Lincoln Park is going to be making books—books with spines and covers and designs. That’s right: BatCat, the new student press, has started its first year.
Last school year, the Literary Arts Department developed a class called Bookbinding in which students learned basic to advanced binding techniques and created their own books and journals. Since then, the idea has expanded into the start of a small, student-run press.
Deanna Mulye, the teacher who started Bookbinding here, said the press “was an expansion on what we already have. We wanted to do more with Media, and we had the resources. It seemed natural.”
The small press is run modestly. The staff consists of a mere six students, though there is also a section of the Media Arts Department dedicated to helping with the design and formatting aspect of the projects. There is only one single machine used to aid the staff with binding, and all binding and designs are to be done by Lincoln Park students.
BatCat’s mission statement, as summarized by Mulye, is to “publish works of high entertainment value, but also of high literary value…and to give students the opportunity to work in a semi-professional working environment.”
Submissions are not limited to alumni or students of Lincoln Park, however, and are open to anyone. Over the summer, the staff worked on promoting submissions through events like the Small Press Festival (SPF) in Pittsburgh. They did receive submissions from people (“mostly younger people,” said Mulye) not affiliated with the school. When asked if any of the outside works were to be published, she replied, “We haven’t made any solid decisions yet.”
The staff set a goal for the number of works it wants to publish, however. They are aiming for five books this year, “two definitely for the fall, possibly three,” said Mulye. The staff picked the works for their first two books, but production is sill in the editing and design phase.
Senior Courtney Druzak, staff manager of the press, said there will be “hundreds of copies of each [book we produce].”
When asked where books could be found, Druzak said that the press is “compiling a list of local bookstores. We can’t use big [chain] stores…but maybe small, local ones.”
For anyone interested in submitting, Mulye also stressed that the press is “open to a variety of genres.” For the books to be published in the spring, no definite selections have been made yet, and according to Mulye, the press will be reopening submissions “late this year.”
For more information, visit BatCat’s website:
http://www.batcatpress.com/
–Taylor Sirko