oregon publishing

Twenty Years of Nestucca Spit Press

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Twenty years ago this spring I launched Nestucca Spit Press to publish/present Let It Pour, a web site chronicling dive tavern and bars on the Oregon Coast. It finally left this world a year ago after I decided not to renew the domain name. Most of the joints were gone or gentrified anyway.

At the time, I never dreamed that two decades later NSP would have published almost 30 books/publications ranging from poetry to fiction to memoir to history to pamphlets to magazines and sold/distributed almost 40,000 literary items across the region and beyond.

I want to thank all the purchasers and readers of NSP publications. You kept an independent Oregon publisher going, and it was especially important to me as a person during a dark and dangerous time not that long ago. I never stopped writing and the writing took on a different, better path.

In 2022, NSP will publish a fantastic and groundbreaking book of non fiction written by Drew Kaza called High Contrast, set in 1972, about Jefferson High School’s remarkable basketball championship season featuring an all Black team victory over an all white Baker City squad. It was a cultural landmark and a story of racial relations more relevant today than it was 50 years ago.

I have a favor to ask. To support NSP and its unique editorial mission, will you consider purchasing a title through the web site/blog, or make a contribution in support of the blog, or purchase some of the new print and e-book titles available on Amazon. Link here:

https://www.amazon.com/Matt-Love/e/B01MFFK8XS?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1647207679&sr=1-1

Thanks for considering. I look forward to leading NSP into its third decade.

A special thanks to Lena, Amira, Cindy, Shannon, Erin, Pioneer Printing and Brandy for all the help over the years. It always has been, and always will be, a collaborative effort.

Nestucca Spit Press Seeks Intern

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Nestucca Spit Press seeks an intern to support an independent Oregon publisher in its ongoing mission to produce and disseminate unique Oregon stories and books.

Duties involve transcribing interviews, conducting historical research, proofreading and publicity. The internship will last for six months. Benefits include a small stipend at the conclusion of a successful internship, free tuition to any Nestucca Spit Press writing workshop (next one is Sept. 14 in Astoria), and editorial input/comment into any writing the intern wants to share.

The internship is an excellent opportunity for someone interested in learning the regional book publishing business and/or assisting in resurrecting and curating long lost stories and books, or wants to help an Oregon publishing company founded in 2002 that has distributed well over 30,000 books during that span, exclusively through independent bookstores, live events, out of the back of my vehicles, or through thrift stores.

All work can be performed remotely.

If this offer intrigues, message me, and include a statement outlining your interest and availability. I could really use the help. (Please share this post with anyone you might think would be interested in such a gig.)

Letter From a Bonnie and Clyde Reader

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I’d like to share an excerpt from a letter a reader of the Bonnie and Clyde book sent to me this week. Two friends sent the reader the book and I am grateful for that act because this letter deeply touched me and offered fresh insights about the book and its larger story of and institutionalized (and lucrative) inhumanity unique to America. The letter also reminded me how wonderful it is for a writer, any writer, to hear from readers, about where the writer’s words landed. I know I often write to authors whose books have made an impact on me. Typically, you never hear a thing back, but sometimes you do. I encourage everyone out there who loves books to communicate with authors and share your appreciation and insights about the work. Even conflicts or perceived inadequacies with the book can be shared. Most writers don’t want Valentines from readers, at least I don’t. It doesn’t matter if it’s a book, a poem, a painting, a fort, a song, a play, a craft, a grand meal. If the art and artistry moved you, let the maker of that art know.

Dear Matt,

I just finished The Bonnie & Clyde Files at my living room table with Glenn Gould playing the last movement of the Mozart Piano Concerto #24 in C minor playing on my stereo; perfect music for the ending of your book and what may come afterwards: a mixture of mysterious foreboding built into the main theme and throughout the movement, nostalgia for past beauty recently experienced simultaneously with Sturm und Drang on either side..

When I sent you my first email that I was “enjoying” your book, I immediately felt that was an inadequate and inappropriate word to use, although I was mostly thinking at that moment about your adventures with Bonnie & Clyde, the beautiful river sights, the formal structure of your book which is so powerful and profound as it proceeds, and the clarity and concise skill of your perceptions put into words, all of which I continued to admire more and more as I read deeper into the book. I must have been at around page 52 at that time.

Now that I just finished it, reading this afternoon from around page 71 to the end, I have deep emotions and feelings that have very little to do with “enjoyable,” but I can still admire the climax you so skillfully brought towards the end, like a dramatic symphony that both recapitulates itself and goes beyond what has come before to leave the listener, here reader, with its ending, at a peak of emotional, intellectual, and spiritual intensity that only resolves itself through a vow to continue onward as a more informed spiritual human being, much more aware of injustices and atrocities occurring in our natural and social environment, determined to take actions, or adopt appropriate inactions, to make our beautiful miraculous world a better place—I can say this of few books I’ve ever read, but know your are a true brother in spirit along with Walt (Whitman) and Hesse.