Blue Edge Books Publisher Interview
by Miriam Sagan at Miriam's Well Blog
A new poetry press! Here is an interview with editor Kathleen Lee.
Miriam’s Well: I’ve been a small press lover and editor most of my life. Still, it can be challenging and sometimes annoying. At this point in life, what inspired you to start a poetry press?
I was thinking about a couple of things – the many good writers I know who have failed to find publishers for their work, and my possibly obscure area of experience reading and editing poetry. I thought that I could combine those two things. I regard Blue Edge Books as a kind of donation to poetry, and if the endeavor absorbs and entertains me, I’ll consider myself lucky. Maybe it’s only ‘at this point in life’ that I have the tolerance for running a small press. I didn’t know anything about how to run a small press before I began so it didn’t seem daunting. I like doing things at which I am a novice; being a beginner is kind of relaxing.
MW: 2. I know you as an inveterate and dedicated reader of both fiction and poetry. And a writer of both. What made you decide to focus solely on poetry for Blue Edge Books?
It’s a little embarrassing to give a very prosaic answer to this question: poems are short (not all poems, but still). Plus nobody expects to sell a lot of poetry books, so the stakes feel manageable.