About Calypso

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Mission

Calypso’s mission is to publish books that will endure in both content and form.

We are committed to unearthing literary gems from previous generations, translating foreign writers into English with integrity, and providing a space for talented, new voices.

Our Story

“Speak, Immortal One,
And tell the tale once more in our time.”
—Opening lines of The Odyssey, as translated by Stanley Lombardo (2000)

Calypso Editions is a cooperative, artist-run, 501(c)(3) non-profit press dedicated to publishing quality literary books of poetry and fiction with a global perspective.

Calypso Editions takes its name from the sea nymph in one of literature’s most timeless texts, Homer’s The Odyssey. Calypso, who kept Odysseus captive on his long journey home, embodied youth and immortality.

Calypso is an analogy for the wisdom we find in the company the immortal. At Calypso Editions, we believe that literature is the embodiment of immortality. The enduring nature of great literature is relevant to every generation across every geographical border.

We believe that literature is essential to building an international community of readers and writers and that, in a world of digital saturation, books can serve as physical artifacts of beauty and wonder.

We seek out excellence in literature, across the globe and across the centuries, and present lost and undiscovered works to the modern English-speaking world.

How We Work

Calypso editions is a virtual, cooperative, non-profit press. It is these three components that make us unique.

Virtual Press:

While many presses are based in a specific U.S. city, our members hail from all over the USA: from Fairbanks, Alaska to New York City. In keeping with this idea that geography should not be a hindrance to ideas, Calypso aims to be a national press that reflects the wide array of voices in our world.

Cooperative Model:

Members serve three years with Calypso Editions and conduct given tasks, according to proclivity and previous training, related to running a professional press. Due to our focus on helping authors achieve their vision for their work, we work with our authors to usher their books through the editorial, production, distribution and marketing processes. All Calypso titles are intended to be available in print indefinitely. The press publishes books by both its members and solicited authors.

Non-profit Organization:

A 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, Calypso Editions’ mission is to bring excellent works of poetry and fiction to American and English-speaking audiences. We seek out literature that is either unknown or underrepresented in the American publishing market. By doing so, we are working toward our mission of bringing exceptional literature to a whole new readership.

Our Crew

Editors

Adrian Belmes is the editor in chief of Badlung Press, a micro-press of trauma, publishing chapbooks, artist books, and zines. He is also the vice president of State Zine Collective. He is the former senior editor at Fiction International and also the previous editor in chief of The Koala Newspaper at SDSU.His work has been published in X-R-A-Y, honey & lime, Misery Tourism, Riggwelter Press, Back Patio Press, The Blue Pages Philosophical Idiot, SOFT CARTEL, and other places.

Robin Davidson is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Kneeling in the Dojo and City that Ripens on the Tree of the World, and the collection Luminous Other, awarded the Ashland Poetry Press’s 2012 Richard Snyder Memorial Publication Prize. Recipient of a Fulbright professorship at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland and an NEA translation fellowship, she is co-translator with Ewa Elżbieta Nowakowska of Ewa Lipska’s poems from the Polish—The New Century . Davidson served as 2015-2017 Houston Poet Laureate and edited the citywide 2018 anthology, Houston’s Favorite Poems. She has twice been a finalist for Texas State Poet Laureate, and was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2019. She teaches literature and creative writing as professor emeritus of English for the University of Houston-Downtown.

Breeann Kyte Kirby  is a master of all trades, doctor of none, with an MA in English Literature, an MS in Molecular Biology, and an MFA in Creative Writing. Though she recently became an assistant professor as Point Loma Nazarene University, Breeann has worked extensively both inside and out of academia to foster collaborations between scholars, artists, writers, and scientists to bring specialized knowledge to the general public. 

 Jenny Minniti-Shippey is the Director of the Coyote Creek Writer’s Residency, the Director of Development for the Contemporary Irish Arts Center Los Angeles (CIACLA), the founder of Poetic Youth Programs, and the author of three poetry collections, Done Dating DJs, winner of the 2009 Munster Literature Center Fool for Poetry Prize; Earth’s Horses & Boys; and After the Tour, finalist for the 2018 San Diego Book Awards. She served as the Managing Editor of Poetry International literary journal for ten years, and her writing has appeared in Salamander, Spillway, Tar River Poetry, and others.

Martin Woodside is a writer, translator, and a founding member of Calypso Editions.  He has published five books for children, a cultural history of boyhood and the American frontier, two books of poetry, and an anthology of Romanian poetry in translation, Of Gentle Wolves. Working with MARGENTO, he translated Romanian Gellu Naum’s poetry for Athanor & Other Pohems, which World Literature Today named one of 2013’s most notable translations.  For more, visit martinwoodside.com.

 

Editorial Assistants 2020-2021

Alyssa Buzby, Sara Canelon, Kendall Freemen, Jasmine Jeries, Chloe Jesse, Dani Nouriazad, Juniper Perkins, Louise Sy

Contributing Members

 Anthony Bonds is a book designer and graphic artist. When not writing fiction or working with Calypso, he does freelance book design with Golden Ratio Design. He works as a marketing and design professional in San Diego, California. Contact Anthony at tony@calypsoeditions.org.

Derick Burleson in memoriam.

Sara Cooper received her M.F.A. in poetry at New Mexico State University. Her writing has appeared in Mid-American Review, BorderSenses, and Puerto del Sol. A chapbook of poems, Mis—, was published in 2014 by Grandma Moses Press. She teaches writing in Houston with Writers in the Schools and at the University of Houston, where she is pursuing a Ph.D.

Piotr Florczyk is the author of East & West, a volume of poems, Barefoot, a chapbook of poems, as well as Los Angeles Sketchbook, a collection of brief essays and photographs. He has also translated several books of Polish poetry. Piotr and his wife Dena live in Los Angeles. Please visit Piotr at www.piotrflorczyk.com 

Erika Lutzner edits Scapegoat Review. She curates Upstairs at Erika’s, a monthly salon in Williamsburg. She is the author of Invisible Girls by dancing girl press and editor of the anthology Some Things Are True That Never Happened. Her latest chapbook Bedtime Stories is by dancing girl press.

 Elizabeth Myhr

Janel Spencer-Levy is a poet who grew up in Tucson, Arizona. She currently lives in San Diego where she teaches writing at San Diego State University and works for Poetry International. Her work has recently appeared in Hyperion and The San Diego Poetry Annual. www.janelspencer.com

Kevin Wisniewki currently a PhD candidate in the Language, Literacy, and Culture Program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He’s earned graduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Baltimore and worked as a full-time professor, editor, researcher, archivist, transcriber, graphic artist/designer, and starving artist/musician.  In 2009, he edited an anthology on comedian Dave Chappelle, The Comedy of Dave Chappelle: Critical Essays. And, in 2014, he was elected Managing Editor of Roving Eye Press, by a collective of artists and scholars re-issuing the works of the poet-publisher-impresario-writer in every imaginable genre, Bob Brown.