We hope you will find this website and our publications of interest. We regularly post exclusive material on our national list: interviews, diatribes, consumer recalls of our more dangerous products, new Pavement Saw loungewear and so on. If you would like to have the posts sent to you, here is the address. http://pavementsaw.org/list/?p=subscribe&id=1 If you live near us & would like material that is specific to our area Fort Wayne, Indiana; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Toledo, Ohio and throughout the fine state of Ohio use this link as well: http://pavementsaw.org/list/?p=subscribe&id=1 subscribing to both is fine, it will not create a conflict--

Pavement Saw Press has been publishing steadily since the fall of 1993. Each year since 1999, we have published at least four full length paperback poetry collections, with some printed in library edition hard covers, one chapbook and a yearly literary journal anthology. We specialize in finding authors who have been widely published in literary journals but have not published a chapbook or full length book. Many well known authors and editors have supported these titles including John Ashbery, James Tate, Cornelius Eady, Len Roberts, Jim Daniels, Edward Dorn, Leslie Scalapino, Harryette Mullen, Robert Kelly, and Billy Collins. Their praises appear on back covers, in reviews and in other support materials we use to market these books. Reviews and other free coverage has appeared in Poets & Writers, The Georgia Review, Small Press Review, the AWP Chronicle, A View From the Loft, and many other fine publications.


Until 1999, we were mostly known as a publisher of fine chapbooks. Our results from releasing chapbooks by first time authors were phenomenally successful. Reviews of Douglas Goetsch's Wherever You Want, appeared in many fine journals including The Georgia Review. Since we released Wherever You Want in 1997, Goetsch was awarded the Paumonk literary award, a New York State Artists Grant in Poetry, and his first book Nobody's Hell was released by Hanging Loose Press in 1999.


Naton Leslie's chapbook Their Shadows are Dark Daughters was published 1998. This was his first collection of poetry and shortly after we accepted the manuscript for publication, Bottom Dog Press decided to publish his first full length collection Not Always Easy, and three more collections have been released since then including Marconi's Dream from Texas A&M Press.


Joshua McKinney's first collection Permutations of the Gallery, 1996, lead to a second chapbook released by Primitive Publications in 1998 and a full length collection Saunter which won the University of Georgia Press Contemporary Poetry Series Competition for 2001. Shelley Stenhouse's Pants continued this tradition of exposing first-collection authors to an important, well connected and receptive audience. This collection of poems was chosen by Ruth Anderson Barnett, poetry editor of the Marlboro Review.


In 1998 we started to receive funding from the Ohio Arts Council. At this point our focus started to change and we released Will Alexander's full length title Above the Human Nerve Domain. in both hard and soft cover editions. Alexander's previous book Asia & Haiti, on Sun & Moon, publishers of a yearly National Poetry Series title, was one of the top selling poetry titles for both 1997 and 1998 at our distributor: Small Press Distribution in Berkley, California. We did a press run of a thousand soft cover trade copies with and additional one hundred and thirty five hard cover copies for libraries and institutions.

In 2000, we published seven titles; 5 full length books, a literary journal and a chapbook. Simon Perchik's Hands Collected: The Books of Simon Perchik Poems (1949-1999), Gordon Massman's The Numbers, Dana Curtis' The Body's Response to Famine, and Richard Blevins' Fogbow Bridge Selected Poems (1972-1999), were published in trade paper as well as library reinforced hardcover bound editions. Errol Miller's Magnolia Hall, Shelley Stenhouse's Pants and Pavement Saw 4 were released in trade paper editions.

Dana Curtis' The Body's Response to Famine, was chosen by Bin Ramke. Ramke is a Professor at the University of Denver. He is the editor of The Denver Quarterly. His most recent book Wake : Poems won the Iowa Poetry Prize. Announcements for this award appeared in the Associated Writing Program's Chronicle, Poets & Writers, The Loft, Small Press Review, and many other national and regional magazines.


Pavement Saw Press' mission is to establish a large, efficient, non-university affiliated press, publishing works of national significance, magnitude and influence. We will publish quality books of national importance by unknown and known authors from the United States. Our goal is to benefit Ohio culturally and economically by receiving national and international recognition for our efforts, by attracting outside visitors, and by exposing our authors to a national and international audience.


Once a year our literary journal, Pavement Saw, is published. The journal has grown to eighty-eight pages, perfect bound, and features an under represented writer in each issue. The content of the journal is poetry and various forms of prose including letter writing and short-short fiction. Authors who have appeared in the journal have gone on to have books published by University of Georgia, Mellen Poetry Press, University of Illinois Press, Tri-Quarterly Books, Sulfur River Literary Review Press, Sun & Moon, and many others. They represent a section of upcoming poets and writers who have recently won the Academy of American Poetry Prize, NEA Awards, various state grants and fellowships (including the Robert Frost Fellowship at Breadloaf), and some have recently appeared in Best American Poetry and Best American Essays. The journal is released annually.

With Hands Collected: The Books of Simon Perchik Poems (1949-1999), Pavement Saw Press solidified its move into large scale books.


Hands Collected was nominated for the National Book Award as well as other national prizes. We are distributed by Baker and Taylor, Small Press Distribution, Swets/Blackwell and many other fine organizations. While donations to Pavement Saw Press are not tax-deductible for federal income tax purposes, we do appreciate the support and use these funds to continue publishing.

We hope you will find this website and our publications of interest.

Be well,

David Baratier
Editor, Pavement Saw Press
321 Empire Street
Montpelier, OH 43543
419.485.0524
editor at pavementsaw dot org