This book blog which started out as a fun project is slowly evolving into something else. I thought it might be an idea to post links to publications and publishers who are doing good work but who don’t often get mentioned in conversations on diversity. This is yet again another self-interest move. Because I do want to keep up with publications outside of the central eye and this is like a reminder to myself to keep checking out these houses.
One of my memorable reads was Breaking the Bow edited by Anil Menon and Vandana Singh. There’s an interview with the editors on this blog and you can read it here.
I remember talking about the Kuzhali Manickavel story on twitter and getting an answer back from the house that publishes her work. Blaft Publications is based in Chennai, India and they publish quite a variety of work. There’s an exciting vibe about this publishing house that reminds me of how much fun genre is. It’s a site worth checking out and don’t those books just look intriguing?
Joyce Chng pointed me to Buku Fixi which is a publishing house in Malaysia. The site itself is in Malaysian but this is the house that published two collections I want to read this year. Zen Cho’s Spirits Abroad and Ee Leen Lee’s 13 Moons.
Google pointed me to this interview with Buku Fixi’s founder, Amir Muhammad. It gives the reader some insight into Buku Fixi as well as the work of translation.
It would be remiss of me not to mention Visprint. Visprint is a publishing house in the Philippines which has been steadily growing a list of Filipino writers. When I was back home, most of the titles they published were in the local language, but they’ve branched out and have been producing collections, anthologies and comic books.
Visprint has published and distributed the work of writers like Paolo Chikiamco, Eliza Victoria and Dean Alfar (to name a few) and the work they publish is definitely worth checking out.
I’ll be writing more about other places worth checking out and definitely am up for recommendations. Let me know which houses you think are doing work that we don’t often hear about. I’d be happy to add them to the list of links that I am collating.
