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Below a pale, hazy sky, along the crowded boulevards bursting with a gathering throng of diversity, LA has a secret.  Contrary to what some may believe, our sprawling hometown on the doorstep of the Pacific Ocean sustains a prolific, sophisticated community of poets and novelists, photographers and freelance writers encouraged through independent presses and publishers.

Though known more for its contributions to film, Southern California boasts a vibrant tradition of sponsoring struggling artists who are outside the grating millworks of the Hollywood machine.  Iconic novelists Ray Bradbury and Raymond Chandler absorbed the expanding transitory culture of LA and echoed its lonely grandeur with tales of science fantasy and pulp fiction.  Of course, no one can forget Mr. Charles Bukowski or John Fante (the man Bukowski called “God”) and their LA-inspired novels and stories.

Published at the behest of Buk, by LA publishing legend John Martin of Black Sparrow Press, Fante’s effusive protagonist, Arturo Bandini, pleads to an indifferent metropolis in the classic LA novel Ask The Dust,   

Los Angeles, give me some of you!  Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town.

The mission statement of the Red Hen Press in Granada Hills begins, “Our purpose is first to create and promote good writers.” 

Kate Gale, a poet, novelist, and college professor, moved to LA in1987 and here met her future husband Mark Cull, a former aerospace engineer; and the two passionate entrepreneurs founded Red Hen Press. 

“I felt that LA needed more of a literary presence, so I wanted to work on creating that.  It just seemed to me that everything was so spread out,” Gale told me.  “Red Hen wanted to carry forth that independent spirit of looking at West Coast writers.  We started off publishing poetry, then, eventually, fiction and non-fiction, and then we started the Los Angeles Review.”

As with many independent publishers across the nation, such as Graywolf Press in Saint Paul or Copper Canyon Press in Washington State, Red Hen is a non-profit organization.  ”It’s the only way we can do what we do; printing hundreds of copies at a time is expensive.”  They further enrich the community by donating books to the LA school system and scheduling presentations by poets and authors contributing to the cultural fabric of the city by creating inspirational, thought-provoking opportunities for exchanging ideas.

The editors at Red Hen read thousands of submissions each year.  “About 30 percent of what we get is from teachers and academics, but the rest is from writers from all walks of life,” said Gale.  “I want to read something that really blows my skirt up, something that’s feisty and different,” she noted.  “I’d like to find the next Kafka.” 

And poet/author Gale has a great eye for talent.  One of their writers, Chris Abani, teaches in the MFA Program at Antioch University in Los Angeles and is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of California at Riverside.  His collection of poetry, Dog Woman, is a “vision quest into one soul, one poet’s journey into the dark haunting of his own masculinity.”  Red Hen’s alums also include California Institute of the Arts poet Douglas Kearney, whose hip-hop style leaps from the page in his collection, Fear Some, and Jane Hilberry, author of the stunning, sensual collection, Body Painting.

Gale and Cull have engendered not only a vehicle where poets and authors can publish their work, but strive to give Los Angeles wordsmiths an opportunity to extend their unique vision to LA.  Gale acts as host of Red Hen’s Monday Evenings at the Geffen.  Of this experience, she writes, “Given the flowering of literature, music, and theater in this most auspicious city for the arts, we are pleased to give writers a stage to speak their voice.”  RH also head up the Poetry at the Ruskin series that combines “unbelievable performances” with complimentary wine and cheese every second Sunday of the month.