This is the night Andromeda crawled down from your ceiling’s flatland of shining crickets, a night to check the leaves and bring the scarecrows to bed. This is the night cicadas landed on Earth and set out toward the half-fires and rain mountains that the people left behind. 

Bill Featherman

ABOUT US

Rain Mountain Press (“RMP”) evolved in 2006
                                                                          from the magazine Skidrow Penthouse, which published 20 issues in 19 years, and takes its name from the poem “When The Cicadas Return” by Bill Featherman. We favor writers who speak the language of storms, the fire after the smoke is gone, styles that are idiosyncratic and grounded, while at the same time suggesting realities beyond themselves, whether those realities be political, cultural, or of some undefined nature.

This has been our maxim from the beginning and remains so. During our showcase year we published seven titles. We have been publishing two to three titles a year ever since. We originally envisioned Rain Mountain as a publishing collective, and while RMP ultimately decided upon the sole proprietor model, the spirit of collaboration remains. We invite writers’ input whether it be choosing the interior font, the cover design and/or artwork. The interlude between manuscript and finished book, when the first proofs arrive, that is the becoming time. We believe that to realize the writers’ vision the publishing of a book should be a collaborative commitment and not strictly hierarchical. We are always willing to work through the self-doubt and near pathological need to revise that is common to most writers. We tend toward slowly cooking our releases as opposed to rushing them into the world.

Our focus is literary work and our titles are comprised primarily of fiction and poetry. We favor lyric prose, hybrids of poetry and prose, including fiction/poetry, essay/poetry, memoir/poetry, as well as other work that resides in the interstices.

With the advent of printers who offered print-on-demand, we were able to do small-batch printing and enter the diversified and expanded publishing world. From the large-print-run-warehouse model to print runs matching demand, we entered a new age, one in which we, along with other independent literary presses, could flourish and transform publishing.