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.

From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today my guest is Michelin Ahoronian Markham.

She is the author most recently of The Mirror in the Well.

It's been published by the Donkey Archive Press.

Her first three books were a trilogy,

which began with three apples fell from heaven,

the daydreaming boy, and draining the sea.

Those books were published by Riverhead.

And the first thing I wanted to ask you,

you know, people are now talking so frequently

about commercial presses, literary presses, independent presses, small presses.

You moved with this book to a new publisher, to Donkey Archive, and can you talk about

the difference between the kind of books that the literary presses are publishing and the books that are acceptable to others?

I don't know if I can speak to the books that they're publishing, except for what I know

that I like to read that is being published not in the mainstream or by the big houses in New York,

which are often non-American writers, writers, not from the United States.

Because as far as I understand it, and I think this is correct, only 2% of American fiction, or the fiction you can find here is from abroad.

...