"Regional" Writing and Its Universal Value

Our latest crowdfunding update

We posted this update on our Indiegogo campaign on Tuesday, but we’d like to share it here too. If you haven’t yet had a chance, please check out the project and consider supporting our next anthology! We’re currently about $70 away from our next milestone (30%), and rewards start as low as $5. which include special limited-edition merch and book bundles in addition to pre-ordering Mid/South Sonnets.

Although we’re primarily interested in expanding access to the publishing world for writers based in what we consider the “Mid-South”—loosely defined for us as Arkansas and the surrounding states—as a press we’re fascinated both by how porous many of those boundaries can be and how this area also resonates with the wider American South. In this respect, we believe that “regionalism,” when taken as a form of conversation, need not be overly specific or limiting but can instead open up more universal explorations of how we navigate home and identity. Writers who commit to their roots and craft worlds inspired by their home places have something to say that’s worth listening to, no matter where they’re from.

We also approach anthology projects as an opportunity to take this focus to a broader/larger scale, considering how many of us are trying to make sense of a lot of the same things even if the details look different. It’s our hope that those individual details are where the poetry breaks through.

For Mid/South Sonnets, we were thrilled to find some form of representation for every state loosely within our confines. Whether nomads who’ve wandered across borders, expats who’ve ended up elsewhere, or transplants who’ve found themselves somewhere new that has become a true home, our sixty-six contributors offer a simultaneously deep and wide lens into how a love of place can translate into reflection and action in many aspects of our lives.

Check out the graphics below to get a snapshot of the states you can find inside the pages of Mid/South Sonnets, and be sure to spread the word about our campaign! Remember you can also subscribe to our Substack to keep up with our other projects. Thanks so much for your support.