Two Plum Press

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Two Plum Press

Two Plum Press produces slim volumes of literary works both contemporary and classic. www.twoplumpress.com

Titles include works of poetry, essays, fiction, philosophy, visual art, travel and food writing. The press operates similarly to an independent record label, where the artists are tied to one another through their friendships, common location, history, and collaborations. The books are produced in industrial southeast Portland, Oregon. They are printed on primarily old paper stock and feature let

terpress-printed dust jackets using hand set lead type. Designer/publisher Andrew Barton is the son of an author and a librarian, grandson of a poet and book store owner. Collecting books since his early youth, he has always gravitated towards those smaller and simpler by design.

30/05/2024

Alex Baker’s new book ‘Bar Nostalgic’ launches in NYC with a special cocktail hour gathering at in the East Village (81 E 7th St) on Friday from 5-7 p.m. Special cocktail by Liz! More soon about this book soon ➡️ !

26/04/2024

Two Plum Press will appear in rare “brief pop up” form at Powell’s City of Books in downtown Portland on Saturday 4/27 from 4-6pm! This is TOMORROW, this is Independent Bookstore Day, and Powell’s has extended the invitation to Two Plum and several of our small press chums to sling our wares independently within their independent monolith of a bookstore! Wowee Zowee! We will be selling the first copies of a new title from a new imprint that has been teased 0% and has no expectations from anyone but is something we are very excited about and proud of, as well as the as-yet-unavailable-online ‘The Book of Definitions’ by Ross Robbins, a new batch of the ever-hot-ticket ‘Writing Exercises’ by Joshua James Amberson, copies from the last box of the second printing of Andrew Barton’s ‘The Long Loaf,’ and assorted tittles from our 11 (!) years in producing paper distributable art objects! Please consider a jaunt downtown to stroll the isles and visit our table. 📚

05/03/2024

ATTENTION READERS: This coming Sunday, March 10th, at 7pm we will be celebrating the release of the latest Two Plum Press volume, THE BOOK OF DEFINITIONS by Ross Robbins. There will be a reading at the Rose City Book Pub (1329 NE Fremont St), also featuring Kevin Sampsell and Amy Temple Harper. Ross is the author of two previous Two Plum Press titles - ‘The Three EPs’ and ‘All In Black Blood My Love Went Riding.’

16/12/2023

/// TODAY TODAY TODAY /// Publication+ Fair
Saturday, December 16th - 11am-6pm
111 NE MLK BIvd. Portland, OR
Street parking near NE Davis and 3rd.

Coffee and crepes available for purchase.

room.pdx

studios.pdx
Gobsh*te Quarterly / Reprobate Bks
And more!!!! Yes we will have unicorn copies of out of print Two Plum Press titles, the last box of ‘The Long Loaf’ open, and scrounged copies of the out of print ‘Myrtlewood Cookbook’!

02/12/2023

SAVE THE DATE! Two Plum Press will be tabling for the first and only time in 2023 at grand return of our favorite book event, Publication Fair, this December - 111 NE MLK Blvd, Saturday 12/16 from 11-6!

22/06/2023

NEW RELEASE from the Nickel Dinner imprint! ANNOUNCEMENT: surprise! Sofie Sherman-Burton, author of the very first Two Plum Press book (‘Flavor’) and Andrew Barton, author of ‘The Long Loaf’ (and more!) made a deluxe zine. It is a collection of recipes and stories about sour cream, inspired by their cat, Whiskey, who loves sour cream. 40 pages, printed on old stock paper. Whiskey was hospitalized for pancreatitis and an ensuing liver infection last month. She is ok now and back to rolling in the garden catnip and snuggling with her people, but the stay was *very* expensive and traumatic! This zine was an idea Sofie had to help bounce back a little and honor this favorite cat’s favorite treat. Sliding scale pricing, with every cent benefiting Whiskey. Link in the bio!

14/06/2023

Ally Young launches ‘NELL’ in Brooklyn this coming Sunday, June 18th at Unnameable Books , 615 Vanderbilt Avenue - 7 pm! If you are in New York and appreciate our press / lovely bookstores / quality literary evenings, seriously consider adding this to your calendar.

23/05/2023

NELL by Ally Young (042) is available in the bookshop now (link in bio)! I first read NELL in the guest bedroom of my childhood home. In this setting, I felt suspended in time. I was reading these strange and utterly beautiful poems, and I was the texture in the paint of the walls, the dry wooden trim of the windows, and I was everything they had seen – at least everything that could be described as a small moment. This room was not the only room where this experience could be had, reading this book; I knew it as I read it.

For the first two weeks of her life, Ally Young’s parents named her Nell. I once knew a Nell for just a few weeks, in the summer, in the woods. I can remember her glance, kind and detached, and the way she tucked her hair behind an ear at the same moment. This book is unlikely to be about that Nell, or about yours. But read on, and peer into the places between the pages. “The poems in Ally Young’s Nell shimmer with the chilling ease of a slowly spinning disco ball — one round, complete thing made of many little mirrors, tossed light. Indeed a project wherein the very question of identity is approached fractally, carefully, Nell blurs the past tense of memory with a beguiling, visceral present-ness as the speaker gathers image and experience as evidence of possible, lived totality, simultaneity. Selfhood itself is the itch at which these poems scratch, the riddle this book is preoccupied by, and Young’s technique of shirking linearity works well to situate such existentialism beyond a forced clarity, however incredibly clear and sure Young’s voice is throughout. “Three deer. / There is no other way to tell you what I mean.'"
- Chelsea Harlan, author of Bright Shade, selected by Jericho Brown for the 2022 American Poetry Review / Honickman First Book Prize and Two Plum Press’s ‘Country Music’

28/02/2023

Available from Two Plum Press mail order for the first time: “Collected Coffee Bags” by publisher , released by , the imprint of Two Plum Press author . From the bookshop: ‘A tiny coffee table book, comprised of photographs of saved “for art” coffee bags and anecdotes – sometimes whole stories – about them. In the years since its release, this book has served as a surprisingly fascinating first-half-of-the-2010s time capsule for many Portland, OR coffee roasters – documenting a part of their history and showcasing the evolution of their graphic design.’ Limited stock.

03/02/2023

IMPORTANT NEWS! Two Plum Press has been a no-or-extremely-low-profit operation since it began, TEN YEARS AGO this month. I have been told countless times that we don’t charge enough for the books or that I am completely silly for spending as much time as I do on such a non-business. Whelp, none of that is changing BUT due to increased costs from the printers of our interiors, extremely increased costs + scarcity of quality bulk paper stock, fees fees fees with all digital money processing, ye olde rapid inflation, and more - it has become time to…sell the books on our site for the same price they have been in stores for at least 6 years: $12! I got the idea for doing the press in 2012, so there we go. To mark the occasion I made an “Any Available Titles 3 pack” option where readers can still get books for $10/each, to be found at the top of the bookshop page. They will also remain $10 when sold directly in person, because I want to hang on foolishly and romantically to that dream. Keep your eye on us here in 2023 - my goal is to reach 50 titles which would mean NINE NEW BOOKS are coming this year. Help me do that by buying existing books and telling me via message or comment or IRL conversation about your favorite bookstores and why they ought to carry these books!

28/10/2022

NEW BOOK! “Permanent Art On Temporary People” by Sasha Moore () is an incredibly useful and well-articulated book about the process of getting good tattoos. Knowledge about tattooing and etiquette within the process has long been guarded and weirdly word-of-mouth. No more! Thank you Sasha for brilliantly putting it into words from the perspective of a tattoo enthusiast, a curious person, and a tattoo artist. Check out Sasha’s shop .tattoo and pick up the book! It is available there, our web bookshop, and . Will update with a list of more shops selling the book soon. In the meantime, visit our page to see and read more!

26/10/2022

NEW RELEASE: “Writing Exercises (and various approaches to life on earth)” by Joshua James Amberson. This book was such a joy to bring into the world, imagining all the people who these simple exercises will bring creative stimulus and joy. I remember after printing out the manuscript and reading it through my excitement was so palpable I didn’t really know what to do with my energy. I was visiting my parents, so I wandered into the next room and started telling them all about it. They asked if they could read it, and each took a turn that day. “What a tremendous little book!” they said, and I say it to you now too. To be filed with ‘Elements of Style’ by Strunk and White - timeless and endlessly useful.

25/10/2022

NEW RELEASES! Two Plum Press is thrilled to introduce a new series - ABOUT. Nonfiction titles that explore anything and everything. We begin with Writing, Poetry, and Tattoos. Individual posts about each book throughout the week, but for today (traditional publication Tuesday) we simply share the cover images. Thanks to , , and for writing such tremendous books to begin the series. Please visit our bookshop to read and see more! (Of note for all-in readers: a discounted 3-pack is available!)

07/06/2022

ANNOUNCEMENT of a NEW TITLE and a NEW IMPRINT! ‘The Long Loaf: bread for all days’ is out now! This is my (, publisher here) second full length cookbook, an unusual mix of what one might call “food writing” (bread writing?) and practical-handbook style instruction. Ideas, stories, the how and why of naturally leavened bread baking. The book should appeal to folks new to and familiar with making bread, offering a perspective that is more loose and more romantic because, well, that’s me! The book launches the new culinary imprint of , which I am calling Nickel Dinner. Offset printed in Portland, OR by Charles Overbeck (), this is a hands-and-old-machinery-made paper product. A limited first edition of 250 copies. Order through the link in bio - each copy will be signed next to a photo of a cheeky bite of bread and butter!

11/05/2022

A PUBLIC READING! Also a swim, a potluck, a bread ritual. Monday, May 30th (Memorial Day), 2:30 pm. Seward Park, Seattle. Celebrating the second printing of ’s “Body of Water,” (and a special return visit to the US for Alexis, who is a Washington Native but a UK resident) ’s “Slow Motion Heroics,” and the release of publisher ’s new book on bread “The Long Loaf: bread for all days” - this will be a sweet time for us and anyone in the Seattle area.

19/03/2022

2022 has begun! It runs from today, March 19th, through to the 26th. Two Plum Press is offering a 15% discount on all orders placed this week if you use the code SMOLFAIR22 at checkout! The following photos are books released since the last SMOL fair. SO many more are coming this spring and summer! Heads up: I will be out of town for spring break (I am a teacher) and orders placed during the fair will be shipped the first week of April. Bonus to that: if there is a sold out title you are hoping for, there is time for interior reprints, so please do send a message and if it’s possible to get you that book during this sale week I will do my best to make that happen! Thank you as ever for the support!

14/02/2022

ANNOUNCEMENT: Two Plum Press is honored to receive an Oregon Literary Fellowship from ! The press has an extraordinarily busy year ahead of us, and this feels like a perfectly timed acknowledgement of what we’ve been doing since 2013! There will be more titles in the 20s/20s series, new-new books (as always), wildly exciting editions of the Selected Songs series with , a whole new ‘About’ series, and the launch of an all new imprint?! We hope to do it all, and feel very grateful for all the support along the way and into the future!

08/01/2022

ANNOUNCING: author of “Country Music” (036) has been named the 1st prize winner by for her full length manuscript, BRIGHT SHADE. This is colossal, dreamy, wild, and deliriously delightful. I am so proud! Chelsea’s work is a joy to edit, a joy to read, a joy to publish, and I am beyond thrilled that an esteemed review and guest judge Jerico Brown not only recognize the quality of this work but are also publishing it, with distribution through Copper Canyon Press, in September 2022.

14/12/2021

‘The Myrtlewood Cookbook: Pacific Northwest Home Cooking’ by Two Plum Press publisher Andrew Barton has been added to the bookshop! This has been suggested before and not acted on, but with a fresh box of them on hand, why not? A nice option if you’d like to combine it with other books for ease of shipping and/or gifting! Published by . Originally self published and designed by Andrew! A book that would not have been possible without the gorgeous photography by and styling by and support of so many dear ones in the process!

18/11/2021

ANNOUNCEMENT:Our newest title, ‘SLOW MOTION HEROICS’ by Joshua James Amberson ( ) is out now and available in the bookshop on our site (link in bio)! This is a very special and unusual mixtape-like collection of prose, trading back and forth between personal essays and short fiction; a truly exciting “full length debut” of contrasting prose, painting for us a broader picture of a writer who can give you a glimpse into his past with film like clarity, tell you the story of the person sitting next to you on the bus, and make you think about why the world turns the way it does within the same few pages.
Excerpt from “The Tunnel”: Moments before, in the quiet dark of the long tunnel, we were introspective and slow, trying to place what we wanted from life, grasping for words we didn’t yet have. This was part of every adventure we took together–as soon as we made it onto the rooftop or snuck into the abandoned building, the brief rush of adrenaline satisfied something in our brains, allowing for a meditative state we couldn’t seem to find any other way.

22/10/2021

ANNOUNCEMENT! We couldn’t be more thrilled to see back in the Small Press section at Portland’s bookstore institution ! This is the first time they’ve been able to order a new stock of books from us since January 2020, and we’ve released 8 titles since then, so this is both a massive restock of older titles AND the first appearance of many. Make your way to the spinny rack and surrounding area for all your Two Plum Press in-person perusing. Support us! Support Kevin and the small press section! Bookstores!!!!!!

09/10/2021

CLASSIFIEDS… ‘Country Music’ continues to charm / /// thnx to for spotting in the wilds

07/09/2021

The first round of COUNTRY MUSIC by sold out so quickly! It’s like people out there understand how incredible it is?! This box of packages is going out today and I will have more interiors of books this week, so ordering remains open. I wanted to take a moment to share an element of the Two Plum Press mailorder experience. Some time ago a plant got watered too close to a shelf of my books, and unsure of what to do with beloved, water damaged books, I started including a single torn out page with each order. I think it’s poetic and sweet to know of my books being scattered around the world, page by page, and to give each reader a chance to absorb a finite but hopefully compelling passage. This box saw the entirely of “Berryman’s Sonnets” by John Berryman go out into the world, and began the timelessly perfect volume “Summer Cooking” by Elizabeth David. The books come wrapped in wax paper and packaged entirely in brown paper so I can pretend it is 1920 or whatever because, well, we’ve got to cling to some romance these days.

31/08/2021

‘COUNTRY MUSIC’ by Chelsea Harlan (037) is a book of poems that makes me think and feel in a new way about poetry, about my life, about the earth under my feet, the trees planted in the yard, the neglected house down the block, the faded sign on the side of the road, the lost taste of the season’s first perfect peach and the certainly-coming-but-not-not-yet last taste of the garden tomatoes. If I could prescribe this book to all of you, I would, but the best I can do is *strongly recommend* it. Let this book be the potato chips to your picnic sandwich. ‘COUNTRY MUSIC’ is here to enrich your experience of being in the world. Out today! Link in bio! // I say wow, I see the two mouths! / And we sit outside and watch the butterflies flitter / and just as I’d begun to mourn certainty itself, / the little brother says, Those aren’t butterflies, they’re cabbage moths.

29/08/2021

On the last day of august, an inconspicuous Tuesday, our latest book will step forth into the world! // ‘country song(s)’ is a playlist gift from the author to us all. For further cryptic hints and a deeper dive into the aesthetic landscape of the book (“social media blitz campaign” is really our strongsuit 😉) visit the accounts of poet and publisher // At the Santa Cruz Public Storage sharing a too-hard persimmon
I hate what we’ve gone through
but I love that we’ve gone through it

28/08/2021

(036) “May Day” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It seems I neglected to get this book ‘on the grid’ as they say back in May, when it would have been ‘on the nose,’ as they also say- but hey- I was just in New York City feeling the timeless hustle and bustle and overflowing of living which is captured so beautifully in this novella from 1920, so now here you go I suggest you read it in this handsome volume from our 20s/20s series. Watch this space for book news. There is always book news.

10/05/2021

Two Plum Press special box at in Seattle! This is the first retail establishment to carry the 20s / 20s series, and a beloved champion of our other titles as well. Readers Of Seattle: visit this box! @ Elliott Bay Book Company

16/04/2021

HARLEM SHADOWS by Claude McKay (035) I was introduced to the work of Claude McKay by the recent Penguin Classics first-time publication of his lost q***r dockside novel, ‘Romance In Marseille.’ I immediately devoured as much of his work as I could get my hands on, which lead to finding Harlem Shadows and his earlier life as a poet rather than a novelist.

McKay was born in Jamaica, came to the U.S., had a sojourn to the U.K., and eventually returned to become a significant figure in the Harlem Renaissance. The poem “Baptism,” which appears in this collection, is a noteworthy piece collected in ‘The New Negro’ anthology (1925) edited by Alain Locke. His novel ‘Home To Harlem’ (1928) was a great commercial success at the time, and remains one of the highlights of the movement.

This title is the first of several works from the Harlem Renaissance to be shared as part of the 20s / 20s series. Two Plum Press will not profit from these works, but rather donate 100% of proceeds to the Black Resilience Fund and the Portland chapter of the NAACP. @ Portland, Oregon

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