Hanging Loose Press is still going strong, and hoping to do so for years to come. 2025 will harken in 6 new poetry titles, and in 2026 we will celebrate 60 years of publishing with an anthology featuring poems by our HLP authors.

But as a small press, we face various challenges, one major wrench in our wheels was when our our long-time distributor, Small Press Distribution (SPD), suddenly—no exaggeration—told us, along with the many other small presses they have dealt with, that they were about to close, out of business, period, right away. The small-press community was left scrambling to cope with a void in distribution and the disappearance of warehouse space. This happened earlier this year in March, but we have since dealt with this problem, finding a new distributor (Itasca Books), and adding direct credit card purchase of titles from our webpage, but of course it has meant more of a strain on our resources.

But on the up side, our mission remains steadfast: to seek out and support exciting new writers and artists, as well as the acclaimed and established. Some ways HLP is getting it done:

Founders Award : One of our achievements in recent years has been the establishment of the annual Hanging Loose Press Founders Award to publish a first poetry collection, in honor our 1966 founders— Ron Schreiber, Emmett Jarrett, and Bob Hershon—who have passed away. We are grateful to the Russell Freedman Foundation, among other donors, for support of this prize. The 2024 Founders Award winner is Starr Davis, whose book, Affidavit, will appear in 2025.

Loose Translations Award: Since 2012 we have collaborated annually with the MFA program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation of Queens College, to publish a book of poetry or prose translated into English by a student in that program. The 2024 winner of the Loose Translation Award is Jay Boss Rubin’s translation of contemporary short stories from the Swahili, which will also appear in 2025.

Guest Editors: Since issue #113, we have brought back our practice of turning over part of each issue to a guest editor who will have free rein to present work by writers of their own choosing. The regular editors just sit back and watch it happen, continuously impressed by the caliber of work curated. This year’s guest editors have included the remarkable Joan Larkin (#115) and, in #116, the collaborative selection by Milady Auguste and Danielle Legros Georges of young Haitian poets.

In 2024, our authors include:

Indran Amirthanayagam: Seer, a survivor’s look back at memories of personal and political life from childhood in Sri Lanka to London and then the U.S. and through the Covid years—from a writer who’s literally been a world traveler, who writes in five languages, and whose scope is broad and deep.

Joel Lewis: Well, You Needn’t: How I Became a Jazz Fan, a sometimes dizzying, hilarious, in-depth look at jazz in poems and the prose memoir threading its way through the book, and how this gifted, lifetime-New-Jersey poet became a knowledgeable and enthusiastic (!) fan, and what it’s meant in his life..

Pablo Medina: Sea of Broken Mirrors, a book of questions and incantations; lush sonics and surreal yet contemporary imagery. His work is grounded in descriptions of Vermont’s nature—still beautiful despite the ravages of global warming—as well as memories of his early youth and family Cuba.

Rebecca Suzuki: When My Mother Is Most Beautiful, a powerful love letter to a mother and to language itself, delving into complex questions of family, communication, culture, and connection; and winner of the 2023 Loose Translation Award. These poems chronicle the difficult art of navigating multiple cultural identities, examining how languages twist and morph across cultures.

Terence Winch: It Is As If Desire, poems that examine, deconstruct, disrupt, and celebrate love and friendship. As the title suggests, these poems see love and desire as often conditional, fragmentary states. In this dialectic between life and love, it is up to the poems themselves to provide the ultimate synthesis.

In 2025, our forthcoming authors and their books:

Barbara Henning: A Detroit poet for many years, now living in New York City, she has published five novels, eight collections of poetry, and a book of prose poems. Hanging Loose Press will be publishing her prose-poem memoir, Girlfriend.

Paula Cisewski: winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize, and the Diode Editions Book Prize Award, is the author of five previous poetry collections and several chapbooks. Hanging Loose Press will publish her sixth collection of poems: The Becoming Game.

Karen Kovacik: Winner of a Fulbright research grant to Poland and two NEA fellowships for her translations of contemporary Polish poets Krystyna Dąbrowska and Jacek Dehnel. HLP will publish her third collection of poems, Portable City.

Starr Davis, (Founder’s Award winner, as noted above): Affidavit. She has been a fellow at The Luminary, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and PEN America.

Sherman Alexie (“rez indian/urban indian”) Pen Faulkner and National Book Award winner,enrolled member of the Spokane Tribe, whose work we have been proudly publishing since 1988, with a new collection of poems.

M.L. Smoker enrolled member of the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes, former poet laureate of Montana: HLP published her first collection of poems, in 2005. HLP will be publishing her new collection of poems.

Thanks to you, our community for supporting us through these six decades. If you have the means to support us in the new year, we will be so appreciative. You can donate via the link in our bio or https://givebutter.com/q0t8Yh or hangingloosepress.com.

Donations of $75 will receive a one-year subscription to Hanging Loose magazine or the extension of an existing subscription. Donations of $150 will also receive a book selected by one of the editors, with a specially designed Hanging Loose Press bookmark.

Thank you, thank you, as always.

HLP Editors

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