Natalie and Nadine, founders of STRANGE NATURES, discuss small press publishing, favorite books, and their motivations for starting this publishing project.
Natalie: Nadine, hello!
Nadine: Natalie, hi!
Natalie: So, we've been working together for quite a while now and have never interviewed each other quite like this. So this should be fun! Let's just jump right in. Can you tell me what makes you fall in love with a book?
Nadine: I love good first person narration; I want to climb inside somebody's weird heart and hang out there for a while. I love a good gutpunch moment of emotional truth and resonance. When you're like "oh right we're actually all on this horrible human journey together and I'm not irreparably alone!" I love to laugh, I love to cry (preferably both). I love a book that reshapes my understanding of the world, that feels like someone placing their hand tenderly upon my chin and redirecting my eyes so I see things a little differently. Also I won't claim not to fall in love with books based on their covers all the dang time. Who doesn't love a beautiful book!
How about you, Natalie, what makes you fall in love with a book?
Natalie: That’s such a great answer! For me, it’s when I pick up a book and encounter a sentence or a paragraph or a page that just completely knocks me over and takes my breath away (sometimes literally). From that point on its almost like I’m obsessively in love with that book. I LIVE for that moment. The cause of that feeling varies from book to book, and I don’t feel it with everything I read (even books I enjoy quite a lot), but when it happens it’s kinda like magic; like in that moment I feel like I was put on this earth to read that sentence, or those sentences, at that moment in time. It’s just a really special thing to me. In reading fiction I love character-driven writing and falling in love with characters and wishing that I knew them or could meet them; that make me wonder what they’re up to or how they’re doing in the world off of the page. In non-fiction I love to be challenged and confronted, even when it feels uncomfortable. I love stories that help shed light on my understanding of the world or my experiences, that offer me a language to use I couldn’t find myself. And OH MY GOODNESS do I also love a beautiful book. Certain books just feel like such a treasure, such a lovely object to hold, ya know?
Nadine: Yes! I think it's so important, as a publisher, to be mindful of the fact that your creations will live in people's homes with them! Make them objects worth holding on to.
Natalie: That brings us to our next question... if you were a book, what would you be?
Nadine: A Dickensian tale of a plucky orphan trying his best. And you?
Natalie: I think I would be a children’s picture book about a map who keeps getting lost because no one ever taught it how to read itself. But in the end, the map’s map friends teach it how to find its way. I think I want to write this book!
Nadine: Well I want to read that book!
Natalie: Do you have any favorite words?
Nadine: Oh gosh I have a lot of favorite words! Habit, luck, tender, scraps, epoxy, helpless, crepuscular, gentle, fever, threadbare, secret, empathy, humanoid, tenacity, wild, delicate, weird, death, flimsy, sheepish, ambisinister, feral, wistful, desperate, cloistered, intimate, ephemeral, freakazoid, pajanimal. I identify as a pajanimal.
Natalie: These are such great words! Truly.
Nadine: What are your favorite words?
Natalie: I don’t think my list is quite as long, but there are a few that really bring me joy in saying/writing: Lovely. River. Tender. Soft. Fantasy. Bramble. Lonely. Strange. Moonlight. Magic. Wallflower. Rain. Firefly. Human. Camp. Whimsical. I can’t think of any more!
Can you speak about why you wanted to start this project?
Nadine: Despite spending several years in publishing, I never got to do the jobs I really wanted or work with the types of books and authors I actually wanted to work with. I was a working class person with major health issues and zero connections, and supporting myself financially came before professional or creative fulfillment ever did. I wasn't able to take unpaid internships (ugh) or ever quite figure out how to network effectively or find opportunities that would've allowed me to engage with projects I was genuinely passionate about. Eventually I realized that if I wanted that opportunity, I would have to create it for myself! And I realized that it would likely have to be outside of the insular world of the big publishers. Also, I wanted to be part of a project that would create opportunities for voices similarly under-represented in traditional publishing. I see STRANGE NATURES as a home for those voices, a way of directly creating space for more stories to exist on paper, in print.
I also felt really encouraged by our work together, and our shared interest in trying to run a more empathetic and compassionate business, and being thoughtful about what that means. Even the conversations we’ve had around this very interview and the weirdness of putting something personal into the world! It’s just good to know that I can bring my real self and all its anxieties to a project like this. I wouldn’t want to start a business where that didn't feel possible.
Natalie: I am in complete agreement on a lot of this. Early on after meeting each other, we started to have these conversations about "climbing ladders" in the publishing industry and previous experiences we've had in feeling excluded from job opportunities or upward movement due to financial circumstances or not having the right "connections." It isn't fair, and I never felt compelled to include myself in that trajectory or fight that force for my own personal gain. For a long time I've simply wanted to have a real opportunity to learn about publishing in a hands on way, and eventually realized I'd have to create an opportunity to learn a lot of these skills myself.
A lot of my inspiration for starting STRANGE NATURES also came from reading books published by other small presses. In finding these books and authors and readers of small press works I finally felt like I had access to like-minded people; people whose stories I could see myself in, whose work felt challenging and comforting. I can only hope that through this project we can also give voice to those far under-represented in traditional publishing and those left in the margins in so many ways of living. I want to hear their stories and I think a lot of other people do too.
And I have to say, in meeting you I finally felt like I found someone who I could actually see myself starting a project like this with because our visions aligned so seamlessly from the start and I felt like I could likewise bring my full, messy, and emotional self to it without judgement. And I really, really appreciate that about you! I also wouldn’t want to start a business where that didn’t feel possible.
Nadine: Our business meetings are, like, 50% processing and I wouldn’t have it any other way. So, where do you see this project fitting into the larger universe of small press publishing?
Natalie: There are so many wonderful small presses out there putting out quality and challenging and important work. There are also so many talented and inspired writers out there looking for homes for their book babies! I don’t see STRANGE NATURES as being in competition with any small presses, but rather joining that space as a comrade, offering those writers more opportunity and choice. If they feel we happen to be a better fit for their book than another press might be, then that’s great! But I will forever lift up and support fellow small presses because we are all committed to the hard but essential work in bringing stories into the world that need to be heard. I’m just happy to sit in a small corner of that universe.
Nadine: Totally agree. We’re not trying to encroach on the space of anyone who’s already out there, but rather to expand the size of the space for everyone.
I also think one thing that distinguishes us is that we are specifically interested in facilitating a more collaborative publishing process for the writers we work with, and giving writers who do want it more access to that process than they might get with a publisher larger than us.
Natalie: Absolutely. The very foundation of STRANGE NATURES came from a wish to approach publishing books from a far more collaborative and compassionate place than I've seen from bigger publishers, and I wholeheartedly believe in allowing authors more creative control than a traditional publisher might be comfortable with. After all, we're all in it together!
Nadine: Is there a book you read as a child that stands out as having made a big impression on you? Have you revisited it as an adult?
Natalie: There are several books/series that stand out in my memory as leaving a lasting impression on me as a young person (ahem... Harry Potter), but the one I remember reading over and over again - almost obsessively - is Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit. I read it in school for the first time at 9 years old and remember feeling such a kinship with this young girl, Winnie Foster, who felt dissatisfied with her life, wanted to run away from home, and had this incredible curiosity about the world. I don't think I realized it at the time, but looking back I think I was also drawn to this idea of chosen family that is woven so tenderly into this story. It was probably the first book I encountered that forced me to confront notions of death in a way that didn't paralyze me. I wanted to live in the dreamy, whimsical woods of Treegap. I don't think it's without its flaws, but it definitely captured my imagination. I've been too scared to read it again as an adult in fear that the magic won't hold up!
How about you?
Nadine: Francesca Lia Block’s Dangerous Angels, but especially the first book Weetzie Bat! I joke that reading that book circa age 12 is most of the reason I live in LA now (the rest is loving avocados and hating socks) but it really might be true. I grew up on the East Coast and had never been or even knew anyone who’d been to Los Angeles but I think that, through those characters, the city came to represent this alternative way of living that was really exciting and wild and equal parts gritty and beautiful (“glam and slam,” as the book says). It felt infinitely more true to me than the circumstances of my actual life. I was drawn to its depiction of chosen family just like you were with Tuck Everlasting. And I related so painfully hard to the tangly-black-haired, strange, foundling child Witch Baby. I revisit that book regularly, and have adopted re-reading it each year as a sort of personal grief ritual on the advice of my therapist. I am delighted to say its magic does hold up.
Natalie: Awww, I echo so much of this! I didn’t read Weetzie Bat until much later in life, but I imagine it would also have made a huge impact on me as a young person. I will forever read this book over and over again.
Nadine: Next question for you. I love this one! If you could be anything other than a human, what would you be?
Natalie: This question is difficult because the possibilities are truly endless. I’ve come up with two answers and can’t seem to pick between them so I’m going to tell you both. The first is that I would be a cuddly little stuffed animal. Anyone who knows me knows how much I (obsessively) love stuffed animals, so I would love to be able to provide that comfort I get from them to another human in need of some love and cuddles. My second answer is that I would be a mountain. This one is more difficult for me to explain, but mountains just stand so TALL and so confident and so strong and you don’t feel like a mountain is afraid to take up space, ya know? I’d like to feel a little more like that.
Nadine: Oh wow I love your reasoning for wanting to be a mountain! It reminds me of what I told you about the Emperor card in the tarot? About taking up space without taking from others, and how a mountain takes up the exact amount of space it's meant to? (This is an interpretation borrowed from tarot teacher Lindsay Mack.)
Natalie: Ohhh was it you who planted that mountain seed in my brain!? That makes sense. There’s something about that image and sentiment, the power and stillness in it, that just really hit home with me.
What would you be?
Nadine: I've probably thought about a million different answers to this question but yesterday I saw a picture of a sparrow sitting on the ground inside an everything bagel as if it were its nest and I think that’s what I would be. A humble bird with a makeshift home inside a trashbagel.
Natalie: I love the picture you’ve painted about this little bird making a cozy little home out of someone’s garbage bagel!
Nadine: That's me!
Can you talk a bit next about the themes we’re interested in publishing work about, at STRANGE NATURES? What draws you to them?
Natalie: Quite frankly, these are subjects and themes I like reading about myself! And themes that I relate to as a human and feel quite close to personally. That’s not to say I feel like I have to personally relate to everything we publish, but I’m definitely drawn to the stuff that isn’t always so easy to talk about or read about or classify and the human experiences many of us share that we don’t hear about often enough. I feel like we have a very similar sensibility when it comes to things we like to read about, so it was quite nice that we have been pretty on the same page in regards to the kinds of stories we’re looking for from the very beginning.
Nadine: For sure. When we sat down to compile a list of themes we’re interested in, it felt so intuitive and there were never really any points of conflict or disagreement over what to include. It was like, no duh we’re going to publish stuff about mental/physical illness, and nature, and identity, and trauma, and death, and magic, and sexuality, and survival! Those are the themes I like to read about because those are the themes of my life! And I’m drawn to the sort of genre-bending stuff we’ve talked about wanting to publish because I feel like work that resists easy classification feels really true and wild and alive and that’s what STRANGE NATURES is about, ultimately.
Natalie: Exactly! I totally agree.
Nadine: This last question I’m not sure I have a solid answer for myself -- I can hardly picture anything ten years in the future -- but, do you have a vision of where you see STRANGE NATURES ten years from now?
Natalie: I find this question exciting and frightening and surreal and energizing all at once. I think my answer will always continue to evolve. But for right now, I love to envision a sizable collection of books we’ve published, all lined up together on a little bookshelf, like friends in conversation with one another. I envision walking into indie bookstores around the country (or around the world!?) and seeing a STRANGE NATURES book featured as a staff pick. I envision us having an opportunity to really create a community with this project, whether that means opening up a storefront/community space, creating a corner of the internet for people to openly share their ideas and their writing, or having an annual retreat where we can take our authors and writers to the woods for a weekend to surround ourselves with nature and have conversation and read tarot and drink tea. I envision this conscious endeavor to practice a more empathetic and compassionate business model finding stability and longevity in this economy. And I hope that in the future we are allowed an opportunity to create cool jobs. All this to say, I don't know where this project will take us but as long as we are able to continue bringing stories into this world, I'm going to be happy.