About

OUR BOOKS  inhabit a place where visual art, literature, folklore, and memoir intersect. And we believe it’s even better when they intertwine. That’s when we know we’re really on to something.

 

We seek to elevate writing that haunts and inspires, challenges and delights—stories that explore the reciprocal aspects of dark and light, whimsy and heartbreaking truth. We like to root around in the dark places, the thin places, and build warm dwellings there.

 

Whether literary, poetic, or cultural exploration, theme unites our books more than genre. 

 

Another thread that ties Mercuria Press books together is strong graphic and illustrative elements. We take great care in the design and production of our books, as our parent press, Chin Music Press has for all of its nearly twenty years of publishing. We strive to produce books as wonderful to hold as they are to read. Limited edition, handmade chapbooks and thoughtful ephemera are also in our catalog.

 

We chose the name Mercuria Press because the stories we all tell are mercurial. As folk tales or family histories or wild imaginings are passed down generation to generation, millennia to millennia, the ground on which the “truth” stands shifts and becomes overgrown. Just when you think you’ve got it, a word disappears, a concept crumbles, only to be replaced with a word and a concept that seems truer to the teller who is remaking the story as their own.