About SplitLevel Texts

We (Karla and Aaron) started SplitLevel Texts in 2011 as a way to contribute something material back to the poetry world that we love. At the time, we had some clear ideas about what that would mean:

• publish only work both of us deeply love and believe in
• establish another outlet for the capacious experimental lyric tradition we both identify with
• publish important new titles and important titles that have fallen out of print

We also wanted to pay homage, editorially and in our design aesthetic, to other small presses we'd always admired, like Talisman House, Burning Deck, White Pine, and — yes — New Directions.

We wanted to be open to experiments in the way we published our books (we started by publishing on an Espresso Book Machine before moving on to other digital and offset printing models).

Finally, we wanted to price our books modestly. Poetry is essential.

SplitLevel Texts is a practical extension of what we do as writers, and we hope you're interested. Our titles are warehoused and sold by our friends at Small Press Distribution.

We don't publish very many books, as you can see, but if you'd like to query us about a manuscript, please let us know by filling out this google form.