Sona Books : A Mission Statement
Sona Books is a community-based micro press that brings poetry, prose, cross-genre, performance, and visual art to the public by publishing project-driven, collaborative, risky, and quiet works. Its mission is to stay small. In staying small, Sona Books--like other community-based micro-presses and in the tradition of the poet's chapbook--can bring literature to a wider audience through affirming the importance of real working relationships between editor, author/artist, and audience.
In its first year, 2002, Sona Books put out six chapbooks by subscription, consignment at St. Mark's Books in New York City, and by individual order. In the next year, a corresponding web-site, sonaweb.net was launched, publishing two issues of writing and art a year. In the spring and summer of 2004, four new chapbooks were published. (Click here for more information on titles and to subscribe or order.) And, a Sona Sounds inaugural recording of poetry and chants by Cecilia Vicuña was made available in the summer of 2004. (Click here for more information and ordering directions.) In May of 2005, twenty writers joined the gift-publishing project which culminated in the self-publishing and exchange of original chapbooks or broadsides in September 2005. While web issues are no longer put out each year, Sona Books continues to publish chapbooks and distribute them via subscription--a structure that enables the press to stay economically self-sufficient and viable. On behalf of all the writers and artists, Sona Books wishes to thank those who have generously supported the press over the years.
Click here to read an essay about Sona Books and community-based publishing, written by Jill Magi, and published in a special publishing feature in HOW2: Experimental Writing by Women.
A short and hopefully kind note on submitting your work:
Because of the emphasis I place on the relationship between writer and editor, I do not publish unsolicited material. Maybe some day if I have more time to respond to inquiries and if I can develop a rubric for rejection, I will cast a wider net. However, please start your own publishing efforts. I think of the verb "publish" in the sense of the writer/artist at the center of the effort--building community through literally handing out their work, among other activities. So make your own pamphlets, chapbooks, books, web-sites. And, as the poet and teacher Anne Waldman advises, publish other writers. For more on this kind of publishing theory, visit the archives of the first issue of Chain (by clicking on the first magazine cover icon at the bottom of the page.) It is an issue devoted to gender and publishing. Also check out the interviews and information at the Tiny Press Center at The Poetry Project.
Jill Magi, jillmagi@earthlink.net Editor and Publisher
7825 Fourth Avenue, F10
Brooklyn, New York 11209