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A Note From Ben Percy
If you fell from the sky and landed on any street corner in this country, you would not know where you were, lost in the concrete maze of Taco Johns, Burger Kings, Best Buys, K-Marts, Wal-Marts. Sometimes I feel similarly adrift and headachey when wandering a chain bookstore, where the same two dozen authors stare out at me from slick dust jackets, where short story collections are difficult if not impossible to find, where novels are weighed down with codes and techno-jargon and brand-name clothes and throbbing euphemisms, where literature sometimes feels as substantial as a Big Mac and fries.
Which is why Dzanc comes as a welcome shot of adrenaline to the heart. It is a publishing venture that transcends the bottom-line, that trumpets what the big houses have crassly elbowed aside, that reminds us reading is more than entertainment, that books are more than commodities. Their standard is bad-ass literary excellence, no matter if it can’t be tidily packaged or pitched by some agent at a cocktail party where everybody wears black and none of the cheese is yellow. If you look at their line-up of emerging and established rock stars -Yannick Murphy, Terese Svoboda , Kyle Minor, Roy Kesey, Laura van den Berg, and Michael Czyzniejewski, to name a few-it’s quite clear that Dzanc is a force.
Folks, we’re talking about a homegrown wonder, something to applaud, a bit of a miracle. I’m not at all surprised, but I’m heartened, that Publishers Weekly called Dzanc the future of publishing; the industry should be so lucky. Join me in supporting them. Or else.
Sincerely,
Benjamin Percy
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