Press Profiles

Ryan Collins, executive director

MWCQC.ORG

Founded in 1979, the Midwest Writing Center (MWC) was created to provide a “permanent home” for writers in the Quad Cities. MWC, the only literary arts nonprofit in the Quad Cities, boasts a long tradition of uplifting local writers through resources, including space for book signings, events and most recently, the addition of its very own press.

“My uncle was one of the co-founders of the writing center way back when. There are a couple of events that we still do that have been going on since [the beginning],” MWC Executive Director Ryan Collins said. “Our annual Writers Conference, the original version of it, started in the mid 1970s. And then we do a thing called the Children’s Literature Festival, but we’ve been doing that since the late ’70s. They had a group of writers and they just sort of coalesced around this idea of creating a space to support local writers, to encourage people to do more writing.”

Collins joined the board in 2001 when his uncle unexpectedly died. After serving on the board for about 10 years, Collins decided to help out in a part-time position. But he’s stayed on ever since and has only gained more responsibility as time has gone on.

Although the center has moved around the Quad Cities throughout its lifespan, it is currently located in the Rock Island Public Library, where it hosts consistent programming throughout the year. After MWC had settled into its home at the library, the center began slowly looking for opportunities to publish the work that was being produced.

“Once we got a physical location in 2003, we would do kind of sporadic publications, but there wasn’t necessarily an imprint,” Collins said. “Somebody would have an idea for a program and maybe there would be a publishing aspect to it. Eventually that coalesced into an actual press and trying to have some regular publications.”

MWC Press puts out three to five titles a year. One of these titles is an annual literary magazine, The Atlas, which is a part of the summer internship program MWC hosts for 15-17 year olds.

“For most of those kids, that’s their first publication,” Collins said. “Whether or not they continue with writing [to be published], we hope they just continue to write.”

After all, encouraging people to write just for the sake of it is sort of what MWC does best—and it remains central to their mission.

“I think a lot of people are like, ‘I like to write but I’m not a writer,’

because what they actually mean is, ‘I’m not an author. It’s just something that I do,’” Collins said. “And they sort of treat it dismissively. But we think everybody’s a writer. And we’re just trying to encourage people to make writing a part of their life. Because whether or not they’re writing for publication, we believe that there’s a lot to be gained from it—for mind, body, spirit.”

Mackie Garrett, founder

INSTAGRAM.COM/508PRESS

Mackie Garrett, founder of Iowa City’s 508 Press, started taking classes on the letterpress after receiving an invitation to an event at Public Space One by a colleague.

“I was at a point with professional changes where I felt a little adrift in Iowa City and I started going to poetry readings,” Garrett said. He had long been interested in the letterpress and took his first class in hopes of slowing down and getting to know a new creative medium. “I found it was an accessible art form as someone who isn’t trained as an artist.”

The environment at Public Space One’s Iowa City Press Co-Op, where he took his first three classes in letterpress, led him to take more classes with the Paper and Book Intensive and, eventually, share his new passion with others through 508 Press. 508 Press is an independent press out of Iowa City that specializes in small runs of often event-specific poetry. Garrett created a reading series where he prints selections of the poems and stories shared for the evening’s attendees. Every print is one-of-a-kind and functions as a souvenir.

“I want a little roughness to it. I like print work that looks handmade and might have imperfections,” Garrett said. He started his reading series with broadsides in mind, saying he felt lucky that other poets were also “willing to take these opportunities to take poetry out of its traditional spaces.” The reading series usually includes visual and musical art as well.

“The overall goal is to bring different—or thought of as different or separate—art forms together,” he said. The long-term goal is to return to the recording studio (the 508 Press house band, Antifahorn, has recorded with poets at Flat Black Studio) and pay artists for their contribution at the events.

Everything about Garrett’s work at 508 is personal and based on the community in which he lives. His press is named for his grandmother’s address, where, he said, “I daydreamed of one day putting books in the world.” While he sells 508 Press publications at book and art fairs and social media, what’s most important to him is that the work is in the hands of someone who appreciates it. At many events, the printings are free or available on a sliding scale, and he loves to send work through the mail.

“There’s something to doing a limited edition print of a single poem, something special to the archival quality,” Garrett said of preparing for a reading. “I write and I want to publish and print poetry that is accessible to people who might not be interested in it or have maybe had a bad experience with it in the past.”

Garrett said he had been taught that one must either self-publish or be published on a large scale. “I wanted to put that aside and subscribe to both camps,” he said,”and I hope that in some way 508 can bring those two together. Those two different camps influence each other. I think you can have both.”

“I THINK A LoT oF PEoPLE ArE LIKE, ‘I LIKE To WrITE bUT I’m NoT A WrITEr,’ bECAUSE WHAT THEY ACTUALLY mEAN IS, ‘I’m NoT AN AUTHor. IT’S JUST SomETHING THAT I Do,’” CoLLINS SAID. “AND THEY SorT oF TrEAT IT DISmISSIvELY. bUT WE THINK EvErYboDY’S A WrITEr. AND WE’rE JUST TrYING To ENCoUrAGE PEoPLE To mAKE WrITING A PArT oF THEIr LIFE.