We begin with gratitude. We’re thankful for what’s possible and present, a universe that’s expansive beyond measure and just the same contained in the smallest acts and actors. That’s to say, the sum total of creation wrapped up in any one writer, any single sentence. For that is also what’s possible. And the result is writing that demands attention.
With that, Fillmore Press is a new adventure in art, storytelling, and should we do it correctly, community. For nothing so powerful and precious as good words should ever be felt alone.
We’re here to help make art and tell stories, to give such gifts and grace a minor recognition and focus. We have a particular emphasis on novellas and shorter novels, but we’re not bound to anything so constrained. What we do like are works of conviction, precision, and intentionality. Nothing wasted. All things earned.
On Place
Fillmore Press is rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area and the American West. We believe what the locavore movement argued for food is also possible for art. We can be in this together. We can build and nurture what’s close at hand.
This isn’t a restriction. We publish writers and artists who are in relationship with community, with landscape, and with what’s becoming. Contradictions abound but the same is true in the act of being local, real, and ourselves.
Our Editorial Sensibility
Fillmore Press books offer a particular kind of company. They may be meditative. They may be demanding. They should be loving. Fillmore Press books are of the present, with characters and worlds that feel familiar if foreign. We like works that know empathy as a method. We like works that know it also as a destination.
What We Look For
We look for writing that cares about emotional precision over emotional volume. Tenor and tone might be instruments for exploring inner lives as well as our many relationships to the outer world, its systems and spaces.
We’re less interested in genre fiction, commercial fiction, or work whose primary aim is plot-driven resolution. We’re not looking for books that explain their own meaning. We’re not interested in suffering for its own sake or in challenge without care and concern.
We expect work that trusts the reader.