Features

When the subject is book publishers, “small” rarely means “insignificant.” Try “independent” and “adventurous”—vital terms in an era when most big publishers have become conformist corporate citizens. 

It was bad news, then, when Berkeley’s Creative Arts Book Company went out of business last year, especially since Creative Arts was unusually willing to publish fiction, which is risky financially. 

But there’s good news for book lovers, too: Some 15 independent presses remain in Berkeley, and most seem to be flourishing. 

Small presses deliver variety: music, politics, travel, spirituality and religion, law, Californiana, alternative medicine, Asia and the Pacific Rim, personal development—just a handful of the subjects of books published here each year. 

Quality is generally high, and in the case of some presses, so is quantity. Sometimes, it seems, small doesn’t exactly mean small. 

Consider Berkeley’s Wilderness Press, in business since the late 1960s. Their current list contains some 150 books, along with a scattering of titles they distribute for other publishers. It’s also a great source for maps. 

The press’s location is distinctly urban, in West Berkeley across Harrison Street from the currently padlocked Berkeley Skate Park. 

There I met with Laura Keresty, WP’s marketing director, and with Thomas Winnett, publisher emeritus and founder of the press. As Tom filled me on the history of his company, I recognized it as a virtual textbook case of how a small press can become a big success. 

First, you need a book that people want to buy. In 1967, in Berkeley, that meant a guide to hiking and backpacking in the Sierra, and Tom had written one, Sierra North (now in its eighth edition). There being then no other book like it, Sierra North wasn’t attractive to cautious established publishers, so Tom published it himself. After all, he already owned a publishing company, Fybate Lecture Notes, well known to UC Berkeley students of the ‘50s and ‘60s, especially those too lazy to get up for class. 

Note-takers were dispatched to the university’s big lectures, producing notes which Fybate then printed up and sold. Tom told me that he carefully read and edited every page of every set of notes. 

The same care went into the writing and editing of Sierra North, and the first run of 2,800 copies quickly sold out. 

Other books soon followed. Pacific Crest Trail California was phenomenally successful and now exists as a set of three volumes. Slain by the ready availability of photocopying, Fybate eventually closed, but Wilderness Press kept growing at the rate of six to 12 new titles every year. Current bestsellers include 101 Hikes in Northern California, by Matt Hein, Jerry Schad’s 101 Hikes in Southern California, and Meditations of Jon Muir. And owing to changing conditions along trails and in parks, older books must be constantly revised. 

Some diversification has occurred over the years. Wilderness Press has urban books, such as Berkeley author Gail Todd’s Lunchtime Walks in Downtown San Francisco and Adah Bakalinsky’s Stairway Walks in San Francisco, now in its fifth edition. (Watch for news of Stairway Walk Day, on May 22.) 

There’s been geographic expansion, too. Though Marketing Director Keresty identified California as their base and the Sierra as their core, Wilderness Press has moved into publishing guides covering the Northwest and Nevada. Their catalog also includes works she described as “geographically neutral,” such as Carole Latimer’s Wilderness Cuisine and John Vonhof’s Fixing Your Feet. I wouldn’t dare leave civilization without both. 

New writers are encouraged to submit proposals. See www.wildernesspress.com for details on submissions and for much else. 

Another Berkeley publisher, Kelsey St. Press, has taken a different road. In the words of one of its founders, Rena Rosenwasser, “We decided to stay small and do what we do well.” What they do, and have been doing for 30 years, is publish poetry by women. 

Among women’s presses specializing in literature, Kelsey St. is one of the oldest and most respected anywhere. 

There were six co-founders. Two—Rena Rosenwasser and Patricia Dienstfrey—remain fully engaged, and I caught up with them and a relatively new associate, Sonya Philip, at a Berkeley café. They gave me the history. 

In 1970 Ballantine Books published a major anthology, San Francisco Poets. Not one woman was represented. Nor did the male poets in a poetry workship of the time, composed of both genders, seem to understand what the women were trying to do.  

Inspired by the women’s movement, Rosenwasser, Patricia Dienstfrey, and four other poets purchased an ancient letterpress, installed it in the basement of the Dienstfrey home on Kelsey Street, and taught themselves how to use it. 

Their first book, published in 1974, was Neurosuite, by the Italian poet Margarita Guidacci, translated by Marina La Palma. Since then, Kelsey St. has published two to four volumes annually, usually in runs of a thousand copies, all of which eventually find a home, either in people’s houses or in public and university libraries. 

Though its headquarters has moved to another location in Berkeley, and the printing is now out-sourced, the guiding spirit of the enterprise has scarcely changed. This nonprofit press produces beautiful books, with great attention paid to design, at prices that even poets can afford. 

That is a constant, as is continuous innovation. 

In the ‘80s, according to Rena Rosenwasser, “considerations of language and form became more central to what we chose to publish,” so that explicit “message” became less so. In the following decade, Kelsey St. developed its Collaboration Series, books which vitally combined the energies of poets and visual artists. One particularly stunning example would be Endrocrinology (1997), with poetry by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and images by Kiki Smith.  

Funding comes and goes. At the moment, with the virtual dismantling of the California Arts Council, it seems just about gone. But Kelsey St., with its mixed staff of old hands and energetic apprentices, is here to stay. Recent publications include poetry by Yedda Morrison and Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, essays by Barbara Guest (with drawings by Laurie Reid), and poems/images by Cecilia Vicuna. For more on these and for the complete list of titles, see www.kelseyst.com.