This year they printed a second fiction title, Drown/Sever/Sing, which is a collection of retellings of Colombian legends and myths. It always felt to me like I was letting somebody else control the presentation, and therefore reception, of the work I’m creating, and that’s a feeling I’m uncomfortable with.”Īnomalous released four new titles at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference this spring 2015, and had record sales. A lot of people don’t push against those boundaries. “You open a Microsoft Word document and a lot of decisions have already been made for you, things like the space between lines and letters, the fonts, the width of the page, the height of the page. “I’m interested in how the format affects the content,” she says. The Anomalous catalog now comprises more than a dozen books. A year after beginning the website, Anomalous began selling print books produced on its letterpress. But Erica had no plans of giving up print altogether. Each digital issue was, and still is, hand coded, page by page, bringing the artisanal labor of printing into the Internet age. While Anomalous began in 2011 as an online journal, Erica conceived of the business as the publishing of handmade texts. There she started a small press called Anomalous. A year after she returned to the States, Mena dove back into academia for an MFA in literary translation at the University of Iowa.
“I got lucky, because it turned out that running a journal was something that I loved doing, and it’s something I’ve continued doing ever since.”Īfter graduating from UMass Boston, Mena worked as a catalogue designer for an art gallery in Harvard Square for a year, and then moved to England for an MPhil in Literary Theory from the University of Cambridge. “I still have the journals that I published,” Mena says. That experience encouraged her to pursue a career in literature. Mena led The Watermark through its most productive period to date, fall 2004 to spring 2006, publishing an issue each semester until she graduated. There wasn’t a lot of structure, and we were like, ‘Maybe it’ll come out and maybe it won’t.’” “I think I was the only one who was willing to take the job,” she says. Mena showed up to the meeting as a reader of The Watermark, and left as its editor. The editors exhausted themselves on an elegant and studious volume that was published a few weeks before their graduation, but hadn’t had time to hire replacements. She’d been there once before to help read submissions for the student literary journal, The Watermark. In the spring of 2004, Erica Mena ventured into the Student Media Office at UMass Boston.
Home › Academics › College of Liberal Arts › English Department › Spotlight: Alumni › Profile: Erica Mena ’06 Profile: Erica Mena ’06 "ICARUS ALSO FLEW": Erica Mena (BA '06) Poet, Publisher, and Executive Director of the American Literary Translators Association
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