By Brian Dunlap

Last Saturday, the first annual Small Press Book Festival took place at the Wende Museum of the Cold War, in Culver City. It was a day to celebrate, promote and connect with Los Ángeles’ independent publishing community. Founded by Mark Lipman, poet and publisher of local independent press Vagabond, the Festival’s “goal is to promote and foster communication and the diversity of voices through literature and the arts as an integral part of the on-going work of building” literary community and community as a whole.

The presses and publishers were located at booths in the middle of the museum, positioned around the exhibits exploring how the private citizens in the former Soviet Union lived their day-to-day lives. Outside, in the back, a stage was set up for readings by poets featured in the Los Ángeles poetry anthology Coiled Serpent, published by participating press Tía Chucha’s, located in Sylmar. Plus, a live recording of an episode of “Poets Café.” The Festival also included workshops, one of which was led by World Stage Press Publisher Hiram Sims.

At the Spectrum Publishing booth, a local literary journal out of Saturday Afternoon Poetry in Pasadena, co-host and poet G.T. Foster said Spectrum is open for submissions for their next issue until November 30^th, on the theme of “who won.” While at the World Stage Press booth, Hiram Sims told me his latest project is an anthology collecting all the poems read at Presidential inaugurations, set to be released by the press early next year. Prospect Park Books was highlighting their recent release of Pasadena mystery writer Naomi Herahara’s latest book Iced in Paradise.

A solid crowd attended the first annual Small Press Book Festival, demonstrating the continued need for locally focused culture that connects the wider Los Ángeles community to its vibrant literary community, the need for people to share their stories and to connect with other people’s stories. And while at the Wende, they toured the small museum, a hidden gem, in Culver City.

At the end of the day, after I read two poems as part of the open mic portion of the Coiled Serpent reading, Mark Lipman capped off the event by reading two poems of his own, As a political poet who “uses poetry to connect communities to the greater social issues that affect all our lives, while building consciousness through the spoken word,” the poems he read first speak to the current political moment, then expand to illustrate our shared humanity.

Before heading home, I suggested to Lipman the he run the Small Press Book Festival next year. To make it an annual event. Lipman’s enthusiastic reply was, “Let’s do it again next month.”