Michael Hathaway, founder and publisher of small press stalwart The Chiron Review, says he didn’t start publishing with any specific vision or goal to achieve. “It just happened, and I had no clue what I was doing. When I started, here in the middle of Smalltown, Kansas fresh out of high school, I knew nothing whatsoever of the history of independent publishing, I never even knew it existed. I learned about that later as I became a part of it. I just knew I was not satisfied with the literature I had learned about in high school, I felt it should have a little more life, more punch to it.”
“I suppose the present and future of alternative culture in America is the same as its venerable, glorious past.” he says. “It has a place and a function. If it rises above that place and function, then it is no longer alternative or independent. Independent publishing is a rebellion against the status quo of ‘safe’ mediocrity, an antidote to mainstream ‘literature’ and art that have been sanitized and watered down for mass public consumption. Independent publishers will remain the oasis where readers find authentic, bona fide literature and art that is alive and kicking with undiluted creativity and honesty. The bigger and more powerful bookstore/publisher conglomerates become, the more prevalent independent and alternative writers and artists will become. We are a result and reaction to mediocrity and oppression. And we will never go away.”
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