Cristina, my brilliant and beautiful better half, and I have started a brand new publishing company, One Subject Press, here in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
We take our name from a shining passage by Richard Rodriguez in his book, Brown, where he’s writing about the messiness and particularity of all literature. Because part of the point of this particular Substack has been to dive more deeply into the twinned acts of reading and writing, I’ll give you Rodriguez’s entire juicy passage so you see and understand our company name in its full context. He writes:
“Books should confuse. Literature abhors the typical. Literature flows to the particular, the mundane, the greasiness of paper, the taste of warm beer, the smell of onion or quince. Auden has a line: ‘Ports have names they call the sea.’ Just so will literature describe life familiarly, regionally, in terms life is accustomed to use—high or low matters not. Literature cannot by this impulse betray the grandeur of its subject-there is only one subject: what it feels like to be alive. Nothing is irrelevant. Nothing is typical.”
Isn’t that true? I mean in the deepest, largest sense? The books we will be publishing and selling, embody that vision.
We have purchased 38 titles—what publishing people call a “backlist”—from Chicago-based ACTA Publications, owned and operated by writing, editing, publishing, and community organizing legend Greg Pierce, who I am lucky to call friend and mentor.
These are some great books! I’m linking you to our website here, but a few highlights include:
· A collection of poetry, Where God Is At Homeby Sister Irene Zimmerman that engages imaginatively with Biblical passages and original photography by James Behrens, O.C.S.O
· Inventing Hell, a brilliant and punchy theological argument by Jon M. Sweeney to get us to re-think Dante’s vision of the afterlife.
· A novel, Cat’s Foot, by the late great spiritual writer Brian Doyle that considers the foolishness of war and the wonder of life.
As you can tell from the titles and authors I’ve highlighted here, imagination, and in particular a Catholic-inflected imagination, will be an area of focus for One Subject Press. I hasten to add, however, that “Catholic imagination” we see as broadly and inclusively as possible.
An example of what I mean by a work of “Catholic Imagination” is our first-ever publication: Father Patrick Hannon’s memoir-in-essay-form, From Glory to Glory: A Pilgrim’s Notes from the Hinterlands of Grace. This book will consider the ancient wisdom practice of pilgrimage from multiple angles—community, language, and prayer, among many others—in order to invite readers into the pilgrimages they might begin or into deeper awareness of the pilgrimages they are already on. From Glory to Glory is tentatively set for a late fall 2025 publication date.
In the meantime, yes, reader, we have another book of Fr. Hannon’s available to you as you eagerly await his debut! Such Dizzy Natural Happiness, a “long loving look at the Lord’s Prayer” that gives you a good sense of this author’s essayistic brilliance. Order here now from One Subject Press.
You’ll hear more from me at our business Substack in the future, but in the meantime, if you have read this far, you might be asking yourself: How can I support this new endeavor?
Not very complicated. Peruse the new website. If the books I shared above don’t interest you, there might be something else that will. (Maybe the Book of Catholic Jokes or Listen to the Desert?)
Enroll in a paying subscription for either this Substack or One Subject Press
I will continue to write non-One Subject Press “Teacher / Poet” essays on this Substack. And also be promoting One Subject Press writers and books on the new Substack I’ve created for that purpose. Enrolling in a paying subscription for either of these will support the work I’m doing at One Subject Press.
That’s all for now, folks! Next issue of Teacher / Poet, on Friday, March 14, I’ll be back to my regularly scheduled ramblings.
Congratulations!