Belladonna* Collaborative (or Belladonna Series, Inc.) is a small press non-profit publisher and collaborative organization based in Brooklyn, New York City. It was founded in 1999 by Rachel Levitsky as a reading series at Bluestockings in New York, NY. The reading series quickly expanded to a matrix of readings, publications, and informal salons, featuring avant-garde feminist writing, with an emphasis on hybrid and language-focused writing. Currently, the press operates as a non-hierarchical collaborative, publishing books and hosting literary events with attention to diversity in its roster of authors and editorial board.
History
Belladonna* was started as a reading and salon series at Bluestockings, a bookstore on New York City's Lower East Side, in August 1999. The first publications were postcards by kari edwards for the May 4, 2000 reading at Bluestockings. Following the edwards postcards, and in collaboration with Boog Literature, Belladonna* began to publish commemorative "chaplets" (staple-bound pamphlets typically with fewer pages than a chapbook, produced in very small print runs) of its readers' work.
In 2006 Belladonna* published chapbooks by Erica Hunt and Akilah Oliver and co-published its first full-length book, Four from Japan: Contemporary Poetry & Essays by Women, in collaboration with Litmus Press. The following year, Belladonna* published its first full-length books independently: Open Box by Carla Harryman and Mauve Sea-Orchids, a book of poems in Spanish and English with facing page translations, by Lila Zemborain (translated by Rosa Alcalá and Mónica de la Torre). In celebration of its ten-year anniversary in 2009, Belladonna* published The Elders Series—eight multiply authored perfect-bound books highlighting the continuity and transformation of the ideas, poetics, and artistic/political concerns of its poets' circle. Each book was conceived as "an anthology and a conversation between the guest curator and the elder(s) she hosts." Since 2009, Belladonna* has published, on average, two full-length books and 14 chaplets a year.
Awards
In 2009, Bharat Jiva by kari edwards (co-published with Litmus Press) was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Literature. Erica Doyle's Proxy was a 2013 finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Poetry and a winner of the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award in 2014. LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs was a winner of the 2016 Whiting Award for TwERK. Cancer Angel by Beth Murray won the California Book Award for Poetry in 2016. In 2015, Sophie Seita won a PEN-HEIM Translation Grant for her translation of Uljana Wolf's Subsisters. In 2016, an excerpt of Subsisters won second place in Asymptote's Close Approximations Translation Contest.
Readings
The Belladonna* reading series is foundational to the press's history and mission, predating even the first publications. The series is run by the reading series curators. Since 1999, curators have included Marcella Durand and Rachel Levitsky, erica kaufman, Emily Skillings, Krystal Languell, Jamila Wimberly, Cara Benson, Ariel Goldberg, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Saretta Morgan, Chia-Lun Chang, Ana Paula, and Asiya Wadud. Belladonna* collaborates on the series with performance venues, academic institutions, arts and literary organizations, such as Abrons Art Center, Asian American Writers' Workshop, Berl's Brooklyn Poetry Shop, BGSQD, Bluestockings, Bowery Poetry Club, Brooklyn Art Library, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Public Library, Bryant Park Reading Series, CUNY Graduate Center, Dixon Place, Eugene Lang College, Housing Works Bookstore, La Casa Azul Bookstore, Lambda Literary, The Lesbian Herstory Archives, McNally Jackson, The Poetry Project, Pioneer Works, Pratt Institute, Queen's College, St. Mark's Bookstore, Unnameable Books, and ZieherSmith.