Publishers

Serpent’s Tail/High Risk Records

APA Staff
Date Range: 1990 – 1997
Survey Conducted: Tue, 2009-10-06
Creator: Serpent’s Tail/High Risk Archive

History: High Risk Books was founded in New York City in 1993 by Ira Silverberg as an imprint of Serpent’s Tail Press in London. Dedicated to publishing challenging, innovative, and progressive literature, High Risk Books transcended the traditional boundaries of publishing to provoke and inspire a new generation of writers and readers. Ira Silverberg told The New York Times in a March 13, 1994 interview that he and his co-editor Amy Scholder wanted to “catch an area of the market that’s being overlooked by mainstream houses. We’re working with a lot of gay men, lesbians, and African Americans, because the voices of under served communities tend to shed more light on societal conditions than the voices of the people who have the franchise. That’s not to say we won’t publish straight white men.” While connected by a certain subversive impulse, authors as diverse as William Burroughs, Kathy Acker, June Jordan, Sapphire, Ameena Meer, Kenzaburo Oe and many others were published by High Risk.
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Asian American Writers’ Workshop Records

APA Staff
Date Range: 1992 – 2009
Survey Conducted: Wed, 2009-03-25
Creator: Asian American Writers’ Workshop Records

History: Asian American Writer’s Workshop (AAWW) was founded in 1991 as a nonprofit literary arts organization dedicated to the creation, publishing, development, and dissemination of Asian American creative writing. AAWW supports writers of the Asian American community by making grants, offering workshops, helping to publish and publicize their works, establishing an in-house reading room to facilitate access to Asian American literature, and instituting the Annual Asian American Literary Arts Ceremony, held since 1998 to recognize outstanding writing in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, memoirs, stage plays and screenplays. In addition to sponsoring readings, book parties, and panel discussions for writers, AAWW runs various youth arts programs that engage NYC students in discussions of race and identity, offers writing classes, and instructions on making videos. Semi-annually, AAWW publishes literary anthologies and the Asian Pacific American Journal . It also publishes Ten magazine, which features articles about writers and writing. Through its programming and service as an educational resource center for Asian American literature and awareness, AAWW seeks to encourage the telling of diverse stories and diverse ways of telling stories for the important contributions they make towards increasing community visibility and the building of a collective history.
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