Arte Público Press of the University of Houston is the oldest and most esteemed publisher of Hispanic authors in the U.S. Dedicated to publishing contemporary Hispanic literature, Arte Público also boasts a successful children’s book imprint, Piñata Books, and the Recovery Project, which aims to recover Latino writings that were lost from the colonial period to the 1960s. At their offices in Houston, Texas, I sat down with Dr. Nicolás Kanellos, founder and director of Arte Público Press.
Frances Riddle: How did Arte Público Press start out?
Nicolás Kanellos: I first founded and edited a literary magazine, the Revista Chicano-Riqueña for some eight, nine years. This came out of the Latino Civil Rights movement where I had worked with lots of writers who didn’t have any place to publish. We founded the magazine in 1972, and by 1979, we decided that we could publish books. First we published poetry books by Nuyorican [New York Puerto Rican] writers and then went on to prose. It’s called Arte Público because we were influenced by the public art movement, which meant we believed that there was art and culture in the community, and we wanted to take that art and format it and give it back to the community and make it known to everyone.
FR: What gap in the publishing landscape does Arte Público Press aim to fill?
NK: Well, we have about 45-50 million Latino inhabitants in the United States, which makes the U.S. either the second or third largest Spanish-speaking country in the world. The publishing industry is not addressing that audience and is not publishing Latinos. Some people have bandied around this term about the Latin Boom in U.S. publishing, and it’s not true. If you read the pages of Publisher’s Weekly, there are hundreds of thousands of books published in the U.S. every year, and you’d be hard pressed to find more than 20 literary books published by the mainstream presses. So there’s really a lack of interest and a lack of access for Latinos. We exist to give access to Latino writers and to Latino intellectuals.
FR: What changes in the publishing industry have you witnessed since you began in 1972?
NK: There have been many changes in publishing that have taken place. One of the first revolutions was desktop publishing in the mid 1980s. The advent of computers meant not only that people had the ability to typeset their own books, but small publishing houses now had the capacity to eliminate the compositors and do the job themselves. This brought down the cost of publishing greatly and made for more access for us and for our writers. The next change, which was very, very important, was the internet. Not only because eventually e-books would be available, but because we have the capacity today, and as of the early 1990s, to get an electronic text from an author, edit it, then send it over to our designers, then send the books electronically to the printers, and then back. So with one fell swoop we’ve eliminated big intermediaries and big costs in the whole publishing world. And the larger publishing industry from books to newspapers has benefited also. The third big change, of course, is the whole advent of e-books and the e-book retailers and wholesalers. It’s a whole new world, and it’s one that’s changing rapidly, so it takes a lot to keep up with these changes. In our particular instance, what is also important is the growth of Latinos in the United States, which has impacted our publishing. Even though the broader industry lags, we have larger Latino audiences; the schools, which are a big market for us, have to respond.
FR: What have been some of the biggest challenges Arte Público has faced?
NK: One of the biggest challenges is the concentration of information and entertainment in very few hands. Large multinational corporations have taken over everything, so there’s fewer and fewer opportunities to get our books reviewed and otherwise noticed. Book reviews are being syndicated among the newspaper chains so they’re no longer reflecting local tastes and local authors, and they’re basically reviewing the books of the big corporate publishers that buy ads. It’s a freeze-out and that extends to other media, to radio and television. Even in selling foreign rights, it’s dominated by the large commercial publishers, and there are very few of them. Basically, today there are only seven commercial publishers in the United States. There are a whole bunch of small ones, but the major publishers that you think you’re buying books from are really conglomerates of 10, 12 publishing houses that still go by separate names, but are really only one publishing house. And it’s places like Newscorp/Fox Media that control television, newspapers, and publishing houses like Harper Collins, everything. So that’s a big challenge for us. It means that we have a hard time getting our writers talked about unless we buy ads, and we don’t have the capital to buy ads.
FR: What have been some of your successes?
NK: Despite this bleak landscape, we’ve had a few of bestsellers, like Rain of Gold by Victor Villaseñor, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, and various others. Some of them have gone onto other media, to TV and movies, foreign rights. Our internal success is with our children’s and young adult publishing, and our external success is with authors we have launched who have gone on to win very competitive national and international awards. Sandra Cisneros became a MacArthur Fellow, and just recently Rolando Hinojosa won the National Book Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award. We published all of his books, so that was a very big recognition for him and for us.
FR: Can you give us your list of top Hispanic writers you think we should all be reading?
NK: I think everyone should read Rolando Hinojosa and Graciela Limón, both novelists, and Sergio Troncoso and Judith Ortíz Cofer.
FR: Do you think Hispanic literature will one day have a stronger foothold in the U.S. publishing industry?
NK: As the Latino presence grows and we produce more and more educated and professional people, we’re going to have to give them art and literature and all kinds of cultural products to consume, so it can’t help but grow. We’re lagging behind now because of market structure, but in the future all of those things will be in place and educated people will demand books, whether in electronic or in print form. And we’ll be there.