In Praise of Small Presses October 17, 2010

Topic of the Week: October 18-22, 2010

Joyce Hinnefeld

Small presses are often more willing to take chances on authors with books that don’t fit a conglomerate publisher’s lists. Authors who once published with a small press can fill a Who’s Who of Publishing and some have even  have become household names. This week in #litchat we’re discussing the importance of small presses in providing a literary landscape for authors whose work might otherwise be overlooked.

Joining us in #litchat on Friday, October 22, is Joyce Hinnefeld, author of 2008’s In Hovering Flight and recent release, Stranger Here Below. Both books are published by the small press Unbridled Books. Stranger Here Below zig-zags through a century of history as glimpsed in the alternating POVs of several interconnected women. It’s a story of abstract design, tightly woven with character–the kind of novel that big commercial houses often praise, but ultimately pass.

Hinnefeld graduated from Hanover College in Hanover, Indiana in 1984, and attended graduate school at Northwestern University and at the State University of New York at Albany. She has lived and worked in Chicago, New York City, and upstate New York, and she now teaches at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

She has published fiction, poetry, and essays in a number of print and online journals, and her book of short stories, Tell Me Everything (University Press of New England, 1998)—called “a beautiful and wise collection, with no wasted words” by judge Joanna Scott—received the 1997 Bread Loaf Writers Conference Bakeless Prize in Fiction. Her first novel, In Hovering Flight—called “as quiet as twilight and just as lovely” by Ron Charles of The Washington Post—was the #1 Indie Next Pick for September 2008.

Follow Joyce Hinnefeld in Twitter at @jhinnefeld.