The Fiction Collective, founded in a Brooklyn apartment more than 30 years ago and wandering from university affiliation to university affiliation ever since, has landed once again—at the University of Alabama Press, where it will be an imprint under the directorship of Dan Ross. The Collective, which began as "not a publishing house," in the words of cofounder Ron Sukenick, but a cooperative run by writers, has a backlist of more than 200 books, including early works by Russell Banks, Mark Leyner, Sukenick and Jonathan Baumbach. The uncompromising adventurousness of the list continues to keep it relevant, especially in English departments where experimental poetics and literature holds sway. FC2, as it has been known since an editorial board restructuring in 1989, is headed up by novelist R.M. Berry. The board will make all its own editorial decisions, something Alabama director Ross welcomes. "We've been looking for a way to branch Alabama into fiction and poetry, but if you announce something like that in Writer's Market, manuscripts come pouring in. We wanted to have people in place to make the decisions." Ross says that the FC2 program makes a nice fit at Alabama, since its own backlist includes an impressive poetics series, with books by Marjorie Perloff, Juliana Spahr, Nathaniel Mackey and Rosmarie Waldrop, among others. Also, two members of U. of A.'s creative writing department—Kate Bernheimer and Michael Martone—are FC2 authors and board members.
Over the years, the Collective has been associated with Brooklyn College, Illinois State, the University of Colorado, Florida State and, most recently, Northwestern, which had decided to end its arrangement. Logistically, it is an easy transition for Alabama to make, since the University of Chicago Distribution Center handles many UPs, including Northwestern and Alabama. Says Ross, "It's fiction, it's experimental, and they have a few books that do quite nicely, like Michael Martone's Blue Guide to Indiana, which sells 1,200 copies a year. This will help us; we expect it will add $60,000 a year to our sales."
