My First Day at Milkweed

          Milkweed Editions is located in a beautiful converted warehouse in a newly gentrified area of Minneapolis. It shares it's building with  the Loft Literary Center, a comprehensive writing center hosting events and creative workshops, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, a small bookmaker that creates books by hand, two for profit tenants and a lovely coffee gallery. Milkweed's office is very simple. It welcomes it's guests with shelves lined with it's newest books. I was impressed by how professional they looked. They were glossy and pleasantly colorful. The office itself is small, with only about eight full time staff and five interns. Most of my first day was spent in training. 

          We were given a very brief tutorial on how non-profit publishing functions (which I didn't totally understand to be honest). There are many different steps involved. I was surprised by how wasteful large publishing houses could be. One intern told us that a publishing company shipped quite a few copies of the wrong book to her yoga studio and when she notified the publishing house they told her to throw the books out. As an aspiring author and book lover this idea is simply horrific to me. But, none the less it is more cost effective for the company for the books to be destroyed than to be sent back. I think Milkweed shares my sentiment. Each copy of a book is a precious artifact, not only of writing but of our contemporary culture. With the advent of e-books, paper books are losing their value by the minute, but Milkweed seems to continue to appreciate the written word in it's original form, as do I. 

         After training I was given a full length manuscript, which I was absolutely thrilled to read it. Interns and new employees in the publishing world are infamously assigned to read 'slush' or unsolicited manuscripts. I rather enjoyed my slush and thought with some reservation that Milkweed should get behind it. Milkweed publishes texts in a more traditional style. This manuscript was about an incestuous relationship between a mother and son and there were many neologisms (made up words) throughout. The nontraditional subject matter and style might not make it the best fit for Milkweed but I found it quite well written and entertaining. For those of you looking for a similar read, look up Nike by Nicholas Flokos. 

        I also read a poetry book which I thought Milkweed should reject. I am a bit biased being more of a fan of prose but I found the style of poetry to be too uncreative and unoriginal. Overall it was a very stimulating first day and I'm looking forward to going back!