Endings and beginnings
Dear friends,
At 3 Hole Press, we rely on familial metaphors. When Mary Marge joined the Press, she became the Press’ step dad. Presses we collaborate with become sister presses. In our latest news, we’ve been adopted!
At the end of last year, 53rd State Press absorbed our catalog alongside the catalog of Plays Inverse. Beginning in March, all our titles will be available via our parent distributor, Theatre Communications Group. This means 3 Hole Press titles will be part of a definitive home for new books in the world of drama and performance.
Coming together as presses feels like a gift. Artistically, it’s an honor to share a home with so many of the writers who inspired our press into being and who are influences for many of our authors. Practically, this means we can keep our books more sustainably in print and that we can share resources and knowledge within a wider editorial collective. The mission of all of our presses are intertwined; we are all artist-run and held together by belief in our writers and their work. We already share authors and communities. The theater world is small. It turns out we need each other.
As a reader, you may notice a few small shifts ahead. Ordering books on our website will now take you to the 53rd State Press bookshop. The holes on our book covers have been replaced by trompe-l'oeil circles (sad, but appropriately theatrical, and worth it to keep our books at an accessible price!). Most importantly, our books will now be easier to find, both online and in the world, and several of our sold-out titles are already back in print, including Wheelchair by Will Arbery, Cooking As Though You Might Cook Again by Daniel Licht, and The Immeasurable Want of Light by Daaimah Mubashshir. If you are a bookseller, note that TCG books are distributed by Consortium, an Ingram brand.
This change has been a long time coming. In 2021, 3 Hole Press convened at the Blue Mountain Center as part of a residency for small presses to discuss their long-term futures. During that time, we talked about the energy and resources needed to support artists working to support other artists. Where does the energy come from? How can we trust that it can ebb and flow and move between us? Rachel and Mary Marge each had career changes that year (Rachel started commuting to teach at Yale, and Mary Marge started working full-time at The New York Times as a fact checker). We knew something needed to shift in order to keep the work vibrant, and to keep us vibrant as we helped produce and distribute that work.
3 Hole Press, Wendy’s Subway, and Thick Press (sister presses) at our residency at the Blue Mountain Center, 2021.
At our BMC residency, we consulted our very own MORE STUPIDS by Emmy Bright for guidance about the future. Photo by 3 Hole fellow Verity Sturm.
We’ve been lucky to reach a consistent readership that surpasses our capacity to ship books from our living rooms. In 2022, we transferred the publication rights of our very first title, Is God Is by Aleshea Harris, to TCG’s own imprint, which we’ve long admired, since they had a more robust mechanism for distributing Harris’ new classic. Ultimately, our mission is to bring our books into the hands of readers. Joining together with other presses is a continuation of this same commitment, while allowing us to preserve our separate catalogs and designs.
Thank you to everyone—fellows, mentors, friends—who has thought through various iterations of our future alongside us. Thank you to our designer Alice Chung for her playful and beautiful redesigns. Thank you to our artists for supporting this change with grace and excitement. It is exciting! We’re grateful to Erin Salvi and John Petrie at TCG for welcoming us into their house. And we are especially grateful to Kate Kremer, whose vision and tremendous commitment have made everything possible.
To learn more about our new home at 53rd State, read the Press Release from TCG.
And please join us in supporting 53rd State Press, which is keeping new and interesting drama accessible and alive.
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COMING UP
January 18-20, 2024: We’ll be at the Index Art Book Fair in Mexico City! We’ll be tabling Thursday from 6-10pm and Friday from 11–8pm. If you’re in Mexico City, come say hi to Mary Marge and to our beloved Marian Roa Oliva, who will be tabling with us!
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3 Hole Press