In 2020, we were able to expand our capacities to publish full-length collections. Our mission was to strike a balance between poignant literary craft and reckless art. We found that in our first four books: Emily Brandt’s Falsehood, a searing study of gender and power in suburbia; JoAnna Novak’s Abeyance, North America, an erotic travelogue mapping desire across landscape; Lawrence Giffin’s Untitled, 2004, a meditative, epistolary, and ekphrastic long poem about birth, death, art, culture, and the works of the late Agnes Martin; and Galina Rymbu’s Life in Space, a co-production with Ugly Duckling Presse that brings our former chapbook author’s full-length debut to English, and which vibrates with some of the most powerful political writing happening anywhere today.
Under the After Hours umbrella, we also started a reading series called Bank Holiday, so named for the surreal setting of an abandoned bank in Catskill, NY. We held two events before the pandemic, but it’s something we look forward to revitalizing in the future. By the time we can pack an indoor setting again, maybe we’ll have a long list of After Hours authors to host.
Our ambition for the press is to publish 2-4 books a year, and for those books to be both surprising and seductive. The design of our books is an important element of that equation; instead of glossy stock photography, we want the covers to be windows into the work, and to be worthy of the work. We’re also committed to publishing at least one translation each year, adding our drop to the bucket of the American literary landscape, where only 3% of books published are translations.
Most poetry presses are labors of love like ours. We’re doing what we can outside the bounds of our day-to-day lives. That’s the ethos of After Hours, in a nutshell: we are the midnight oil, when you move from one desk to another. A pleasure pursuit with better lighting.
