WritersCast is a series of podcasts about writing and the publishing industry – basically a series of recorded interviews with various different writers and publishers, recorded by David Wilk, who has been in publishing himself for several decades, at least since the 1970s. I’ve been following the series for some years, since David did an interview with the British new media writer Andy Campbell, about whose work I have written myself. Anyway, the latest one in the series is particularly interesting and inspiring: it’s an interview with Anne Kingsbury and Karl Garten about their alternative bookstore/literary centre ‘Woodland Pattern’, based in Milkwaukee. They’ve been running this place since 1979, not only stocking a huge selection of what we here in the UK would call small press poetry, but also putting on readings and literary events at the rate of about three a week. I can’t imagine how they manage to make a living out of this enterprise, and the interview doesn’t really make it clear, but the small press culture is more highly-regarded in the USA than it is in the UK, thanks to experimental poets like the Objectivists who published their work via small presses. The interview ends with a long digression about Lorine Niedecker, according to Wikipaedia ‘the only woman associated with the Objectivist poets’, who I must confess I hadn’t come across before. It’s really interesting stuff, and well worth listening to if you’ve got some spare time: http://www.writerscast.com/david-wilk-talks-with-anne-kingsbury-and-karl-gartung-about-woodland-pattern/ .