As you well know, Mission Creek is not just a music festival. It is also a literary festival. There are a number of really high quality presses coming through for this festival, but I defer knowledge about any of this to Joe, our resident literary organizer. While this is on my name, this post is his and it contains an interesting proposition for the daring ones of you:

There’s no harm in following in on coattails here, so allow me: AC’s right. The festival is about spaces; not only in the way we as audience and participants re-engage local venues, it’s also – and maybe more importantly – about the ways new artists and new voices fit into (or in the case of Carusella last year, underneath the rubble of) spaces we’ve all come to frequent. An artist’s capacity to own one of ours, many engaging Iowa City for the first time…there’s hardly a greater live intimacy. Mission Creek is a flurry of these moments. And intimacy at the festival is about to go to a whole new level.

Enter: Black Ocean Press. While scouring The Guardian’s website mid-January, the Books Blog featured an article titled “Written on the body: how about a literary tattoo? A US publisher is offering free books to anyone who brands themselves in tribute to one of their books. Tempted?” (Besides the awkward wording), I was. I’d done some work about a year prior for the Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature, as part of a project that began over a pint of beer at Dublin Underground when their Director was in town a year earlier. A project based on literary tattoos that spawned into a photo blog on all the ways we carry words with us; on notecards, the backs of receipts, in ballpoint on the soles of our shoes, or a line from memory. In other words, a promotion on the ways we personalize literature. Months later, there it was again, except this time the art of personalization promised a bit more on the back end.

THE DEAL: Black Ocean Press will give a lifetime subscription to anyone who tattoos themselves with some ink inspired by a Black Ocean title. Its that easy. A copy of every one of their books for the rest of your life.

OUR DEAL: Nemesis Studios (385 East College Street) will tattoo Black Ocean inspired works on discount all week of the festival! (Starting at $40 for the basics. You know the rest.) For some examples, check out their blog here and here, and their catalogue.

What’s better yet? The two will come together as part of our Lit Crawl. On Saturday, April 2nd, poets from Black Ocean Press will read from their books at Nemesis Studios from 5 – 5:45pm. Readers will include Janaka Stucky, Matthew Henrikson, Brandon Shimoda, and Paula Cisewski. Joining them, local poets B.J. Love and Katy Chrisler will also read.

There may hardly be a more intimate way to follow literature these days than through devotion to a small press’ catalogue. I also can’t think of many presses deserving of as much, in Black Ocean. (And if anyone has any dirt on them, please let me know, because right now everything they do is gold.) Their books are not only gorgeous to handle, but they’re also Best-Of material – and for the hardcore faithful out there, they recently released a Selected Poems by Dominic Mallary, lead singer from the band Last Lights.

The festival’s job is to highlight voices like Black Ocean’s, presses out there giving everything for quality books by emerging authors. For a selection of their works in-person, be sure to check out their booth at the Small Press and Literary Journal Fair at the Mill on Saturday, April 2nd, from 1 – 4:30pm. Also featured at the fair will be: Granta Magazine, The Iowa Review, Rescue Press, Wag’s Revue, Defunct Magazine, Hell Yes Press, Flim Forum, featherproof, Green Lantern Press, Black Clock, Blue//Green, PANK Magazine, Canarium Press, MAKE Magazine, Catenary Press, Lightful Press, Human 500, Further Adventure Press, the UI Center for the Book, the Iowa Youth Writers Project and UNESCO City of Literature. Filling in the spaces of the afternoon, free beer courtesy of New Belgium Brewery, and a 3pm reading sponsored by Granta Magazine, and featuring work by Sam Lipsyte, Nami Mun, Benjamin Percy, and Dora Malech.

JOSEPH TIEFENTHALER is a native Iowan who received his BA in English from the University of Iowa in 2005. At the UI, he was Editor-in-Chief of Earthwords, the undergraduate literary magazine. Currently, he divides his time between the IWP office; the Mission Creek Festival, where he is a staff member; and the Iowa Review, where he is an editorial assistant.