Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal. You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal. Who can think, who can reason, who can read?

Hello, this is Michael Silverbladden.

Welcome to Bookworm.

This is a very special show.

We have three guests today, and they're here because something special has happened.

All of you know who listen to Bookworm on any regular basis that this bookworm is a lover of literature at its finest,

which often means rarest, hardest to find. And the publishers of small presses, literary

presses, as we now call them small presses, as they were known in the 60s, are coming together in Los Angeles,

nine of them,

to talk about the fate of the literary press.

It's threatened on every side

by the demise of the NEA,

by the disappearance of foundation funding except for a very few treasured set of funders.

And it's about joining an amalgamation of literary presses to ensure the future of the literature

that true readers care most about. That is to say, the development of the new writer,

the cherishing of the difficult work, the preservation of traditions within literature

that really amount to our culture.

My guests today are John O'Brien, publisher of Dalke Archive Press from Normal, Illinois,

Betsy Lucian, Executive Director of the Coffee House Press in Minneapolis, and Robert

MacDowell, Executive Director of the Storyline Press from Oregon.

...