See inside The Bottom, a Black bookstore and community space in Knoxville
The Bottom serves as a community hub and multi-use space aimed at providing Black literature and learning opportunities.
Calvin Mattheis, Knoxville News Sentinel
- Sundress Publications, a Knoxville-based press, is a nonprofit that uses its publishing platform to uplift historically under-represented voices.
- In addition to publishing, the press’s arm Sundress Academy for the Arts facilitates programming including workshops, reading series, retreats and residencies.
- Firefly Farms in Knoxville is home to Sundress’s writing residencies.
Imagine you’re a writer, sitting on a bench swing outside a charming farmhouse. You look up from a draft of your latest poem, and out at towering trees. Nearby, you can faintly hear sheep bleating and chickens clucking.
This is a glimpse of what life might look like for writers in residency at Firefly Farms, run by Knoxville-based Sundress Publications, a nonprofit literary press that publishes stories from across the continent.
Anyone can submit to Sundress, but the press is particularly interested in using its platform to uplift underrepresented voices.
“We work to center stories from historically marginalized communities, so we publish a lot of books by writers of color, by trans and nonbinary folks, by queer writers, by writers with disability,” said founder and Executive Director Erin Elizabeth Smith. “Those are things that we kind of are looking for when we are reading manuscripts, … stories that we feel that we have not heard enough of.”
Sundress goes beyond publishing
Sundress Publications − which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year − publishes chapbooks and full-length works, including the titles listed above, in print and online.
The press’s chapbooks and anthologies can be accessed online for free, while other works published by Sundress can be purchased on the Sundress website or at your local bookstore.
Smith, who is a poet herself and served for two years as the Poet Laureate of Oak Ridge, shared a few insights with Knox News about a book Sundress recently published, “Florence” by Bess Cooley.
“It is dealing with her grandfather’s Alzheimer’s,” Smith said. “And it utilizes erasure in the poetry to mirror, kind of, the erasure of memory at the same time. It’s a really beautiful and haunting book that’s just … tremendous.” Erasure is also called blackout poetry, erasing parts of text to create something new.
Although Sundress’s authors live all over North America, Cooley happens to reside in Knoxville, where she teaches in the English department at the University of Tennessee.
Sundress also oversees five literary journals that regularly publish writing.
But there’s a second arm to the press that helps to foster community for writers in the area and beyond. Sundress Academy for the Arts encompasses a variety of programming including workshops, reading series (one of which happens locally at Pretentious Beer Co.), retreats and residencies.
The magic of Firefly Farms
Another unique aspect of Sundress is that the operation is entirely volunteer-run, and many of its programs are online or have an online option, which means that it’s able to have quite a large staff, with members based far and wide.
“So much of Sundress is, you know, is all the people who work with it,” Smith said. “So, it’s here, it’s in almost every state in the country. … Our managing editor lives in Indiana. Our acquisitions editor is in Rhode Island, our staff director is in Toronto.”
Sundress might be everywhere, but the part that’s in Knoxville is truly special, as it tells the story of Smith’s love for Appalachia. She’s lived in Knoxville for over 15 years, but when she first arrived, she had no expectation of staying long-term.
“I really fell in love with it,” Smith said. After two years, she and her partner, Joe Minarick, who is chief of operations for Sundress, decided to stay. “We were like, if we’re going to do this, we should build something. And this is what we built,” Smith said. This is Firefly Farms, a wooded 45-acre hollow in rural Knoxville.
The farm is home to a herd of sheep, plus ducks and chickens. As the site of Sundress’s writing residencies, it’s also home to a handful of visiting writers at any given moment.
Writers participating in the short-term residencies live in the two bedroom, one-bathroom farmhouse or in the “Writers Coop,” a dry cabin − meaning it has no running water or electricity − outfitted with a bed, desk and stove. The main farmhouse has a shared kitchen, living area and a work area in the basement containing a functional 19th-century letterpress.
“It’s always exciting to get to bring people here (to Knoxville),” Smith said. “They’re always like, ‘It’s so beautiful.’ I’m like, I know, right? The people are great, and everyone’s nice, and people love the arts, and people love writing, and going to events and like, it’s just … such a welcoming community.”
Increasing accessibility in the literary sphere
As part of its goal to amplify voices from historically marginalized communities, Sundress works to lower barriers for writers participating in its programming or interested in submitting.
For each residency period, a full scholarship is available for Black and Indigenous writers that covers a week-long residency. Once a year, full scholarships are available for LGBTQIA+ writers, writers of color and women and nonbinary writers. Additional scholarships are sometimes made available through donations, including one this fall available for transgender writers.
Black and Indigenous writers also can apply for a support grant of $350 to go toward travel, childcare, or other needs during their stay, with two available per residency period. A reparations-based payment model also is used for residency pricing that allows writers of color to receive a discounted residency rate during a certain number of weeks.
For the first two weeks of each submission period, there is no cost for any writer to submit work for publication. Writers of color can always submit for free. The intention behind this approach goes back to Sundress’s goal of publishing a broader array of writers.
Hayden Dunbar is the storyteller reporter. Email hayden.dunbar@knoxnews.com.
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