Stitching Stories: A Conversation with Sara Lefsyk, Editor of Ethel Zine & Micro-press
By Melissa Nunez, written November 2023
I was the heart being held, holding the heart, all the other hearts. I didn’t know if I could do it. - “The Doll,” Wild Apples: A Flash Memoir Collection with Writing Prompts by Joanna Penn Cooper
For many people, publication means a printing by one of the “Big 5,” a place on the shelves of a brick-and-mortar store like Barnes & Noble, or an appearance in digital libraries of Amazon’s Kindle readers. They think fast and mass produce. But for people like Sara Lefsyk, publishing means something more: The art of handcrafting the cover of a collection with the same painstaking precision as picking the perfect words to create the world held within the pages. Each stitch designed and carried out with diligence. Sara started Ethel Zine & Micro-press in 2018. She puts out twice yearly zines and publishes collections of writing in many genres (poetry, flash fiction, flash memoir, and more). Melissa Nunez, Yellow Arrow Publishing interviewer, and Sara recently discussed the creative inspiration behind this press and the motivation to maintain a space that promotes a more personal publication experience.
What inspired you to start Ethel Zine & Micro-press?
Since I was young, I have always had to be making something, keeping my hands (and mind) busy. After I received my MFA, I’d often ask my poet friends for poems that I would then sew into little books, for the fun of it, and give out copies to each author. My friend Joanna Penn Cooper had the idea in 2018, when I was very unhappy and unstimulated, working 50 hours a week as a prep cook, that I start a small press and handmake the books. So, I did.
What is the inspiration behind the name?
When we were in grad school together, Joanna, my classmate, and I became friends. She would have me come visit her in New York City often, where she would make me eat and perform fake rituals that really worked to help pull my spirit halfway back into my body—I was dealing with a lot back then. During one of those trips, she just started calling me Ethel for no particular reason. When Joanna suggested I start the press, she also suggested I name it Ethel.
What is your mission as an indie press?
My main mission is to bring book publishing away from being mass produced by machines in some warehouse . . . back to each one being almost completely handmade [though] I do get the book innards printed by a local print shop. [With Ethel,] I also want to publish as wide a range of styles and voices as possible.
Maybe I haven’t written these stories yet, because it feels more sustainable to write about something else, anything else. – “Stories I’m not writing,” Predator/Prey by Frances Cannon
Why handmade journals and books? What sparked your desire to go this route?
First, as I said above, it was a hobby before I started the press. I love finding various objects, papers, and images and sewing them together. I didn’t really know or think much about the publishing world before I started Ethel, but as I began to understand it more and more, I realized that barely anyone is hand making books anymore. I like being able to offer a different way of being published to those interested.
I’ve read several collections from your press and there are so many styles of writing from lyric poetry to CNF snapshots set alongside writing prompts to magical memoir. What do you look for in a submission?
I honestly am not looking to publish anything in particular but want to represent as wide an array of authors and writing styles as possible. I suppose every person has their particular likes so really in reading [submissions] it’s just whether I like it and it excites me or not. Personally, I like strangeness and the unexpected in writing, I like the grotesque, I like things I haven’t seen or thought about before. That isn’t to say that is all that I publish, but that is just what excites me.
What is your favorite part of publishing?
A few things, I love the process of working with the authors to come up with a cover design and the process of making it. I also like publishing people who otherwise may not have been published. I have heard from authors that if you’re not part of the writing community—and especially the community or those who have an MFA—it can be hard to be noticed or published widely, but there are so many amazing voices that aren’t part of that world and that deserve to be read. I think this is why the micropublishing world is so important. That and the fact that micropublishers are the ones who are saving the art of bookmaking.
What is the hardest part of publishing?
Money. Sometimes I am afraid I can’t keep Ethel going financially. I personally don’t make any money off the press, all the money that comes in goes back into making more books, but when I have a couple months of low sales, it can be really hard to keep running. There are a lot of costs involved in running a small press, from printing to supplies to postage to website costs.
What female identified writers does your press admire?
Outside of books that Ethel has published, lately I have really been getting into the work of Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee Choi. I have also been reading the short stories of Leonora Carrington. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria E. Anzaldúa is another book that I love and continue to read. I also love and admire Inès Pujos’ book of poetry Something Dark to Shine In.
tell me: that i don’t sleep to white noise, learn to whisper lies to myself. that i don’t pretend, that i am not the daughter of an alien. – “burning haibun in white lies,” Moongazing, ephemerally. by Kayleigh Sim
What other female or BIPOC-led presses do you admire?
Bloof Books, Gutslut Press, Porkbelly Press.
Are there any especially cool collections forthcoming from Ethel that readers should look out for?
The next in line to be released are Juliet Cook’s Your Mouth is Moving Backwards, Hal Sansone’s Wild Garlic, healing poems for my root system, Ariel Moniz’s Nostos Algos, and Anne Whitehouse’s Being Ruth Asawa.
What advice would you share with other editors/artists?
Ooooh, I guess I would say do what makes you happy but don’t get in over your head like I did. Leave yourself space to also be able to focus on your own work.
You can find the latest issues and collections coming out from Ethel Zine & Micro-press on their website at ethelzine.com. You can also get glimpses into their publishing process and news on their submission cycles on Twitter @the_ethelzine.
Sara Lefsyk is Editor-in-Chief of Ethel Zine & Micro-press, through which she hand makes/sews/binds chapbooks and an annual journal of art and writing. Sara has one book of poetry available from Black Lawrence Press—We Are Hopelessly Small and Modern Birds—and chapbooks with Dancing Girl Press and the Little Red Leaves Textile Series. She hopes to be able to delve more into the art of bookmaking and artist’s books in the future, starting (and ending) with an unending accordion book called The Doll Tome.
Melissa Nunez makes her home in the Rio Grande Valley region of South Texas, where she enjoys exploring and photographing the local wild with her homeschooling family. She writes an anime column at The Daily Drunk Mag and is a prose reader for Moss Puppy Mag. She is also a staff writer for Alebrijes Review and interviewer for Yellow Arrow Publishing. You can find her work on her website melissaknunez.com/publications and follow her on Twitter @MelissaKNunez.
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