Meet the books of 2027
Fifteen years ago, Unsolicited Press started publishing books from inside the walls of an old student family housing apartment on the UC Davis campus. It was a small thing, really. And it wasn’t even books at first…it was a literary journal. The team consisted of quirky, witty writers…some by the names of Nicole, Kevin, Summer, and Eric…a few came on later. Others dropped. But before we knew it, the books had more allure. The thing started breathing on its own. So we began feeding manuscripts into a small independent machine and hoped it would not catch fire.
We had no fucking clue what the catalog would become. No one could’ve predicted that there’d be hundreds of titles and hundreds of authors, or that fifteen years could be measured in manuscripts, covers, cartons, launch nights, postal receipts, alarming emails, impossible deadlines, and the occasional spectacularly stupid problem arriving at 7:57 on a Friday night.
No one told us there’d be annual bookfairs and conferences. And (breaking the wall here), no one told me that I would fall in love with a skeleton named Gary, whom I now have to determine if he is a lap infant or requires his own god damn seat.
Back then we knew something simpler: there were books we believed should exist, even when the sensible response was to lie down until the feeling passed. Well, that feeling never went away, and we’re still publishing books.
Over the last fifteen years, we’ve had freelancers and volunteers and interns staff this amazing venture. We have a small team of very reliable staff (though I will tell you, it’s not enough) that has endured every year. We edit and we design and we process and we text at 1am and we get shit done. And some shit, well, we don’t get done. And perhaps going into 15 we can find a few other folks who want to take the press to the next level with us even if it means working some odd hours.
But we’ll figure that out later. Like we always have.
Today is about the books. We’d like to let you into 2027 a bit early. The door is cracked; come on in. Inside you’ll find speculative romance, ecological poetry, absurdist novels, anthologies that literally save lives, and hybrid memoirs that are going to have you calling off of work.
But the next shelf is taking shape. It is crowded, unruly, funny, furious, tender, haunted, and already asking where we keep the extension cords. We are ready to show you what is coming. Today belongs to these books: the romantic ones, the absurd ones, the dark ones that kept their writers awake and will soon begin doing the same to readers.
But throughout 2027, we will look back across the Unsolicited Press catalog: at the books and writers who built this place, the experiments that made it worth it, the projects that became excellent cautionary tales, the people who stayed, the work that deserves another breath, and fifteen years of doing independent publishing our own way—sometimes elegantly, sometimes with packing tape, stubbornness, and the calm expression of someone standing directly in front of a small fire.
You will hear much more about that soon: the early years, the books that changed us, the decisions that made sense only in retrospect, and the fifteen-year miracle of remaining both independent and technically alive.
For now: meet 2027. The door is open. Please ignore the noise from the back room.
