IKE: A Publishing Project

📚📚📚Copies of this beautiful, reversible tête-bêche chapbook “Sweat / Fort Pierce, Florida” are now available for pre-order from Asterism Books. The tête-bêche format creates a rare and unique structural dynamic: Zora Neale Hurston as the creator on one side, and Hurston as a character on the other.

“Stories let us talk to one another about stuff that just can't be talked about any other way. I'm pretty lonely most of the time, and fiction's one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved.” —David Foster Wallace Illustration by Darin Mount #booksky

Daily(ish) #SmallPress #books from @ikeproject.bsky.social: The Mannequin by Carla Crujido & Questionnaire for My Grandfather by Kim Adrian. See alt-text. #DSPBposts 💙📚 #BookSky #booktok #bookstagram

📚️Current TBR Stack: Western Starlands by Toby Dunne (@whiskeytit.com) You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue, trans. Natasha Wimmer The Fourth Man by Bryan Hurt (@ikeproject.bsky.social)

ONE WEEK LEFT ⏳ Our Kickstarter campaign, The Architecture of Identity, is down to its final days. This is the moment where every pledge truly counts. Pledge today. Tell a friend who loves short stories. Help us finish strong. 🔗 Link in bio to back the campaign.

IKE: A Publishing Project has been quietly building a home for shorter works each beautifully designed, thoughtfully printed, and built to last. We're launching a Kickstarter campaign: 3 new chapbooks that examine the fragile, resilient architecture of identity. www.kickstarter.com/projects/ike...

Getting everything ready for the Portland Indie Book & Art Fair (PIBAF) hosted by Buckman Journal at Honey Latte Cafe on June 27, 2026. I just unboxed a new acrylic book display, picked up fresh postcards, and even ordered a nifty dual-purpose header to top it all off. Come join the fun.

Congratulations to @joybaglio.bsky.social on winning a Pushcart Prize for her extraordinary short story “We Are Sorry for Your Suffering,” first published in One Story Magazine. Joy’s work continues to astonish with its emotional precision, imagination, and depth — this honor is so deeply deserved.

*** Preservation by Maria Lioutaia After seventy years of successful preservation, Lenin’s body is deteriorating faster than the morticians and biochemical scientists can manage. Celebrate Short Story Month with us—one chapbook at a time. Links in bio.

🌹🌹🌹 “Some houses keep their secrets longer than the people who lived in them.” William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” endures as a quiet Southern ghost story—of memory, decay, and the woman a whole town thought it understood. Celebrate Short Story Month with us—one chapbook at a time.

*** Celebrate Short Story Month • Buy a short story collection. • Read a short story. • Write a short story. • Recommend your favorite short stories to your friends. • Buy a story from IKE: A Publishing Project, such as Frog Heart by @joybaglio.bsky.social. Available @asterismbooks.bsky.social

*** It’s Independent Bookstore Day, and we’re celebrating the places that make independent publishing possible. Indie bookstores champion the books that algorithms overlook. To every indie bookseller who has taken a chance on our chapbooks: Thank You! Support independent bookstores. ❤️📚

*** 🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸 Happy Pub Day! “Beware the frog king who lives under the river and visits the ponds of this valley; he will take your children.” Congratulations @joybaglio.bsky.social on the publication of Frog Heart. Available @asterismbooks.bsky.social

"... all she would have done to keep her children safe and alive, all she'd tried to do, all she'd given up, yet how blind she'd been, how weak and scared her version of love had been in the face of the world and its whispering voices." Frog Heart by @joybaglio.bsky.social @ikeproject.bsky.social

ENTER "FROG HEART" GIVEAWAY (by 4/24)! Ploughshares is doing a giveaway, free to enter! Winner receives my new "Frog Heart" chapbook (by @ikeproject.bsky.social) & Ploughshares issue where the story first appeared! To enter, go to @pshares.bsky.social's Instagram post, or here: tinyurl.com/mpt5j26r

THIS APRIL! Excited to share my short story "Frog Heart" - a fairy tale about parenthood & trying to save the ones we love - originally in Ploughshares - in its new form as a standalone chapbook, thanks to @ikeproject.bsky.social! Pre-order & read about it here: asterismbooks.com/product/frog...

*** I Am Tom Waits! (Janice Margolis) Peek inside the mind of the fictional Tom Waits as he wanders the streets of El Lay. From the La Brea Tar Pits to the Hollywood Bowl and beyond, the traveling troubadour muses on everything from the nocturnal habits of peacocks to William Burroughs’ dipsomania.

*** March is Small Press Month, and IKE: A Publishing Project is celebrating by spotlighting our titles to date—ten chapbooks of short fiction, each crafted with care, intention, and love.

We’re thrilled to share that IKE: A Publishing Project will be publishing Frog Heart, a luminous and unsettling short story by @joybaglio.bsky.social, as a standalone chapbook—arriving April 18th. Baglio’s work captivates with its blend of the uncanny and the deeply human.

Greetings from "war ravaged Portland." “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905. youtu.be/dwGQGM9X69o

*** It’s launch day for The Modernists—our Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a series of chapbooks by Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, and Sherwood Anderson. We’re excited about this project and we’re asking for your help. www.kickstarter.com/projects/ike...

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

We’re launching a Kickstarter campaign on September 23rd. It features short stories by: Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Sherwood Anderson. We ask for your support. www.kickstarter.com/projects/ike...

What do Glenn Gould and Henry David Thoreau have in common? They’re both featured players in upcoming chapbooks from IKE: A Publishing Project. Pre-order now @asterismbooks.bsky.social asterismbooks.com/publisher/ik...

We’re excited to announce that our books will be distributed by @asterismbooks.bsky.social Check us out, along with nearly 200 amazing independent presses. asterismbooks.com/publisher/ik...

To celebrate Bob Dylan’s 84th birthday, we’re offering copies of North Of at 20% off. Use code: DYLAN at checkout. www.ikeproject.com/shop/p/north...

Our Kickstarter Campaign was just selected as a "Project We Love." We hope you'll love it too. You can find it here: www.kickstarter.com/projects/ike...

Our Kickstarter project is live! If you're a fan of short stories, I hope you'll check it out. www.kickstarter.com/projects/ike...

#ArtistFave15 #MusicChallenge 8/1 Heartattack And Vine #TomWaits youtu.be/lbIi8ZiW5qI?...

Kickstarter campaign launches on April 14, 2025. www.kickstarter.com/projects/ike...

We're dealing with our own March Madness as we prepare our upcoming titles. Check them out at: www.ikeproject.com and let us know what you think.

Had a marvelous time reading and discussing writing with visionary writer Allegra Hyde a few days ago, at @forbeslibrary.bsky.social in Northampton MA, as part of the Readers & Writers Live series. Read from a new short story forthcoming in One Story! Allegra’s reading was 🔥

“After seventy years of successful maintenance, Lenin’s body was deteriorating faster than the morticians and biochemical scientists could keep up.” Cover reveal. Pre-orders are underway. Cover art: Oleksandr Balbyshev www.ikeproject.com/shop/p/prese...

I extend my sincere apologies to President Zelenskyy and the people of Ukraine on behalf of the American people.

Here is a sneak peek at one of our upcoming titles … “When a boy wakes he must not make a sound. He must kneel beside his bed in silent prayer, like the others in the room, and feel the weight of two minutes. He must feel joy too. And gratitude. www.ikeproject.com/shop/p/the-f...

I wrote much of what I think about this election before it happened, so I am going to put it all together here. My book, Autocracy Inc, described the network of autocrats who seek to undermine democracy, inside their countries and ours www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/725302...

“But the books brought me things. This is my point. They made me feel less alone.” ― Elizabeth Strout, My Name Is Lucy Barton Happy Birthday.

Random thought: Who remembers this one episode of Twilight Zone, “Time Enough At Last”? I’ll be sure to prepare for at least 3 extra pairs of glasses 👓👓👓 😊

“Her perfume smells like Vanity Fair magazine.” —Marie-Helene Bertino, North Of (upcoming from www.ikeproject.com)

“Speaking of dislocation, for longer than I’d care to admit, I thought harum-scarum was an abandoned ghost town near Addis Ababa.”—Janice Margolis, I Am Tom Waits! (upcoming from www.ikeproject.com)

“If the people at the convenience store on Bloomingdale Road are surprised to see the bloated Voice of a Generation using the candy display to scratch the low part of his back, they keep it to themselves.”—Marie-Helene Bertino (from North Of, upcoming from www.ikeproject.com)

I Am Tom Waits! Janice Margolis “If you want to read a story version of Being John Malkovich transferred to the mind of Mr. Waits, here you go, minus the scheming plot.”—The Florida Review (Online) www.ikeproject.com/shop/p/i-am-...

“There are American flags on school windows, on cars, on porch swings; it is the year I bring Bob Dylan home for Thanksgiving.”—Marie-Helene Bertino, North Of (upcoming from www.ikeproject.com) Image by Malika Favre.

“Trumpet is the most honest instrument. It never smiles when it doesn’t mean it, cries when it does, is mean as hell when deserved.” (from I Am Tom Waits! - upcoming from www.ikeproject.com)