Omnidawn Publishing

About

Omnidawn Publishing is a small, privately-owned, nonprofit publisher based in Richmond, California. It was founded in 2001 by Kenneth Keegan and Rusty Morrison out of their small house and has expanded from there. They publish primarily explorative poetry books and have won a number of awards over the years. They have a magazine called The Omniverse that has a lot of individual poems featured. For events, they offer annual poetry workshops and host readings to market new books. Here is the link to their website: https://www.omnidawn.com/

History

Omnidawn had a rough time financially during the coronavirus pandemic, as many businesses (and people) did. They received a $10,000 grant from the Academy of American Poets’ Literary Arts Emergency Fund in 2022 to help keep them afloat. 312 other nonprofit literary arts and publishing organizations also received funding; a total of $4.3 million was distributed. This is the article about it: https://poets.org/literary-arts-emergency-fund-awards-43-million-historically-under-funded-literary-arts-field-it

In 2022, Kenneth Keegan passed away from cancer. Before he died, he and Rusty Morrison appointed Laura Joakimson to take his place as co-publisher and executive director. She and Morrison are the current co-publishers of Omnidawn.

Mission

When Omnidawn was founded in 2001, their mission statement was, “Lively, culturally pertinent, emotionally and intellectually engaging literature can be of great value, and it is a privilege to participate in the work”. Since then, the mission statement has changed to be more focused on diversity in the authors they publish. Their most recent mission statement is that Omnidawn “seeks to support and expand our community of writers and readers through the work we choose to publish, which questions, in both form and content, the prevailing limits of convention”. They intentionally don't have a single literary focus; their subject matter is meant to test the limits of whats possible in all (omni) directions. Many of the authors are a part of marginalized groups that don't often get a voice.

Structure

Since Omnidawn is a nonprofit organization, they are overseen by a boards of directors that includes, but is not limited to, Norma Cole, Jeffrey Pethybridge, and Steven Rood. The members of the board are all published writers of books and magazine articles that are likely as outside of the box as the rest of Omnidawn's works intend to be. The owner of the business is Rusty Morrison, though it is possibly co-owned by Laura Joakimson. Morrison is the senior editor, Joakimson is the executive director (as stated above). The rest of the editors are Sophia Carr, Anthony Cody, Liza Flum, Kimberly Reyes, Sharon Zetter, Rob Hendricks, and Jeffrey Kingman. According to Rocket Reach, Omnidawn employs only eleven employees. I would assume that the editors below Morrison are counted in that number, but I was unable to find names or titles for the other four employees.

Publishing Program

Omnidawn used to print and distribute their own books, but a few years ago they started distributing through the University of Chicago instead. Some of their older books are still available to buy on their website, but the new ones must be bought through their distributor. They use a print-on-demand system so that they don't have to store any books that aren't being bought. Their books are somewhat expensive, at least from my perspective; some of the old ones can be bought for as little as $12, but the newer ones range from $18-23. There is no sense of symmetry or cohesion that I could see in the cover art, and few repeated elements except perhaps confusion, so I'm wondering if the authors design the covers themselves. There are no cover designers listed in any list of employees that I could find.

Audience

The intended audience depends on the author, but the books are all targeting adults and are mostly aimed at the same marginalized groups that the authors are a part of, such as immigrants, people with disabilities, people with relational or medical trauma, and the queer community.

This publisher is fairly small-scale, so I couldn’t find much in the way of a fanbase. The few people that I did find talking about their poetry talk about how impactful and deep it is.

Three Impactful Books

From Unincorporated Territory [Amot] by Craig Santos Perez

Cover of [amot]

Craig Santos Perez has published seven books through Omnidawn Publishing. From Unincorporated Territory [Amot] is the fifth book in his ongoing poetry series From Unincorporated Territory, which focuses on his upbringing in and the history of Guam. It won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2023, according to Publishers Weekly. It can be found here: https://www.omnidawn.com/product/amot-perez/

Missing the Moon by Bin Ramke

Bin Ramke has written and published six books through Omnidawn. Missing the Moon was published in 2014, and it is a book of poetry that focuses on humanity's desire to reach the moon as a somewhat intrinsic aspect of human imagination. It can be found here: https://www.omnidawn.com/product/missing-the-moon/

In a landscape of having to repeat by Martha Ronk

Martha Ronk has also written and published six books through Omnidawn. In a landscape of having to repeat is a book of poetry that explores repetition as a concept, particularly in repeated turns of phrase and the inescapable repetition of everyday life. It can be found here: https://www.omnidawn.com/product/in-a-landscape-of-having-to-repeat/

Summary

Omnidawn is trying to bring revolutionary literature to a world that may not be ready to read it yet. Their impact on the world is limited because of how small their reach is, and the financial struggles implied by the grant they received after the pandemic and the fact that they recently switched to distributing their books through the University of Chicago do not bode well for their future success. In a world dominated by big publishers, I don't know that they'll last much longer.