Braddock Avenue is a place. And it’s an idea. Above all, an idea. We decided to locate the press in this stretch of postindustrial Pittsburgh for three compelling reasons—each one speaking to a central tenet of the press. Here they are.

First, the city of Braddock cascading down a hillside and into the flats of a small valley, is a place that refuses to give up. The landscape is a memory of industrial greatness and the main avenue a wind-tossed street that seems to know what you’re thinking.

At one end of the long avenue that takes its name from the city, is our office, located in a repurposed school and rectory, home to an art gallery and studios, a writer’s residency, and a webhosting service for antiquarian booksellers. A modern urban art colony. Just across the street, the U.S. Steel Mill hums and smokes, and pours out shift workers round the clock, though the string of cars is smaller now and the drivers head home to green suburbs with long driveways and blue pools and far newer homes than Braddock has. Mid-avenue, the nation’s first Carnegie Library, newly refurbished and a brilliant reminder of the power of books, commands respect as a spiritual anchor and visible reminder of Braddock’s greatness. But this isn’t all. Along with homes and park spaces and a community garden, the remaining stretch of Braddock Avenue hosts small shops like Bell’s and Stamboli’s meat markets, Lucky Frank’s bar, a handful of used furniture stores like Golden Treasures, a pawn shop, and Comet News, and a florist, and a bank that’s no longer just a bank, a night club, an auto parts store, a senior residence, and Al’s Market, squatting at the opposite end of the business strip like a dark challenge to anyone who would dare say Braddock is dead. This is Braddock, Pennsylvania, where people with names like Tiny, and Darlin’, and Joe linger among the memories and the murals keeping the spirit of place alive.

Of course, the population has dwindled since the heyday of Braddock. But since when have numbers revealed anything meaningful about commitment? And that’s the second reason we chose Braddock.

A small, sturdy population calls Braddock home and refuses to let it die. In fact, you may have seen or read about the Braddock Redux project that’s revitalizing this community—or perhaps you recall the Levi campaign—each turning the tide by converting old buildings into homes and community facilities and inviting new businesses to try us out, like the daring restaurateur who’s planning to open a high-end eating establishment and is showing his commitment to the place by living there. Braddock is bringing people back.

So, here’s the third thing you should know about us and our mission. We chose the location not only for the past glory and present potential but also because it was here that General Edward Braddock ended his march from Maryland, carving the National Road as he went, with a brave defense for a cause he believed in. Braddock stood his ground with real courage— not the easy t.v. kind—against overwhelming opponents. The battle that took his life occurred just over the hill from where the press stands today. On a quiet day, from our offices, you can feel the passion of his bold stand.

Braddock Avenue Books draws its inspiration and energy from these movements to resist cant and convention, to battle for authentic voices, to fight with ideas for the ideas that matter, and to support a life of purpose. Our project takes its spirit from the place and from the people who have lived—and still live—here. We hope that we can count you as one of us.

 

A Brief History of Motive

 

Literary publishing has enjoyed at least two great moments in the twentieth century: the explosion of small presses and journals in the 1920s and their resurgence in the late fifties and early sixties. There have been other percolations, of course, but few have compared with these two volcanic reckonings, each in their way passing stern judgment on the barrenness of conventional culture. William Carlos Williams made the project of small presses and journals as clear as anyone. “Noble,” he said, “has been changed to no bull.” And he was right. Clearing the air of cant and superstition, finding sincere voices willing to risk the truth: these were the motivations behind the upstart journals and presses of his time. And the Beats reminded us that the mission to reclaim serious writing from mainstream culture was not yet done.

It has been a long time since the Beats, and many others have pressed on with the project. The zine movement of the eighties and nineties, for example, turned away from the worthless imprimatur of sales figures and press runs and instead embraced the urgency of discovery. They were after authenticity and honesty and a hard, pure, insistent art that spoke truly of and to the times. If zines seem to have lost some of their energy, it is perhaps because they were so radically local and particular. But circumstances have changed and the times are again calling for principled action.

As mainstream publishing tosses aside books that its ministers of marketing have failed to anoint, it is becoming increasingly isolated from and irrelevant to serious readers and serious writers—and to the culture.

The literary landscape has broken in two. As the castle walls grow more ornate, the countryside is blazing with desire.

These are exciting times for independent literary publishers. With so many young writers of purpose coming out of MFA programs—they have multiplied exponentially—there has been an unprecedented surge in literary publishing. Small journals and independent presses are alive and thriving. The growth of the AWP Conference tells the story with its swelling ranks over the last few years reaching nearly 9,500 attendees at the 2011 and 2012 conferences. The smart, disillusioned writers and readers who comprise those numbers are again taking back the world of letters.

It is in this spirit that Braddock Avenue Books was founded.

We are a small literary press dedicated to reducing cant and sentimentality—one good book at a time. Our publication goals are ambitiously modest: literary fiction, long-form essays on contemporary subjects, and serious graphic fiction/nonfiction.

Put it this way, Braddock Avenue Books was created to provide a forum for devoted writers who want to resist the glib, the superficial, and the banal. In a word, when “edginess” becomes a fashion statement and “experimental” looks like a gimmick, it is time to take a stand. Braddock Avenue Books is willing to fight the good fight by publishing books with heart and soul.