and discovered in one of the eighteen stories a description of sexual
relations between two women. As chair of the congressional Subcommittee
on Oversight and Investigations, Hoekstra immediately organized an inquiry into
the NEA's support of FC2. In a 1997 letter to Jane Alexander, NEA chair,
Hoekstra cited four FC2 books that contained materials "most of which are an
offense to the senses of this Subcommittee." During the subsequent hearings,
FC2 received outspoken support from such writers as Mark Strand, William Gass,
and Toni Morrison.
Despite
these political difficulties and their financial repercussions, FC2 continued
throughout the nineties to publish its groundbreaking books. Among the books
of this period were Evan Dara's The Lost Scrapbook, Kenneth Bernard’s
From the District File, Jacques Servin’s Aviary Slag, Omar S.
Castaneda’s Learning to Say ‘Mouth’ or ‘Face,’ as well as various anthologies:
Chick-Lit: Postfeminist Fiction and Chick-Lit Two: No Chick Vics,
edited by Cris Mazza, Jeffrey DeShell and Elisabeth Sheffield; Latino
Heretics, edited by Tony Diaz; and Degenerative Prose, edited by
Mark Amerika and Ronald Sukenick.
In 1999, Curtis White stepped down from his position as managing director of FC2.
White, who had seen the press through its darkest financial days, succeeded in
leaving the press in good economic health, partly due to a sale of Fiction
Collective and FC2 archives to the University of Texas at Austin. FC2 authors R.M.
Berry and Jeffrey DeShell presented a new proposal to the Board of Directors for
operation of the press, in which Berry and DeShell became acting publishers for FC2,
a new position with increased editorial responsibility. In May 1999, the executive offices
of the press were moved to the English Department at Florida State University
where Berry was a faculty member. The editorial board was reorganized under
the oversight of Cris Mazza at the University of Illinois at
Chicago, and book producton remained at the ISU Publications Unit.
It
quickly became clear the function of acting publisher was not one that
could be efficiently shared from a distance. Deshell ceded to Berry. By
2002, submissions had become so profuse the all-volunteer editorial board
was overwhelmed. A mortatorium was called to give readers a
chance to catch up. In 2003, oversight for the editorial board was
moved to the executive offices in Tallahassee and it was decided that the
submission period would be shortened to five months (September through
January). Also in 2003, Lance Olsen became the new chair of the Board of
Directors, and a new Board of Advisors was formed.
FC2
celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2004, with celebrations in Los Angeles,
Chicago and New York.
In the spring of 2006, FC2 entered into an agreement with University of Alabama Press (UAP), whereby UAP would be responsible for production, marketing and distribution of FC2 books, but FC2 would retain editorial control.
After more than thirty years of operation, the Fiction Collective and its successor FC2 have published nearly two hundred titles by more than one hundred individuals. Its operations have been located on six university campuses. In addition to articles already mentioned, the press has been
the subject of articles in Publisher's Weekly, Poets & Writers,
Critique, Triquarterly, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Most of its original membership
continues to publish with FC2 and to take an active part in the press
operation. All editorial decisions continue to be made
by the authors. Virtually all Fiction Collective and FC2 titles are
still in print. And FC2 continues to publish ground-breaking fiction. In
the new century FC2 has published works by new names like Lucy Corin,
Susan Steinberg, Kate Bernheimer, and Stephen Graham Jones, and we have
published the books of experimental heavyweights like Brian Evenson, Toby
Olson, Leslie Scalapino, Steve Tomasula,
Lance Olsen and Harold Jaffe. In the words of publisher R.M. Berry, "FC2
continues to be committed to discovering what it means to read or write
a novel, even in a time in which the marketplace shows little
interest in what a novel is."
::LOCATIONS
AND OPERATIONS::
FC2 presently has offices at four universities, and its membership spreads throughout the United States and Europe. It publishes six new books annually, three in fall, three in spring, and it reprints up to four books a year. All publication is fiction. Average press run is 2000. Normally, publication is paper only.
FC2 executive offices are located at the University of Houston-Victoria: Fiction Collective 2, University West, Suite 310, 3007 North Ben Wilson, Victoria TX, 77901. All decisions regarding press operation, book promotion and marketing are made in coordination with the University of Alabama Press. Its offices are in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The press functions at Illinois State University are coordinated and supervised from UAP. Operations are overseen from the University of Utah by Lance Olsen, chair of the Board of Directors, with the help of Matt Kirkpatrick, FC2 Fellow.
The FC2 book production office is in the Publications Unit, 109 Fairchild Hall, Illinois State University, Normal, IL 61790-4241 (309-438-3025). Here future FC2 books are laid out and prepared for printing by the Unit production manager, Tara Reeser, and her staff.
The FC2 distributor is University of Alabama Press, Box 870380, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0380. UAP lists new FC2 books in its catalogue and provides marketing, sales, and order fulfillment for all FC2 books.
::LIFE
CYCLE OF FC2 BOOK::
FC2 is always recruiting new members. In the past it has held two separate manuscript competitions to attract them, the national Fiction Competition, and the Charles N. and Mildred Nilon Award for Excellence in Minority Fiction. Effective Fall 2006, FC2 is proud to announce the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize, an annual prize to be awarded to an outstanding book-length manuscript by a writer who has not previously published with FC2.
A manuscript can reach the
collective in one of three ways:
1) Ronald Sukenick American Book Review Innovative Fiction Prize.
2) Manuscripts
can be sponsored by FC2 author-members. Anyone who has
in the past had a book accepted for publication by FC2 automatically becomes a
member of the collective, and as a privilege of membership, she can send work directly
to the Tallahassee office for consideration by the Board. The
Board receives 15-20 sponsored manuscripts annually.
3) All FC2 author-members (i.e., individuals
whose work has in the past been accepted for publication by FC2) can send
their own work directly to the Tallahassee office for consideration by the
Board. The Board receives 3-12 submissions from
FC2 authors annually.
Every manuscript submitted to the Board is
read in full by at least two Board members, each of whom writes a reader's report. All Board members read at least 50 pages of any manuscript that has been approved for continued consideration by the first two readers. The Board as a whole makes the final decision to publish each manuscript.
The Board reads 15-30 manuscripts annually. It accepts
for publication approximately six a year. Of the ten novels and story collections scheduled
for publication between spring 2005 and fall 2006, five were by previous FC2 authors and five
were by authors who had never before published with FC2.
When a manuscript
is accepted by the Board, UAP and the new author sign
a contract, and the author begins work on any revisions suggested by the manuscript's
readers.
Approximately one year before
publication the cover is designed and sales copy is written for the University of Alabama Press
catalogue. The book goes into active production one year before publication,
at which time a final copy of the revised manuscript, hard copy and diskette,
are due at the Alabama office.
During
the four to six months prior to publication, the Unit staff enters the
manuscript into Adobe InDesign and determines all formatting and design
parameters. The formatted versions of the manuscript are read at intervals by
the author, the managing editor and a professional proofreader. Approximately
four months before publication, uncorrected galleys are sent to a galley-maker
for binding and, upon return, are distributed to major review publications by
UAP.
Two
months before publication the completely formatted and proofread manuscript is
sent, both on diskette and as hardcopy, to the printer. The printer
produces the finished book in approximately four weeks and ships it to the warehouse in Chicago. The warehouse requires 2-3
weeks to process the books for shipment to wholesalers and stores.
Three weeks
after arrival at the warehouse, the book is published. At this point promotion
and publicity become the principal activity. These efforts are coordinated
by the UAP publicist.
Press kits are sent to prospective reviewers and editors, and the media are
notified of any author appearances or book signings. Review publications
which earlier received bound galleys are now sent copies of the completed book.
Approximately
a year after publication the book retires to the FC2 backlist, where it remains
available from the distributor or through the website indefinitely.
::PUBLICATIONS,
PROMOTION, MARKETING::
FC2 is supported
in part by the University of Houston - Victoria, University of Alabama, Illinois State
University, the University of Utah and by numerous generous private
contributors.
Number of books: 6 - 10 annually.
Since its founding in 1974, the
press (the Fiction Collective, Fiction Collective 2, and the FC2 imprint Black
Ice Books) has published approximately 180 books.
Size
of press runs: 2000
Press runs vary. Over the last three years, runs have been as low as 1200 and
as high as 5000. 2000 is normal. The press normally publishes paperback originals
only. However, occasional titles appear in both cloth and paper editions.
Recognition/awards:
Three FC2 authors (Clarence Major, Gerald Vizenor, Diane Glancy) are represented
in the most recent Norton Anthology of American Literature (Vol II, 5th
ed: 1998). Five FC2 authors (Curtis White, Ricardo Cortez Cruz, Gerald Vizenor,
Mark Leyner, Samuel Delany) are represented in Postmodern Literature: A Norton
Anthology (1997).
Numerous
FC2 authors (e.g., Ronald Sukenick, Raymond Federman, Clarence Major, Fanny
Howe, Marianne Hauser, Russell Banks) have been the subject of essays in scholarly
journals such as Contemporary Literature, Modern Fiction Studies, Critique,
The Review of Contemporary Fiction, and Chicago Review.
Articles
about the press itself have been published in Poets and Writers, Contemporary
Literature, Triquarterly, Critique, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and
Michael Bérubé's The Employment of English (NYU press, 1998).
A few of
the awards and honors which our books and authors have received are: The Western
Book Award (Clarence Major's My Amputations), the American Book Award
(Gerald Vizenor's Griever: An American Monkey King in China), the BEA
Firecracker Award (Rob Hardin's Distorture), PEN West finalist (Richard
Grossman, The Alphabet Man). Two books (Kate
Bernheimer's The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold and Lidia
Yuknavitch's Real to Reel) have been finalists for the
Oregon Book Award. Stephen Graham Jones's The Fast Red Road
won the Independent Publisher Award for Multicultural Fiction.
His book, The Bird is Gone, was a finalist for that
award.
In recent years The
Nation
cited Ricardo Cortez Cruz's Straight Outta Compton as a "best of the year," Publisher's Weekly
gave "top twenty" designations to Yvonne
Sapia's Valentino's Hair and Ivan Webster's Cares of the Day, the Village Voice Literary
Supplement
listed Richard Grossman's Book of Lazarus
among its top twenty-five books of 1997, and The New York
Times Book Review
included R. M. Berry's Leonardo's Horse among its "notable books" of
1998.
Founder Ronald Sukenick was honored with the
American Book Award for lifetime achievement in 2000. And in 2002 the American Academy of Arts and Letters recognized him with the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award, which is specifically for 'writers of progressive, original and experimental tendencies. They said about him that, "For nearly four decades, Ronald Sukenick has methodically pushed the formal possibilities of American fiction to its limits and in the process has discovered illuminating, new pathways to the center of the human psyche." They also said, "He has been an explorer, a courageous adventurer, and an absolutely necessary component of American literature."
The
Fiction Collective and FC2 have received numerous grants from the National
Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council for the Arts, and the
Illinois Arts Council, and have received support from Brooklyn College,
the University of Colorado, Illinois State University, University of
Illinois at Chicago, and Florida State University.
Reviews:
Reviews of FC2 books regularly appear in such publications as: The London
Times Literary Supplement, New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times Book
Review, Village Voice, Washington Post Book World, The Nation, The Wall Street
Journal, Rain Taxi, New Novel Review, Bloomsbury Review, Boston Book Review,
The Review of Contemporary Fiction, The American Book Review.
Distribution
and Marketing:
FC2 books are
distributed by University of Alabama Press and are available to bookstores through
the principal US book wholesalers (Ingram, Baker and Taylor, etc). FC2 books
are regularly sold by the principal national bookstore chains (Barnes and Noble,
Borders, etc.) as well as by the largest and best-known independent bookstores (e.g., St.
Marks Books/NYC, Prairie Lights Books/Iowa City, City Lights Books/SF, Shaman
Drum Bookstore/Ann Arbor). All FC2 books can be purchased directly from the UAP
website or from Amazon.com.
FC2 books,
in English and translation, are also available throughout Europe and in parts
of Asia.
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