Welcome!
If you love fiction and are tired of the bland or gimmicky books championed by media book clubs and stocked prominently on the shelves of your local super-store, you've come to the right place!
OV Books is a not-for-profit, independent press devoted to keeping books of short fiction alive and well in a dominant corporate publishing climate that increasingly marginalizes the short story form. Publishing short story collections, novels in stories, and themed anthologies, OV Books has offices in Chicago and Los Angeles, and is an imprint of Dzanc Books, located in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Founded in 2004 as an offshoot of Other Voices literary magazine (1984-2007), OV Books aims to give writers and readers options beyond what the marketing departments at the big publishers think you should read. By keeping our list very small (1-2 books per year), OV Books offers writers a unique and highly personalized publishing experience, with perks many small independent publishers are unable to undertake due to expending all their resources on publishing more books. At OV Books, we are devoted to the realization that a book needs readers, which means publicity and intense individual attention for every title we put out.
Through our website and many national events, as well as our presence at book fairs and conferences, we also aim to be highly accessible to our readers, constantly in dialogue about how to meet the needs and desires of short fiction fans and all literature lovers. The work we publish does not fit any formula: both traditional and avant-garde forms are embraced. Our only prerequisites are excellence, originality and risk-taking. We publish socially relevant, emotionally challenging fiction that, for the most part, would at one time likely have been embraced by the larger publishing houses, but has now been pushed out in favor of such fads as celebrity memoirs, chick-lit, and too-often white-washed literary fiction. Our fiction is accessible and engaging, not aimed at a "fringe" market. We aim simply to publish some of the best contemporary short fiction being written today: provocative in content, memorable in prose, and easy to enjoy by anyone who loves to read and relishes a good story and a strong voice.
If you're interested in further information or dialogue about the crucial role of independent presses in the current publishing climate, or other issues regarding publishing trends, please visit our links page for blogs dedicated to keeping such discussion and dissent alive and well in American letters!
If you love fiction and are tired of the bland or gimmicky books championed by media book clubs and stocked prominently on the shelves of your local super-store, you've come to the right place!
OV Books is a not-for-profit, independent press devoted to keeping books of short fiction alive and well in a dominant corporate publishing climate that increasingly marginalizes the short story form. Publishing short story collections, novels in stories, and themed anthologies, OV Books has offices in Chicago and Los Angeles, and is an imprint of Dzanc Books, located in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Founded in 2004 as an offshoot of Other Voices literary magazine (1984-2007), OV Books aims to give writers and readers options beyond what the marketing departments at the big publishers think you should read. By keeping our list very small (1-2 books per year), OV Books offers writers a unique and highly personalized publishing experience, with perks many small independent publishers are unable to undertake due to expending all their resources on publishing more books. At OV Books, we are devoted to the realization that a book needs readers, which means publicity and intense individual attention for every title we put out.
Through our website and many national events, as well as our presence at book fairs and conferences, we also aim to be highly accessible to our readers, constantly in dialogue about how to meet the needs and desires of short fiction fans and all literature lovers. The work we publish does not fit any formula: both traditional and avant-garde forms are embraced. Our only prerequisites are excellence, originality and risk-taking. We publish socially relevant, emotionally challenging fiction that, for the most part, would at one time likely have been embraced by the larger publishing houses, but has now been pushed out in favor of such fads as celebrity memoirs, chick-lit, and too-often white-washed literary fiction. Our fiction is accessible and engaging, not aimed at a "fringe" market. We aim simply to publish some of the best contemporary short fiction being written today: provocative in content, memorable in prose, and easy to enjoy by anyone who loves to read and relishes a good story and a strong voice.
If you're interested in further information or dialogue about the crucial role of independent presses in the current publishing climate, or other issues regarding publishing trends, please visit our links page for blogs dedicated to keeping such discussion and dissent alive and well in American letters!
Call for Submissions
This groundbreaking anthology, edited by Stacy Bierlein, Kat Meads and controversial fiction writer Cris Mazza, notorious for her candid explorations of sexuality, will investigate the sexual experiences and identities of male characters as envisioned by female writers.
Throughout history, male writers from D.H. Lawrence to Phillip Roth have defined sex in literature, including female sexuality. Rare examples of women writers’ sexual explorations were either suppressed or treated as trivial. While women writers in a post-Erica-Jong era have claimed the female sexual experience for themselves, those attempting to explore sex from a male character’s point of view are still often challenged for their so-called lack of credibility, or for trying to push a feminist agenda.
Of course, great works of literature involve writers stepping far outside their own experiences—gender, age, social class, race, nation—to approach a wider envisioning and understanding of the world. In Men in Bed, today’s prominent women writers, alongside emerging talent, explore the provocative and historically pertinent sphere of writing sex through the male lens, thereby reaching a greater understanding not only of human sexuality but of literary tradition and the power of the creative imagination.
Guidelines:
Men in Bed: Women Writers on the Male Sexual Experience
Forthcoming from Other Voices BooksThis groundbreaking anthology, edited by Stacy Bierlein, Kat Meads and controversial fiction writer Cris Mazza, notorious for her candid explorations of sexuality, will investigate the sexual experiences and identities of male characters as envisioned by female writers.
Throughout history, male writers from D.H. Lawrence to Phillip Roth have defined sex in literature, including female sexuality. Rare examples of women writers’ sexual explorations were either suppressed or treated as trivial. While women writers in a post-Erica-Jong era have claimed the female sexual experience for themselves, those attempting to explore sex from a male character’s point of view are still often challenged for their so-called lack of credibility, or for trying to push a feminist agenda.
Of course, great works of literature involve writers stepping far outside their own experiences—gender, age, social class, race, nation—to approach a wider envisioning and understanding of the world. In Men in Bed, today’s prominent women writers, alongside emerging talent, explore the provocative and historically pertinent sphere of writing sex through the male lens, thereby reaching a greater understanding not only of human sexuality but of literary tradition and the power of the creative imagination.
Guidelines:
Literary fiction only
Sexually frank work invited; must have strong literary merit
All work should be self-contained and less than 10,000 words.
Previously published stories eligible if the author has retained rights
Submit work via email to meninbedstories@yahoo.com
Please include a brief biographical note.
