Dearest Family
We at Bateau Press have been thinking things over, confronting the hard truth that there is no way we can publish a Bateau Lit Mag in the year of the plague, lost revenue from AWP & COA, and hope to survive. So: BATEAU PRESS IS NOT GOING TO PUBLISH A LIT MAG IN 202O. We will publish a Lit Mag in 2021 once the world is sane again. Will it be sane again?
The entire literary landscape might dissolve. Magazines and small presses might become smoke. We are lucky that we have student labor and institutional support but who knows what the next five years will look like. Bateau might die five years from now, or a decade from now, but for the time being, WE WILL LIVE. We will run the chapbook contest in the fall. Instead of relying on outside designers and printers, we will bring the letterpress printing and design of our chaps and lit mags onto the COA campus. This has always been the plan, now we are fast-forwarding. We will be more ruthless in our exploitation of student labor. ((the kids love it!!!))
We will also reenvision what it means to publish a lit mag in the post COVID-19 landscape. We might become a record label. We might become a dreamscape or a seagull. Check out what Sleeperhold Publications is up to. Whatever we become it will be a physical object, it will have to do with creating art that affirms life, and it will be beautiful. Most likely a lit mag but a seagull would be fucking awesome!
Love,
Bateau
