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History

Letter Machine Editions is a small, nonprofit publisher of books and chapbooks, run by Lisa Wells and Joshua Marie Wilkinson. We are based in Portland, Oregon, in the United States. Joshua Marie Wilkinson is the Publisher. Lisa Wells serves as Editor-in-Chief. Our most recent titles are designed by HR Hegnauer. Letter Machine was founded in Denver, Colorado in 2007 by poets Noah Eli Gordon (1975-2022).

To date we’ve published nearly twenty titles, and our books have been honored by the National Book Foundation, the LA Times Book Prizes, Poetry Society of America, the Arab American Book Awards, and other organizations. Letter Machine books and chapbooks have been reviewed in The New York Times, American Book ReviewLos Angeles Review of Books, Jacket2Rain TaxiThe Washington Post, The Rumpus, Coldfront, Vice, among many others. Fred Moten’s book The Feel Trio was named a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry as well; it also won the Gold Medal in Poetry from the California Book Awards. Brandon Shimoda’s book Evening Oracle was selected as the winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America.

Fourteen of our books have made the SPD best-seller list, including three #1 best-sellers.

Our sister site is a poetry journal called The Volta.

Our titles are available for purchase through Small Press Distribution and the finest independent bookstores in the world. Letter Machine closed its doors to any new publications in 2021. Lisa Wells and Joshua Marie Wilkinson will carry on the legacy of Letter Machine as series editors of the Kuhl House Poets, University of Iowa Press, with poet Mark Levine.

Letter Machine

Authors

Cristiana Baik

Christiana BaikCristiana Baik’s work has been published in the Boston ReviewAmerican Letters & CommentaryDrunken Boat and other publications. She is also the author of a chapbook, The Victory of a Strange Heart Beating (Blue Hour Press, 2009). She works at ART21 and is completing her first book of poems based on themes taken from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. With Andy Fitch, Cristiana edited The Letter Machine Book of Interviews due out in Spring 2015.

Anselm Berrigan

Anselm BerriganAnselm Berrigan is the author of Integrity and Dramatic LifeZero Star Hotel, and Some Notes on My Programming—all from Edge Books. He lives in New York City. Letter Machine Editions published To Hell With Sleep.

Edmund Berrigan

Edmund BerriganEdmund Berrigan is the author of two full-length books of poetry,
Disarming Matter (Owl Press, 1999) and Glad Stone Children (Farfalla, 2008), as well as several short collections. He is editor of the Selected Poems of Steve Carey (Sub Press, 2009), and is co-editor with Anselm Berrigan and Alice Notley of the Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (University of California, 2005) and the Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan (University of California, 2010). He is an editor of Vlak magazine and on the editorial board of Lungfull!, has twice received grants from the Fund for Poetry, and was named a NYFA Fellow in poetry in 2009. Letter Machine Editions published Can It! in 2013.

Janelle Effiwatt

Janelle Effiwatt holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Worskhop. Letter Machine published her first chapbook, Like a Thin Hustle, in 2019.

Andy Fitch

Andy FitchAndy Fitch’s most recent book is Pop Poetics: Reframing Joe Brainard. His collaboration with Amaranth Borsuk, As We Know, will be published by Subito Press later this year. His collaboration with Jon Cotner, Conversations over Stolen Food, will be published by 1913 Press in 2015. For Letter Machine Editions, he and Cristiana Baik are currently assembling The Letter Machine Book of Interviews. Fitch edits The Conversant and Essay Press. He teaches in the University of Wyoming’s MFA program.

Peter Gizzi

Peter GizziPeter Gizzi is the author of numerous books, including Artificial Heart (1998), The Outernationale (2007), Threshold Songs (2011) and In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems 1987-2011 (2014). His honors include the Lavan Younger Poet Award from the Academy of American Poets (1993) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2005). His editing projects have included The House That Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer (1998) and, with Kevin Killian, My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer (2008). He works at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Letter Machine Editions published Ode: Salute to the New York School.

Aaron Kunin

Aaron KuninAaron Kunin is a poet, critic, and novelist. He is the author of Folding Ruler Star: Poems (Fence, 2005); The Sore Throat & Other Poems (Fence, 2010); a chapbook, Secret Architecture (Braincase, 2006); and a novel, The Mandarin (Fence, 2008). He lives in Los Angeles. In 2013, Letter Machine Editions published Grace Period: Notebooks, 1998-2007.

Jessica Laser

Jessica Laser grew up in Chicago. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she has taught at Brown University, The University of Iowa, Manhattanville College, Parsons School of Design, and SUNY Purchase. She is pursuing a doctorate in English at The University of California, Berkeley. Sergei Kuzmich from All Sides is her first book.

Juliana Leslie

Juliana LeslieJuliana Leslie was born in Cooperstown, New York and currently lives in Santa Cruz, California. She holds degrees from University of California, Santa Cruz; Mills College; and University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Letter Machine Editions published More Radiant Signal, Leslie’s first book.

Mark Levine

Mark Levine is the author of four books of poems, Travels of Marco, DebtEnola Gay, and The Wilds, and a book of nonfiction, F5.

The recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, an NEA, and a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton, his poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Pushcart Prize Anthology, American Hybrid and American Poets in the Twenty-First Century: The New Poetics.  A member of the Workshop faculty since 1999, he has also worked extensively as a journalist for magazines including The New York Times MagazineOutside, and The New Yorker. In 2018, Letter Machine Editions will release the 25th-Anniversary Edition of Debt, the National Poetry Series Winner and debut poetry collection by Mark Levine, featuring a new introduction by Srikanth Reddy.

Farid Matuk

Farid MatukFarid Matuk is the author of This Isa Nice Neighborhood (Letter Machine, 2010), recipient of an honorable mention in the 2011 Arab American Book Award, finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Award, and chosen by Geoffrey G. O’Brien for recognition in the Poetry Society of America’s New American Poets series. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Iowa ReviewPoets.org, and Critical Quarterly, among others. He is a contributor to Scubadivers and Chrysanthemums: Essays on the Poetry of Araki Yasusada (Shearsman, 2011), American Odysseys:  Writings by New Americans (Dalkey Archive, 2013), and Angels of the Americlypse (Counterpath). Matuk serves as poetry editor for Fence and contributing editor for The Volta.  His chapbook My Daughter La Chola was recently published by Ahsahta Press. He and the poet Susan Briante live with their daughter in Tucson, Arizona.

Fred Moten

Fred MotenFred Moten works at the intersection of black studies, performance studies, poetry, and critical theory. He is author of Arkansas (Pressed Wafer Press, 2000); In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (University of Minnesota Press, 2003); I ran from it but was still in it. (Cusp Press, 2007); Hughson’s Tavern (Leon Works, 2008); B Jenkins (Duke University Press, 2010); and The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (with Stefano Harney, available here). Letter Machine Editions published The Feel Trio (Finalist for the National Book Award; Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Winner of the California Book Award) in 2014. Letter Machine published The Service Porch in 2016 and All That Beauty in 2019.

Sawako Nakayasu

Sawako NakayasuSawako Nakayasu was born in Japan and has lived mostly in the US since the age of six. Her books include Hurry Home Honey (Burning Deck, May 2009), Nothing fictional but the accuracy or
arrangement (she, (Quale Press), and So we have been given time Or, (Verse Press). Books of translations include For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut by Takashi Hiraide (New Directions, 2008) which won the 2009 Best Translated Book Award, as well as Four From Japan (Litmus Press, 2006) featuring four contemporary poets, and To the Vast Blooming Sky (Seeing Eye Books), a chapbook of poems by the Japanese modernist Chika Sagawa. She has received the NEA/JUSFC Fellowship for poetry, and grants from the NEA and PEN for translating Japanese poetry. Her own poetry has been translated into Japanese, Swedish, Arabic, Chinese, and Vietnamese. Letter Machine Editions published Nakayasu’s Texture Notes in 2010.

Travis Nichols

Travis NicholsTravis Nichols is a writer living in Atlanta. He edits the online magazine Weird Deer and has written for The StrangerThe Seattle Post-IntelligencerHuffington Post, and various other publications. He is the author of See Me Improving (Copper Canyon Press) as well as two novels:  Off We Go Into The Wild Blue Yonder and The More You Ignore Me (both from Coffee House Press). Letter Machine Editions published his first book, Iowa in 2010.

Alice Notley

Alice NotleyAlice Notley has published over thirty books of poetry, including (most recently) Culture of One and Songs and Stories of the Ghouls. With her sons Anselm and Edmund Berrigan, she edited both The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan and The Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan. Notley has received many awards including the Academy of American Poets’ Lenore Marshall Prize, the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Award, the Griffin Prize, two NEA Grants, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry. She lives and writes in Paris, France. Letter Machine Editions will publish her book Benediction in spring 2015.

Andrea Rexilius

Andrea RexiliusAndrea Rexilius is the author of To Be Human Is To Be A Conversation (Rescue Press, 2011) and Séance (Coconut Books, 2014). She teaches Writing & Poetics at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Letter Machine Editions published Half of What They Carried Flew Away in 2012 and New Organism: Essais in 2014.

Brandon Shimoda

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Brandon Shimoda has written several books, all re/incarnations of ghosts left out of the others. These include, most recently, Portuguese (Octopus/Tin House), O Bon (Litmus Press), and a book of prose about his dead grandfather, The Grave on the Wall, which won the Pen Open Book Award. He also co-edited (with Thom Donovan) To look at the sea is to become what one is: an Etel Adnan Reader (Nightboat Books). Letter Machine published Shimoda’s Evening Oracle. Born in California, he lives in Tucson, AZ.

Sara Veglahn

Sara VeglahnSara Veglahn is the author of the novel The Mayflies (Dzanc 2014), and the chapbooks The Ladies: an excerpt (New Herring Press, 2013), Another Random Heart (Letter Machine Editions, 2009), and Closed Histories (Noemi Press, 2008). Her work has been published in various journals, including Conjunctions, Web Conjunctions, Fence, 1913: A Journal of Forms, Fairy Tale Review, Octopus, Tarpaulin Sky, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from UMass-Amherst and a PhD from the University of Denver. She currently lives in Denver, Colorado.

John Yau

John YauJohn Yau is the author of more than 50 books of poetry, criticism, and fiction. He lives in New York City. Letter Machine Editions published his chapbook Exhibits and will release a full-length collection, Bijoux in the Dark, in 2018.
Letter Machine

Editors

Joshua Marie Wilkinson

Joshua Marie Wilkinson (Founding Editor) is the author of Bad Woods (Sidebrow 2021) and eight other books of poetry. He’s the editor of five anthologies of poetics and essays, and the co-director of a film about Califone. He lives Seattle where he’s an adjunct instructor at Seattle University. He also founded and runs a journal called The Volta.

Lisa Wells

Lisa Wells (Editor) is from Portland, Oregon. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Iowa ReviewThe Believer, Best New Poets, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. She was a 2015 Emerging Writer in Residence at Yale-NUS in Singapore, and holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her most recent essay collection is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The Fix, Her debut collection of poetry, was selected by Brenda Shaughnessy for the Iowa Poetry Prize and will be released in spring 2018. She lives in Seattle and Tucson, Arizona.

Jake Syersak

Jake Syersak (Contributing Editor) is currently a PhD student in Creative Writing at the University of Georgia. His poems have appeared in Colorado ReviewOmniverseConjunctions, and elsewhere. He is the author of Yield Architecture (Burnside Review 2017). He edits the online literary journal Cloud Rodeo. 

 

Gabriel Oladipo

 

Gabriel Oladipo (Reader) is a writer currently living in Tucson, where he is studying English and Creative Writing at the University of Arizona. He is from Chicago, Illinois.

 

Sasha Hawkins

Sasha Hawkins (Intern) is a University of Arizona undergraduate studying creative writing, with a minor in film. She is from Laveen, which is just the farthest southwest you can go and still be in Phoenix.

HR Hegnauer

HR Hegnauer is the author of the Sir (Portable Press, 2013). She is a designer specializing in working with independent publishers as well as individual artists and writers. She received her MFA in Writing & Poetics from Naropa University, where she has also taught in the Summer Writing Program.

Will Stanier

Will Stanier is currently an MFA student in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona. His poems are forthcoming from Yes, Poetry and tenderness, yea. He is the author of the chapbook Fakie (Invalid Press).

Submission

Guidelines

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Letter Machine Editions is no longer publishing new work. While we will keep our catalog in print–and available through Small Press Distribution–the editors (Lisa Wells and Joshua Marie Wilkinson) have recently joined University of Iowa Press to become series editors of the Kuhl House Poets series with Mark Levine. We will carry on the legacy of Letter Machine through this new endeavor. Thanks so much for your continued support of Letter Machine. Best, Josh & Lisa.