We believe that turning the page is an optional action for today's readers--
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so we strive to make that action beautiful.
Throwback Books is committed to finding works that focus on the aesthetic of the words as much as-- or even moreso --than the story / character / plot of the piece. We take those works and match them to a typewriter that fits their work in concept or design, then we handmake each book for distribution. In the past, we have stitched bindings or done transparent overlays on the cover to offset text and illustration. We have printed fragmented pages or poetry on pages of vellum folded over newsprint paper. We have raised the appearance of a book to that of a Bible with purple-lace bookmark and gold-lettered cover, then we stained it with a beer bottle drink ring.
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We are hoping to find people who send us coloring books or choose-your-own-adventures. We are hoping for books that demand a tactile change to the page--- something marred or on alternate surfaces. Plenty of great writing will stand alone and will not need a publisher like ours. We are looking for a collaboration to make it all come together with a gestalt it wouldn't have had with another publisher.
Whatever brings out the essence of the writing or writer, we will venture to make it happen in these perfect-bound books.
Rae Wood lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota and teaches at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She was a 2010 finalist in the Associated Colleges of the Midwest Nick Adams Short Story Contest and winner of the 2011 Carleton Class of 1885 Prize for best creative work in prose. Her writing has appeared in Writing Tomorrow, the Loft Literary Center's Writer's Block, and in Vita.mn as the winner of their 2013 Summer Short Story Contest.
About the Editors
Rae Wood
c.vance
c.vance received his BFA in painting from Oregon State University. By his senior year, all of his work was text based in an attempt to blend words and art. Unable to find chapbook publishers who would accept his 20-something rip offs of Bukowski, he founded THROWBACK BOOKS as a vanity press until finding other authors to print and champion.
He is the author of "the alley flowers bloom for every drunk who pisses on them save for me" (Throwback Books) and "We: A Reimagined Family History" (Jaded Ibis Press). He co-hosts Drunken Literates (available on iTunes)-- a podcast of smart and irreverent discussions about books, followed by interviews with mildly or seriously inebriated writers, publishers and other creative people --and works as a day laborer in Minneapolis, Minnesota.