 So, hi, welcome everyone to meet the publishers meet the publisher portrait of an independent press. This event was produced in partnership with the San Francisco writers conference. My name is Karen Edwards and I am one of the librarians here at the mechanics Institute of San Francisco. Coming to you from my driveway in San Andro, California across one day just to be here. So, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the mechanics Institute we are a independent membership organization that houses a wonderful library, which is the oldest in fact designed to serve the public in California, not just mechanics. So a cultural event center and the nation's oldest chess club. Right now due to the shelter in place all of our events are virtual, but I encourage you to consider becoming a member with us. It's only $120 a year, and that helps your support helps us with our cultural activities and our library and all the other fun things that we do that benefits the San Francisco Bay Area. Our speakers today include Sir on Kerr who is the founder of tailwinds press, which is an independent press based in the New York area. We also have Shane race Legland who is a member of the mechanics Institute's writing community. He was born in Western Montana and attended the university there. And he is the author of may we one day pick all the shrapnel from our hearts and so he'll talk about that this afternoon. We also have Maria Espinosa, who is the author of five novels, including the one she'll be talking about today called suburban souls. And she has taught creative writing and contemporary literature at New College of California and English as a second language for City College of San Francisco. But right now she lives in Albuquerque. So the way it'll work today is all three speakers will share their knowledge and discuss their recent projects, and then we'll open things up for discussion. We're kind of a larger group that I expected today which is yay. And so why don't you post the questions that you have in the chat space and we'll fold those into the conversation. And then later we'll open things up so we can all chat together with your microphones off. I mean on. All right, take it away. Thanks. And first of all, I do want to thank Karen, our host and the mechanics Institute this looks like an amazing institution. I'm very jealous it doesn't exist in sunny Connecticut I'm being sarcastic it's not sunny in where where I am right now. It looks like an incredibly rich environment community and I'm looking forward to learning more about it. So I'm sure I'm the publisher. I nominally run the show around here tailings is an independent press and we've been around since 2014. We focus primarily on manuscript length, literary fiction. So the model of the press is pretty simple. People send me manuscripts and I choose the most beautiful and brilliant ones that I like the most and I publish five or six of them in partnership with the authors. So before, so the stars of the show here are really a shame race and Maria. But I just wanted to sort of say a few words about sort of why the press exists and sort of what it's about. So the creation myth that I always tell is that in 2012. I was reading the 600 page tome of poems by Anne Sexton. And as you know she has her own creation myth where one aspect of the myth is that she's she she goes through a lot of difficulties in her life. And in a religious authority, in this case a priest told her during one of these phases, God is in your typewriter. And her poems are awesome. I love Anne Sexton and that's a great thing to be told. But when I read this the first time I felt profound discomfort that over the years turned into resentment. I gradually came to believe, and I think the turning point was around 2012 that the authority to see deep value in art has to consist of a process of self initiation by readers. Reading is not a passive activity. To say that reading is a passive activity is like saying that skiing is a passive activity like like you're just rolling down the hill. Reading is an active partnership in a joint creative endeavor that's intensely personal sacred and extremely powerful. And as long as we wait for someone else to tell us who's typewriter the divine is living in literature will be detached from the people who connect to it most deeply. So that's the first aspect of the creation myth. There's a second aspect of the press that I want to emphasize. So this is not on the face of an Asian American press I haven't published any novels with Asian American themes I don't seek them out. I think once I unintentionally published an author who might have been half Asian when I looked at his press photo but in this is not like an overtly Asian press, but I am Asian American. I'm not with a background assumption with of a certain set of proto confusion values, and one of them is best expressed as this in text, everyone is equal. I don't research people before I publish them. I try not to think about the author's identity at all when I look at the manuscripts. I accept a book and we like the authors and I talk and and people ask me like do you want to know more about what I do I'm like no no that would just confuse me. It should be about the books. It shouldn't be about who you are what you're seeing is like whether you have friends or critics whether you have friends or well known whether you have friends like at all. It should be about what you write. And, and this is the myth of what I was taught was the Chinese imperial civil service that I grew up on with, with these like six week long exams and like that determines her whole life and people spend their entire life studying for this like ultra ultra SAT. And if the press is any strong ideology, it would be that ideal of everyone being equal before what is written down. So every book here represents, and, you know, it's not just Shane race and Maria we publish, I published several a year and sort of they're all, all these other authors of which Shane race and Maria or sort of a representative sample. But the books on my website represent not just this absolutely brilliant book on its own, which is, but it's also what's fundamentally a political statement. I can't think of anything more radical than to allow your own vision and your own aesthetics to be seen and heard, and to help create things that you believe to be beautiful and good. It's very much an honor to publish Shane race and to publish Maria and the rest of the authors. And if I'm hoping that you come away with any other message other than that like these books are great. You should order them on Amazon or Barnes and Noble and probably pals. The other point is to, is, is to urge people to ask the same questions that I asked, where are you unprivileged in your life where are you invisible and unheard. And what do we create with that knowledge. That's enough for me, I think, I think we should do sort of what we did on our initial launch. I think the writers Shane race and Maria are going to introduce themselves and their books and then I'm going to ask some questions, and we can do a little q amp a. So, Shane race, why don't you kick it off this time. My name is Shane is legal. That is a pseudonym but you know it's my real, you know middle name, my parents. My parents were weird. So Shane, Shane race I grew up in Montana. And, you know, after, you know, after high school went to University of Montana. I left university in Montana about 2007. I, you know, came down to the Bay Area just, you know, for work. But, you know, just the amount of work that I was getting in the also, you know, people I knew back in Montana who did not, you know, leave. I really kind of started this story of just kind of, you know, unemployment and just lack of employment, but you know, people not viewing themselves in the proper light so maybe one day pick all our shopping from my hearts right here. It's about that kind of, you know, bad cycle with you people get into of just self of loathing and not, you know, making you know it out making it in life as they wanted to take place in the Bay Area time in Missouri, Montana. And, you know, the main character is a man who believes his wife is way too good for him. And he believes that he, you know, in order for her to have a good life, she has to leave them and so he goes, goes through a plan to get his wife to leave it. And, you know, over the course of the novel, he begins to learn to, you know, care for himself but also more importantly learn to accept love from others. That's great. Maria. Maria you're up are you on mute. You're on mute we can't hear you. Taryn can you unmute Maria. Okay. Yeah, here, I wanted to show the cover first. It's about a really anguished woman and an anguished family. And yet, the whole book is not anguish it's very much about life in the 70s in the Bay Area which I understand is now almost a historical period. And it's about the effect that people who suffered trauma in the whole escaping the Holocaust specifically a family of German Jews cast past this on through their children, and how it affects their children. And I think I all I can say is read the book. It's so hard to talk about something I've just written I find myself really blocked about it. As my own life, I grew up in Long Island, despite my Hispanic name. I was a Chilean writer. And since I never felt okay with my given name I began calling myself Maria. Now I also call myself Paula Maria, which given name, given name. And I lived in the Bay Area for a long time from the 60s until quite recently. So I've seen the changes that happen and I've just seen how particularly one disturbed member in a family, particularly the mother especially can affect everyone around her. More especially in the book I talk about the lack I describe how the lack of communication between people create so much suffering. How people really can go somewhat crazy by not feeling seed or heard or is she wrong says feeling invisible, feeling that they're what they think is not heard falls on deaf ears. They perceive it's just not seen by the rest of the world. The kind of isolation this creates. And in the book, the young the daughter one of the daughters tries to overcome this by moving to a commune in the Santa Cruz mountains again a very 70s kind of field. All I can say is read the book by it. I'll get back to you there's there's much more to say about the book and and I think, you know, during during this, sorry, during this sort of segment, I'll be sort of making observations about the book but you know I personally am very bad at like listening to things, like as a kid I would never sit still and the teachers read to us I was one of these kids we were just like reading under the table and the teacher is like reading at us and I was always pissed off all the time. So, so at these readings I've been trying to get people to like not read and I just like surprise them with questions. So, and these are like, kind of unrehearsed questions when I asked the authors so, so it's sort of an uncontrolled situation I thought maybe the audience might appreciate. But like apologies in advance to Shane race Maria, but but that's just, I try to think about what would keep me interested if I run one of these so that's just an explanation of the format. So, so let's come back to Shane race. So, and this is the second time we've sort of done a launch we had a group launch a few weeks back so some of these conversations are conversations that are continuing from things we talked about a little bit. The first time. So, one of the things that come to mind when I think about this book. It's not fiction it's sort of philosophers who focus on the control of the self. So when I reach back in my mind and ask myself like what is this remind me of there's this aspect of classical stoicism you know Marcus Aurelius and also existentialism you know like Camus the stranger. So, one aspect of these different approaches to living is the idea of self mastery regardless of what crap is happening on the outside. So for the existentialists in their language it's expressed as freedom for the stoics it's expressed as like a disciplined manner of life and I always say that when you read up a sectors it makes you want to clean the house like it actually makes you want to like reorganize all of the shells and all the crap in your kitchen. So, but they result in a very similar demeanor being presented to the external world which is that of extreme self sufficiency. And this goes along with my sense that there's a very strong tradition and literature of men who don't talk much. And I think that's an extricably tied to both the existentialists and to stoicism like you see that in the stranger but you also see that in things that you know are sort of not like last of the Mohicans or Steinbeck and like probably the king of that is like Hemingway you know there's to be this is important because silence in sort of Western society seen as both a sword and a shield silence helps you preserve the core of your of your inner self it keeps you in some sense not pure and authentic, but it's also used to withhold resources, and in that case it's a sword and, and then you become like the passive aggressive cliche. So, I guess my question for Shane race that preamble is, you know what what would you take to be the role of silence in this novel because the silent one of the things I love about the book is that silence is everywhere. The book is like words and it's like a conventional narrative, but you can feel the silence kind of seeping into your bones as you're reading the text, even when people are saying things, you can feel that sense of peace and silence. So I just want to sort of hear your views on that. And one portion of the book I talk about, you know, football, and how the main character doesn't really care about football, but he knows he has to talk about it. He has to know about it so he can relate to other men. And, you know, he kind of comes into this realization that, you know, I mean, a lot of these sports are there, just so men have a reason to talk to one another, you know, and can actually begin to make that conversation with people. You know, the human person needs a lot of interaction, you know, you know, we are, you know, you know, we are social group, but there's so much of this intention of just, you know, suppressing your, you know, these things down, because, you know, if, you know, you appear to, you know, interested in another person, that's going to, you know, you know, be suspect. I feel that, you know, people have a real need to say really what's in their mind, but they cannot, because they feel that what's going to be coming out of their mouth will be, you know, chaotic. And, you know, ultimately, you know, wins into that. And then this, you know, leads down to, you know, a breakdown of communication. One of the big things of this book is the lack of communication. You know, the main character doesn't know what to say to his wife. His daughter is disabled, who's deaf, and they do communicate but only through sign language. She knows how to speak, but has, you know, recently, you know, stopped speaking, and he has no idea how to get her to stop, you know, start speaking again. So the idea of silence is, you know, people are just, you know, getting more and more just isolated and, you know, you know, push back because they're too afraid of, you know, all the emotions that they have just spilling out all at once. And I will say, just in response to the, you know, very epistodist, and, you know, the classic storism is, I mean, you know, especially like a manly kind of view of the world of it's really easy to write something down in a book and say, these are the laws that you should fall. You know, it's really easy to write, you know, as extents, you know, for extents, let's talk about freedom and about, you know, how is a man to work in the, you know, man or woman to work in the world. But that's not living, you know, people feel this, you know, urge to speak and, you know, they can't, they're too afraid to, you know, just lose everything by just saying everything they want. That's okay. Yeah, no, that's, that's great. That's great. This is, so this is sort of, no, and I agree with this. One of the things that I really enjoy about the book and this in some sense, it's, it makes me think of Marcus Aurelius in the sense that they're living according to these. There's a background assumption of, of a stoic principle, I think in your book and also in Marcus Aurelius, but when you, and that's seen in, you know, the way your, the way your protagonist acts and the way he thinks about things. I think there is this kind of surrender and resignation and also strength in the character. That's really, really important to, to the book. I think that I think it also conveys how, how difficult the stoic philosophy is, and sort of what, what the costs of it might be. And, and I think this sort of segues into my second question, which is, his silence is an output issue, just like his daughter's deafness is like an output issue. But the, the input, you know, how does, how, how does his lack of visibility to people like his wife, or, you know, his kid's teacher doesn't listen to him, you know, or his employer. How does that sort of, you know, fading in and out of other people's lives, interact with silence, do you think. You know, reinforces the role he's supposed to play. In the sense, he's not the amount, the amount of silence that he's giving right, you know, you know, he obviously wants to talk more he also wants to speak more, but he's just reinforced that he's not getting that, you know, that input and that this is, you know, just normally what he's, you know, to expect from you. You know, and he's living his life how he's supposed to, you know, he's raising his daughter, he's, you know, you know, he's going to his wife's events, supporting his wife, you know, when he can. You know, this is what, you know, he's supposed to be but this is what he cannot really, you know, be. That makes any sense. You know, it makes total sense and it makes sense in the best possible way which is like when you when you read it. It's, you feel the truth of that more than like when you articulate it which shows that it's necessary if it were articulable I guess it wouldn't be the book would be redundant. But it's, it's a very enigmatic very short novel. It's easy to explain the plot it's easy to write off Bridger as being someone who's derailed by circumstance I mean his life kind of sucks. There's that aspect of it. But I think there's also this like atmospheric sadness to the book that goes that goes beyond that in his self sufficiency and he's, there's something so mysterious and very compelling about the writing. So, with most authors, I can kind of sort of, I can tell what the literary influences are. And with this book. It's, it's hard for me to see an obvious lineage. And, you know, and there's a little bit of Virginia Wolf a little bit of to the lighthouse, which is like a different book but it, it's important in that to the lighthouse also acknowledges human suffering. In a way that's little a little remote and it helps you make peace with that suffering and a very like graceful calm way I mean, I think people forget that like really terrible things happen into the lighthouse right like there's a chap, there's like a section this big or like six people die. And it's kind of like no but you know people kind of move on and the book goes on and like people, you know still like do their thing. And even though it's been traumatic. And so so who do you consider to be your influences in as a as a literary writer. You know, it's strange because I read a lot of this actually was a break from, you know, most of my my big influences. I mean, I enjoyed a lot of the South American writers love fabulous love the what to call them, you know, names are hard. Again, we're going to see Marquez, Carlos when days. And actually, the very first version of a very first version of this book started out as a short story, and it was a magic realist. And I really just had a huge disillusionment with magic realism not that I don't like that the old writers. I just didn't realize I just realized that this is not one of, you know, I wanted to write. I would say, if any of the magic realists probably are closest I probably put feels, feels virtual in English, who was a, you know, considered the founder of the magic realism he was a Uruguayan writer, not successful in his life at all. And he started kind of, you know, adding some things in but you know a lot of his works were about, you know, kind of people trying to, you know, you know, make things the best they have. What about Roberto Balanio. I haven't read a lot of Roberto, Roberto Balanio. There's not much of a connection. I, there's not a connection jumping to mind but I mentioned it because you drew. I think magical realism is sort of poorly understood in the sense that, like, I don't like your, I mean for anyone who's wondering that the book, like Shane racist book is not magical realism is it's very realist like there's something that happens there that that's particularly magical in like any way. But, but to me magical realism is about resorting to like, like a world of traditional myth in a way that it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't mean that unlikely things happen or that absurd things happen to me it means that you're, you're touching some other part of everyday life that that is sort of separate from the everyday life of like you know doing the laundry and like you know getting the car serviced. But I, you know it's interesting I can I can actually kind of see that in the sense that the the narrator spend so much time on his own sort of thinking about stuff. There's something, there is something sacred about everyday small tasks. You know he drives, he drives like a sewage truck, right and he just sort of does one like sort of monotonous task after another, but you can see the little the thing that's magical about the book is that he sees, you know the details of, you know, the people he sees with the sewage truck or, you know the weather as he's driving around it's it's those little things that that make that that sort of help his life have coherence in it. So that's, that's interesting I hadn't, I hadn't real that's something I hadn't seen but but now that you mentioned I think I can see a little bit of it. Thanks, thank you for and we may come back if there's more Q&A, but I want to move on to Maria. So, just a few things about Maria's book so one of the things that I love about suburban souls is there's this portrait of this like enraged offended like burn this house down feminism that we have in the protagonist Gerta. She's sort of an antihero it's easy to dismiss her as someone who's flawed and self destructive. I mean she's like, really you'd like mean to her children she's, she's angry, but there's also this like gleeful portrait of like a despondent housewife who is unafraid of being needy and afraid of being angry and sexually rejected and raging about her distant husband not loving her. It makes me always think of this comedian Phil Hartman on this from the Simpsons who died very tragically in the 90s and one of the things he said about his estranged wife before he died was, I retreat into my cave and she throws rocks to get me out. So there's a lot of that dynamic between Gerta and her husband Saul who's estranged for most of the book. It's complicated by the Holocaust because they're Jews who barely escaped America as children from the Nazis it's complicated by 1970s feminism and sexual liberation versus this really repressive version of domesticity. And it's complicated by infidelity, but to me the true focus of suburban souls is this primal destructive universal drive to be loved and to be visible when the world refuses to love you, or to see you. The first question to Maria, which has two parts is first. Why do you focus on the theme of need and dependency in your work and why do you focus on on those topics and why does it, why does the book need to take place in 1970s San Francisco. Well, let me start with the first one, the second one, the 1970s San Francisco Bay Area was a time of, how can I say, ferment and hope the 60s whole hippie movement had taken place people were experimenting with sexual freedom with drugs with communal living with all kinds of new terrain they were trying to break old barriers, and they were breaking part of their psychics, one of the main characters is a Scottish psychic, a rather skeptical ethics, rather dubious morality, let's say. And the first question you're talking about about the enraged feminism about not being seen not being heard they get that really connects with Shane racist book about the lack of communication which is really a major theme, and how it need and dependency. I think, as a woman I was brought up very much in this need dependency, sort of matrix of being where a woman was nothing without a man. And the man was supposed to be the breadwinner of the supreme authority the woman was supposed to gain power and sort of manipulative ways. And so she's up against this whole framework of need and dependency of the fact that she needs to be dependent that's ingrained in her somehow, and she hates it. And it's for Saul the husband. He's just been. He needs, again, the dependency is very real they both neither feels quite strong enough to stand on their own feet to feet they need somebody, and that person they're trying to lean on is failing them. Neither of them hear each other really neither of them really see each other or get to the other person is. They're trying to get to their own families which were quite disturbed that there's this generic sense of the whole culture of the whole German culture trying to annihilate them before they managed to get out of Germany when they were children. So there's that kind of subliminal sense underneath. Yeah, that's all. That's, there's so much going on and suburban souls. The aspect of this book that I find fascinating is the ambivalence. So I'm going to bring up something, an interesting fact, which is that Maria has a connection to someone that I have a massive fascination with, who herself had very deep ties to both San Francisco and New York, which is a nice man, like, you know, Henry, Henry and June and I've read all the unexpurgated diaries and I'm like a huge fan right like even the ones that nobody reads like the like the six that came afterwards and like they put out one in 2017 or 2018. I'm like a huge fan so I didn't realize this until we were almost going to press because, like I said I tried to focus on the books, as I sort of look at the manuscripts but I was looking around for a photo on Maria's website and I realized that a nice man had actually responded with Maria and read some of her poems in I think the late 60s and offered, you know, this appreciation and praise of her poetry, which is awesome so to realize that a nice man and I have somehow connected across time and space through Maria and you know her books and it means so much to me as a publisher so I want to thank Maria for that. But that that got me thinking a little bit about Anais Nen and sort of what are the ways in which there are correspondences to sort of her work and to Gerda. So, I was actually reading the latest, the latest diary. Like I said, it's called Trapeze. So, Gerda is deeply conflicted by her life as is Anais Nen. Anais Nen is a Cuban who marries and falls in love with American men. She doesn't like American men, so you read the diary, she doesn't like them, she thinks they're really basic. The last love of Anais Nen's life was an American man who lived in the Big Sur area and this actually reinforces all of her complaints. So, you know, American men make her cook, they make her clean, they make her bake pies, she has to hang out with neighbors, she thinks they're ass boring, they're Philistines, they listen to the radio too much. This guy reads too much Time Magazine. I think this is the equivalent in the 1950s of someone watching like meet the press all the time, like I hate meet the press, so she can't stand American men. And yet she loves American men and there's this similar ambivalence in her diaries about America in general, because during the 50s apparently Anais Nen went through this like slump in her career where like nobody read her, the American mainstream wasn't picking her up, everyone lost so much money on her books. And so the other half of the diary, which is like completely safe for work is like how much American readers suck. It's like these people are troglodytes, they're boring, they don't understand Freud, they don't read, they watch too many movies. And yet the irony is that history like has shown that Anais Nen's readers I think are, you know, it's a very American, it's a very American milieu, it would be like unthinkable to think of Anais Nen as being situated anywhere but in America to me. And I think of her as like being completely American in every way in the sense that she's an immigrant. You know she thinks self consciously about the difference between mass media and like, you know whatever she's doing she's she's she's she's conflicted about every aspect of American life, which to me is like a sign that you're really American. So, you know, one question I have for you Maria is that, you know, how do you see Gerta's role as an immigrant, especially someone from the, you know, old world roots and a stranger as being a part of how she interfaces with her environment in America. And do you think visibility is a deeper issue for her than, you know, not just in her, the personal sexual sense but also in some global social sense as well. That's an interesting question. Before I answer it I'd like to digress a bit and say that my original attraction to Anais Nen was that she wrote in the voice of a woman, I grew up in the 50s, where the writers I read most of them even the women seem to be having a gardeness about their true feelings and a kind of male voice which I found artificial, a kind of masculine pseudo strong voice. And so they were imitating Kermis Ernest Hemingway so I was very attracted to Anais Nen because she began writing. She was one of the first people I wrote began who wrote about real female feelings emotions. And Gerta, I suppose is an extension of that in a very, very extended way. So she came from Europe, where ironically I felt that women were more visible and more respected in Europe than they were in the United States. When I first traveled to Europe, and I was in Paris for a long time, couple years, I felt the women were much, much more visible, more heard, more freer in a sense than they were in our country. And yes they had the traditional roles of homemaker, as they did in Germany. So I'm, I'm wondering about that I think she may have felt the loss of identity and of being seen and heard coming to this country, rather than an gaining of it does that make any sense. Absolutely. I mean it's, it's, it's very complicated because I mean she writes about, you know, Cuba about America and she came over at like a complicated age like you know when she was maybe a teenager or like 10 years old. And so you're, you're, and I, you know, I know this from personal experience to your, your views of a culture are colored by your own individual experiences with, with the culture. You know, even if that's not completely grounded in fact. So I, I see so much of these themes that, you know, initially came up probably during the 60s and the 70s and feminism but that are still sort of prevalent in different forms people are still asking the same questions now there's, there's simmering resentment at having, you know, like someone, this this guy like wanting her to bake a pie because it's like it tastes better than like a store bought pie just her rage at like someone like making her do that when she should be like writing. That's so resonant, you know, like that's like, like every first date where someone asks me if I like to cook that that that like burns in my memory is being like like this is like this is like the worst thing ever. But, you know, the questions are still there and the cool thing about an ISD and the cool thing about GERDA as a character is that they both have no boundaries right so so they say all these things. The diary, you know, gives an ISD and that freedom and being like, you know, mentally unstable gives GERDA the other type of freedom. But they're able to to say what a lot of people in every day non magical realism life or like actually just thinking constantly. And to me that's the freedom of suburban souls is that like gleeful like, I'm going to burn this place down, you know, type type of attitude and, and it's not even like a political sense right like it's you just want to burn the place down because it's just soft. And there's, I think there isn't enough of that transparency and in a lot of the books I read so I found that very refreshing. When I'm thinking of this in places like Mexico, women are perhaps less visible freedom but they're more deeply respected, it's a matriarchy. And also in Europe I feel there, at least there was a much deeper respect for women and I think the United States is a very male masculine kind of country and its sensibility. Yeah, it's not, but the irony and the irony is that it's not enjoyed right like it's full of, I feel like, you know, when I'm thinking back to the election. We actually had talks, the group of writers that were launching this year had, we had talks about whether we should have launches like before or after the election or we should have like one before one after. Does that like, does that mean I was like maybe maybe if, if, maybe if it went one way we would like burn book burn our books or something or I don't know, but, but I can actually see his point now, which is that, you know, having reflected on what happened in in the I don't think it's a political statement to say that there was a lot of rage because people that were not traditionally considered to be disenfranchised felt very disenfranchised for reasons that may have been like completely valid, but are not discussed at all. And this kind of goes back to sort of my views about, you know, the press and you know what's important in running the press, you know, what, what does visibility mean what is being heard mean. I think that the feeling of being heard is is so complicated, and suburban souls sort of exemplifies that I think, may we all pick the shrapnel from maybe one day pick all the shrapnel from our hearts exemplifies that. It takes, it takes so much I mean Virginia will simplifies it as like a room of your own, but to actually get there mentally and emotionally for any gender any race is is so difficult. And maybe this is coherent to me because like, I picked the books you know when I read the manuscripts and, and so this is kind of like the headspace behind my behind like this sort of set of books I put out, but it's I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with it but but it is about visibility of sort of groups that feel profoundly disenfranchised. You know, maybe I'm not not having any like sort of social theory background, I can't say what to make of that but, but it is something that that you see and that I think is becoming more prevalent and literature and you know blogs and things. I see a connection between all may all the shrapnel fall and and suburban souls this great. I kind of will the lack of communication that causes so much suffering. And in Shane racist novel, there's a beautiful on a poetic sort of bleakness to the whole thing. And that hard fact as you talk about being stoic. And then saw is feeling some of that in suburban souls. He's a lot less stoic but again, he's not able to express himself just to speak in a way that connects with people. But if only he could think of something to comfort his daughter Hannah but he does he's not able to all he can do is scold her for forgetting some kind of household chore, and he's suffering inside but he's not able to reach out of himself to reach her. And that's the flip side of stoicism. Yeah. That's really good I mean I, every time I, I talk about these, these books I come up, you know, I, I see something different. Teran is doesn't make sense to move to Q&A is now having tormented Shay Grayson Maria for long enough. I think that maybe has the time. Yeah, I do have a question for you sarong. How, how many submissions do you get. If I publicize that I got like 1000s and if I don't publicize that I got like about 300 per year by worth per round. You know, I, lately I haven't been publicizing it that much because I've noticed this is like very mysterious like, no matter how many submissions I get about each year I find about five or six that I like. And I don't know how that shakes out, but it's, it's difficult I read them all myself right so it's, it's a difficult process. I think the writers have incredible patience I think Shane race, like, I think your manuscript took, like, like a really unconscionable length of time for me to sort of get through it like I requested the manuscript and like that took another six months, you know it's, sometimes life just gets ahead of me. And production sort of takes up a lot of time and then once you get really behind you kind of like hide from it so I think after these books fully launch off to start reading the slash again. It's so discouraging because some of it's like so old, you just got like shame to yourself, but but it is rewarding once you once you find a manuscript that that you really want. And it's great that there's so many people writing and producing great things. Now do you have a, like, what's the process people submit a manuscript to you, you read it when you get to it. And then, how does it work for independent presses. Yeah, it's a it's so, you know, I'm, I try to be as informal as possible in the sense I don't have like a specific date, you know, people, when people want to send me something they send me something. And I don't have specific reading periods. I, I take simultaneous submissions. So, and I think that accounts for, you know, a lot of the volume that I get. It is very the submission and the reviewing the manuscripts aspect of it is actually the most difficult one because the rest of it you can kind of predict how long it takes to produce a book. But the uncontrolled factor here is sort of whether you come up against manuscripts that are that require you to like think about very closely whether to take them. Most manuscripts are either like I love them at first sight, or, and, and like even just skimming them like I know I want to take this, or even a skimming it like I know I would never publish this so those decisions are actually made very very quickly. The things that are difficult or the ones were like, I have, I'm kind of conflicted about it. So it means I have to read it like relatively closely and you know that gets pushed to the back burner and that that can drag the process on for a long time. That's the toughest part, like having to make that that decision. Right, I'm sure. And then I have one more question, you know, on the nuts and bolts side of publishing. When, when you decide that you like a manuscript, do you then advise the author to have an editor go over it with a fine tooth comb and continue like shape it, or do you have, do you have your own team that you call in at this point. So, so, and this is idiosyncratic but I don't buy fixer uppers I've done it like once or twice. And I was like, never again. So if something comes that that I like, I trust the process and you know, that's the way it, I just buy it like as a finished product right like I'm not, I'm not going to re sand the floors and like build a patio and like re dig the basement or and, and, and I think that's, that's partly because there's a this is a very, very lean small scale operation, but I think partly I, you know, who knows, you know whether that paragraph should be split up into two into two paragraphs right I think reasonable I don't believe in there being one universal in one universal attitude towards craft I think craft comes in many, many different forms. And, and, and if the general impression is one that is aesthetically that is aesthetically positive. I would not tinker with that, because you know that's sort of the prerogative of the author who had the initial sort of verbal vision of what to write. So, I think that's idiosyncratic that I have this sort of non, not non judgmental but I don't have strong views about how specific things always need to be said or presented. You know, I try to take a more intuitive approach. And, you know, maybe I, I think the results are pretty good but but honestly like who knows you know like that that's sort of the spiritual exercise of running the press you have to sort of believe at the end of the day that that you got it right. Right well I think from the author's point of view you just want to know how this, how this publishing situation is going to work with this publisher, because there's so much variability, and you know you just want to know going in. All right, I need to get my, my ducks in the row as far as the manuscript is concerned make sure that you know I'm not creating any, anything awful that I'm actually producing the best product as possible so. Yeah, and I trust and I think writers kind of know, you know, like, I think they're, I think when people put together, like a large work of fiction, people, most, most people who sort of have, who know what they're doing, like, it's a coherent vision, in the sense that it, you know the, like, you can sort of debate, you can sort of debate back and forth like should it be this way or should it be that way. But, and I always feel like I always lean towards trusting the author more than maybe a lot of other people do. And also is that logistically and that this goes sort of to the role of an indie press logistically, I don't have the, the resources to buy to sign a manuscript that needs like a lot of work and a lot of like, you know, TLC like I accept that whatever, whatever whatever manuscripts I take are sort of in their essentially final form. Right. And Christine posted a question that she would like to hear more about Shane Race's title and how that came to pass. Yeah, I talked with a seal wrong about it during the launch event. The influence is we talked to Ben was a Japanese writer by the name of Kendra Burrow away. And he was known to, he's still alive. He's known to write some really, you know, interesting titles whose works like teach you, teach us about war madness or rise up you young men and generation, just really beautiful titles and that was like kind of the point of, you know, having such a, you know, you know, long title that was always interesting to me. The actual title refers to cynicism and negativity and just kind of the, if you allow it that you know that cynicism can really build up over time and you know maybe one time. I learned like over cynicism, you know, we pick all the shrapnel shrapnel being the cynicism from my heart. That's interesting that you mentioned being influenced and paying attention to other people's titles. Because I find that I spend a lot of time looking at titles and you know they convey so much information about the theme and the tone and the feel of the book. So, yeah, that's interesting. Does anyone else have any other questions that you want to pose in the chat space or shall we, shall we open this up to just general conversation. Not, I don't see that anyone else has questions so what I'm going to do is go ahead and open things up for general conversation. So if you would like to chat let's unmute yourself. Hi Linda are you. Yeah hi. No, okay. Hi anyway. I guess I would like to thank both Surong, shameless and Maria for a great presentation. I liked that it did not follow a traditional form. It was very to think of being one of the authors, but I thought that the authors. They have extremely interesting responses, and that it made her an extremely successful question. Thank you. Linda has a question for both the authors, did you have, did you pay for an editor to go over your manuscripts before submitting the first time around to tail? I'll start. I did get a line editor. I didn't do that the full developmental editing just because I knew that, you know, it's a small book. The interesting is, I didn't know where I was going to, you know, publish it at all, and it was a day that I said hey why don't you check out small presses go to this one, you know website where you know the, you know, the listed, you know, and that's where I found Hailbook wins is actually through this, you know, MLP.com. I forget what it's called. There's a directory of small presses. I'll try to find it. And yes, I also did I got. I hired an editor to do sort of a rough look at the whole thing, not particularly with typos which is roughnesses. It's very much in shape when I gave it to her. And yes, she did do typos too. That's good. I mean, hiring an editor can be a wonderful experience or you could just really plow a lot of money in there because yeah, what the editors opinion of how your book should. What shape that book should take. You really need to have one, at least someone to go over and make sure that you've, you know dotted your eyes and cross your T's, or vice versa. Let's see, Maria what gave you the inspiration or ideas for your story this is from Sandra. You know I'm thinking about it, and I was thinking a lot about my mother which I hadn't thought about previously growing up in the 50s. And how oppressed, she felt by not just her husband but by the whole set of circumstances by the whole milieu, and also very much by my father who was very much engrossed in his own work as he was a sculptor was and a teacher very engrossed in his own life and career. And so insensitive really to what was going on with her. And finally actually she had a lover who I really liked he was one of our great family friend and his wife and I really was not a good I thought of mine but I thought you know she'd be better off with him he's much more sensitive and empathic and really disturbing her and then I also happened to know a lot of Bay Area holocaust survivors people who got out of Germany or got out of Europe just in time and I go few that had to go through the whole camps to and how it how it affected them on a very deep level and how it ties into a whole centuries long since almost ingrained I think in so many Jews certainly I feel it's ingrained in my old genetic code of just being on ready for the next pogrom to break out ready to flee and a whole set a whole chemistry that sort of revolves around that really does encode in the body cells I think. Yeah I wonder what what's encoding in our. In our physical memories you know now with what we're living through interesting. Let's see does anyone else have any other questions. Would you like to chat directly with the speakers. Feel free to turn your mic off I mean turn it on and say hello. Let's let's do that. Hi Christine it's nice to see you haven't seen you in a while. Now it's so good to to be here at least virtually if not in person. Right. This is happening. Anyone else have any comments for our speakers or me or each other. Well, I guess I wanted to thank you for hosting this whole event, and I wanted to thank Shane race for inviting me and zero wrong for inviting me and really appreciate it. Yes, I've ordered your books to be available at the mechanics Institute's library so. And I'll come in because things are a little bit uncertain right now with with males and with book ordering but it will eventually be in our collection and of course our catalogers are only coming in coming in once a week. So, but eventually it will be there and you'll, you'll see it on the shelf. Oh, that's, that's great. Oh, there's a question. I was going to say thank you to Taryn, and you know Shane race and Maria for sort of letting me publish their books and also to Taryn for hosting this event and I mean, this is, this is awesome. I do appreciate it very much. There is another question from mana, she asks. Exactly to Maria if you have any advice on how to deal with people who are Holocaust deniers. Wow. I don't really know. Yeah. I think it's the way I also feel that I have to deal with people who are Trump supporters. What can I say. You know, Holocaust deniers in the same ways they deal with Holocaust, just deny them, just like, you don't exist. How do you prove that you exist. Right, right. Yeah, actually, I can understand some Trump supporters because I understand a lot of the economic problems that people have gone through and the fact that people are disenfranchised. But yeah, I don't know what to say to the person who denies the Holocaust. Just like that a very different worldview. Yeah, that might be what it's all about. All right, well, I, I think we're losing some of our audience so I just want to thank everyone for coming and thank all of our speakers. You surround you are an amazing interviewer so I look forward to working with you in the future. Yeah, this is an amazing really powerful platform. I'm, you know, this, this is amazing. I'm really, really happy that, you know, you're able to host this and came together. That's great. All right, well we'll be in touch. Thank you everyone. And I look forward to seeing you virtually at another one of our programs shortly. Thanks so much and have a great weekend. Thank you. Bye.