Beth’s on FC2
March 31, 2009
Hi folks,
Welcome to Beth’s FC2 (Fiction Collective 2) Extravaganza, in which you will find some basic FC2 facts, a brief interview with Lance Olsen (FC2′s chair of the board of directors), and links. I decided to do this project on FC2 because they’re my dream press. One day, through perseverence and the honing of my craft, through talent and hard work (or perhaps threats and bribes), I will be published with them. And the angels will sing in the heavens. Honestly, though, if you write fiction that tries to stay off the beaten path, they’re the press you strive for–they value innovation and experimentation, but the work they publish is also smart and readable. They don’t publish books that only consist of the letter Q, or that don’t actually have words in them. And I have the honor of considering some of the board members friends, and they’re wonderful, wonderful people who deserve a plug now and then.
FC2 QUICK FACTS
A small, independent, not-for-profit press, Fiction Collective Two receives no financial support from government arts councils. Rather, it relies on the generosity of the University of Utah, University of Houston – Victoria, and Illinois State University for in-kind support, and its sources of revenue include contributions from its Board of Directors and Advisory Board, its contest submission fees, and The Writer’s Edge conference fees. These sources barely allow it to break even each year.
FC2 is an imprint of University of Alabama press. Revenues acquired from the sale of FC2 books by the University of Alabama Press are used at UAP’s discretion. They are not available for use by FC2′s Executive Editor, Board of Directors, or Advisory Board.
FC2 is committed to finding new innovative work and continuously expanding the membership of the Collective, which has grown from six founding members in 1974 to well over 100 today. FC2 does this through its contest and through member-sponsored submissions.
The FC2 Board and executive editor make all editorial decisions.
The Ronald Sukenick American Book Review Innovative Fiction Prize is specifically designed to locate authors outside of the collective who have aesthetics similar to ours.
FC2 is committed to keeping all of its titles in print.
Volunteers do most of FC2′s editorial work.
Current Board of Directors: Lance Olsen (chair), Lidia Yuknavitch, R.M. Berry, Kate Bernheimer, Noy Holland, Brian Evenson, Susan Steinberg, Brenda Mills, Matt Robertson, Daniel Waterman, Thomas Williams, and Michael Martone.
Mission Statement
FC2 is among the few alternative presses in America devoted to publishing fiction considered by America’s largest publishers too challenging, innovative, or heterodox for the commercial milieu.
FC2 was originally founded in 1974 as the Fiction Collective, a group of avant-garde writers, among whom were Jonathan Baumbach, Raymond Federman, Clarence Major, and Ronald Sukenick. In his New York Times Book Review “Guest Word” of Sept 15, 1974, Sukenick described the group’s aim to “make serious novels and story collections available” and “keep them in print permanently.” The Collective’s subsequent history has been shaped by this commitment to preserve cultural resources that might otherwise be silenced or lost.
FC2′s mission has been and remains to publish books of high quality and exceptional ambition whose style, subject matter, or form push the limits of American publishing and reshape our literary culture.
FC2 books have received disproportionate attention in critical works on American fiction of the seventies, eighties, and nineties. More than ten percent of the authors selected for inclusion under the category “American Prose since 1945″ in The Norton Anthology of American Literature (fifth edition) have been affiliated with the Fiction Collective, and several received their first publication with the press. Fiction Collective authors have also been conspicuously represented in Norton’s anthology Postmodern Literature, as well as in numerous other anthologies.
FC2 authors have been the subject of critical studies published in Contemporary Literature, Modern Fiction Studies, Critique, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, and Chicago Review. Articles about the press have appeared in Poets & Writers, Triquarterly, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Publisher’s Weekly. Books published by the press have won or been nominated for the American Book Award, Western States Book Award, PEN West award, and BEA Firecracker Award.
FC2 continues the commitment of its founders to unsettle the bounds of literature and broaden the audience for America’s most adventurous writing.
Interview:
1. Do you feel like FC2 has had to compromise its original vision at all to survive in publishing today, or has it pretty much stuck to its guns about what it publishes and how it negotiates with the world?
In a sense, nothing’s remained the same about FC and then FC2 over the decades except its commitment to publish work deemed too challenging, adventurous, and/or heterodox by commercial, mainstream presses. At least twice while I’ve been aboard that commitment has taken us to the brink of bankruptcy. But we simply won’t blink there. What’s funny is that when FC was founded in 1973-74, the idea was to set up an indie press by authors and for authors that would last, if lucky, two or three years; in other words, it was going to be an experiment in an alternative publishing paradigm. Now we’re in our thirty-fifth year, and we’re in better financial shape than we have ever been. Because we have very little overhead, we’re able to weather some very rough financial times in a way that larger commercial presses can’t. As the financial crisis causes big houses to be eaten by bigger houses or fold altogether, and to publish more and more books that want to be films when they grow up, FC2 keeps on keeping on.
2. How has it changed since its beginnings as the Fiction Collective?
In a nutshell, though, the changes have involved continuous rethinking and restructuring of our editorial procedures, our institutional affiliations, and our organizational layout, along with a continual self-reflexive, always-in-flux meditation about what “innovative” means, how it means, and why. One of the changes I’ve enjoyed seeing the most over the last twenty years is this: when FC started, it was in essence a boys’ club. By the early nineties, FC2 was actively seeking more innovative women writers. Now 60-70% of our writers are women.
3. Have you noticed shifts in the type of work that gets published/trends in innovative fiction (this is kind of a “duh” question, I know)/trends in what people buy?
This is probably too large a question to answer here. To get a sense of things, I urge you to check out our new anthology, Forms at War: FC2 1999-2009. It was fascinating for me to read back-to-back excerpts from books we’ve published over the last 10 years, both to discover how heterogeneous they are, and to spot myriad formal trends (the rise, for instance, of more and more texts employing images, investigating the technological reality of the page, etc.), while at the same time delighting in the fact that our primary vision–that exploration into what fiction is and what it can do and what its limits are–remain consistently strong.
Links:
(FC2 homepage)
(FC2 blog, in which you can find podcasts of folks reading their work, discussing FC2 and independent publishing, and other fun stuff)
