Ugly Duckling Presse is an American nonprofit art and publishing collective based in Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

, New York City that publishes small to mid-size runs of poetry, translations, lost works, and artist's books. It was founded in 1993 by Matvei Yankelevich as a college zine

Zine

A zine is most commonly a small circulation publication of original or appropriated texts and images. More broadly, the term encompasses any self-published work of minority interest usually reproduced via photocopier....

 before expanding to publishing other works in 1995. A micropress, the company uses distribution methods not traditionally seen in publishing, such as subscriptions, and gathered its early audience with guerilla marketing techniques.

Publications

Ugly Duckling Presse (UDP) focuses on new, international, and "forgotten" writers and specializes in projects that may be difficult to produce at other presses. Formats produced include full-length books, chapbook

Chapbook

A chapbook is a pocket-sized booklet. The term chap-book was formalized by bibliophiles of the 19th century, as a variety of ephemera , popular or folk literature. It includes many kinds of printed material such as pamphlets, political and religious tracts, nursery rhymes, poetry, folk tales,...

s, and broadside

Broadside (printing)

A broadside is a large sheet of paper printed on one side only. Historically, broadsides were posters, announcing events or proclamations, or simply advertisements...

s. These formats, along with UDP's magazine and newspaper, all contain handmade elements. The Presse states that these, "call attention to the labor and history of bookmaking".

Past publications include Nets by Jen Bervin, erasure poetry

Erasure poetry

Erasure poetry is a form of found poetry created by erasing words from an existing text in prose or verse and framing the result on the page as a poem. The results can be allowed to stand in situ or they can be arranged into lines and/or stanzas....

 of Shakespeare's sonnets

Shakespeare's sonnets

Shakespeare's sonnets are 154 poems in sonnet form written by William Shakespeare, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. All but two of the poems were first published in a 1609 quarto entitled SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS.: Never before imprinted. Sonnets 138 and 144...

, Poker by Tomaž Šalamun

Tomaz Salamun

Tomaž Šalamun is a Slovenian poet. He was born in 1941 in Zagreb, Croatia, and raised in Koper, Slovenia. He has published 39 collections of poetry in his native Slovenian language. Šalamun spent two years at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop in the 1970s and has lived for periods of time in...

 (which was a finalist for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation

PEN Award for Poetry in Translation

The PEN Award for Poetry in Translation honors a poetry translation published in the preceding year.The award is separate from the similar PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize.-Winners:-See also:*American poetry*List of poetry awards...

) and works by New York based writers Steve Dalachinsky

Steve Dalachinsky

Steve Dalachinsky is a New York downtown poet. He is active in the poetry, music, art and music- Free jazz scene.Dalachinsky was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1946...

 and Lewis Warsh

Lewis Warsh

Lewis Warsh was born in 1944 in the Bronx, New York. He is co-founder, with Anne Waldman, of Angel Hair Magazine and Books, and co-editor, with Bernadette Mayer, of United Artists Magazine and Books...

. The Presse also publishes a regular series of translations of Eastern European poetry. Publications include works by Czech poet Ivan Blatný

Ivan Blatný

Ivan Blatný was a Czech poet, member of Skupina 42 .-Life:...

 and Russian conceptualists Dmitri Prigov

Dmitri Prigov

Dmitri Aleksandrovich Prigov was a Russian writer and artist. Prigov was a dissident during the era of the Soviet Union and was briefly sent to a psychiatric hospital in 1986....

 and Lev Rubinstein.

In collaboration with various visual and performance artists, Ugly Duckling Presse also creates "paperless" works. These may be performed, or produced through media such as digital video, CD, or tree bark.

Premises and personnel

The Presse maintains a small workshop and letterpress studio in the Gowanus

Gowanus, Brooklyn

Gowanus is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community Board 6.The Gowanus area has been an active center of industrial and shipping activity since the 1860s...

 neighborhood in Brooklyn. Volunteer led, its current members are Phil Cordelli, G.L. Ford, Ellie Ga, Yelena Gluzman, Garth Graeper, Ryan Haley, James Hoff, David Jou, Filip Marinovic, Anna Moschovakis, Julien Poirier, Nick Rattner, Linda Trimbath, Genya Turovskaya

Genya Turovskaya

Genya Turovskaya is an American poet, born in Ukraine. Her work has been published in many journals and literary reviews. She received various awards and fellowships, such as a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, a Montana Artist Refuge Fellowship, the Witter Bynner Translation Residency at Santa Fe Art...

and Matvei Yankelevich.