Seattle writers have long stood on the national stage, but they are almost always represented by publishers in New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago. The richness of Pacific Northwest literature reaches back to the Raven and Coyote stories of the Salish and extends toward bestsellers like Sometimes a Great Notion, Snow Falling on Cedars, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, and Where’d You Go, Bernadette.

More recent examples of books written by Seattleites are Peter Mountford’s The Dismal Science,  Kristen Millares Young’s Subduction, and Elisabeth Eaves’s The Outlier. None of these books were published in Seattle. Popular novels like Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer, set in Seattle during the 1990s, are represented by agents, editors, and publishers far from Seattle’s damp blue streets.

Publishing is no different from film. With movies set in Seattle but filmed in Vancouver and produced in Hollywood, one starts to feel like we aren’t even invited to our own wedding. Because of the publishing industry’s disposition, Seattle is brimming with talented writers who mail their manuscripts to the far side of North America for publication.

Perhaps we can find a model in another local producer of art, this one in the music industry. If you know about Seattle from elsewhere, it might be because of grunge music. Seattle’s own Sub Pop launched many grunge music careers and continues to discover, cultivate, and produce local and national artists. Since 1986, their relationship with the art community, excellent taste, consistency, and quality keep them in the game. Funnily enough, Sub Pop started as a ‘zine.

While local authors experienced success through the old publishing houses, literary projects bubbled up through the culture and stayed home, such as the group Invisible Seattle’s ironic, experimental novella The Novel of Seattle, by Seattle (1983), which declares, “No one is from Seattle.” Small yet unforgettable books like Seattle Graffiti (1984), by Bob Sheffels’s own Sheffelsonian Press, represented the city to its own citizens. Seattle is no stranger to entrepreneurship.

Several local presses have sprung up over the decades. In 2016, regional feminist publishing house Seal Press was purchased by Hachette, showing that local publishers like Barbara Sjoholm could generate a productive catalogue of books and writers. Editors at Sjoholm’s press went on to found the local powerhouse Girl Friday Productions. More recent literary ventures like Chin Music Press in Pike Place Market and Sublunary Editions in Pioneer Square continue this tradition of starting and growing in Seattle, connecting local writers and readers.

The American publishing industry has, in recent decades, both consolidated and splintered. The Big 5 is not yet the Big 4, but only because the US government prevented a Penguin Random House from acquiring Simon & Schuster. Simultaneously, desktop publishing has advanced to such a degree that most cities have their own small publisher and self-publishing authors. Although self-publishing writers like Bob Sheffel’s may have benefited from Amazon settling in South Lake Union, local bookstores, writers, and editors have a mixed relationship with the bookselling behemoth. Like the Big 5 (Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan), Amazon has layers of bureaucracy, a corporate culture, and an instrumentalized relationship with the writers and editors in the bookmaking process.

It is onto this publishing seascape that Pickle Fork Press embarks. By combining a local tradition of literary arts, scrappy startup culture, and  passion for connecting writers and readers, Pickle Fork will create a real sense of place. Not one where Seattle is filmed by the B-Roll team— filming setts that relocate the Space Needle to the middle of Elliot Bay (see: Frasier). Like Sub Pop, a motivating idea behind the press is the idea that literary movements and international authors are community affairs and local individuals.

Born in Seattle, publisher Matthew Bennett grew up reading local books like Wheedle on the Needle (Serendipity Press) and Fred Beckey’s Freedom of the Hills (Mountaineers Books). For his undergraduate thesis at the University of Washington, he wrote, illustrated, and bound a novella titled These Things Need Ruin (artistically: a disaster). Matthew cofounded Cascadia Editors Collective over a decade ago and now runs his standalone freelance editing business Breakwater Editorial.