Middle-America's most engaging authors since 1998.
Middle-America's most engaging authors since 1998.
Spartan Press was launched in spring of 1998 by Jason Ryberg and Will Leathem as a vehicle to give voice to Middle-American writers whose work did not fit into the more calcified commercial and academic-centric publishing apparatus.
Since then, Spartan Press has brought to print over 400 titles of poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction.
Spartan’s main goals were to provide writers with professional, eye-catching products (books) that stood apart from the usual POD schlock, and to do so at a price point where working authors could earn meaningful financial returns on far smaller print-run quantities than the existing publishers that seemed to siphon off most (if any) financial reward from work.
Spartan Press maintains several Imprints to better focus awareness of author work.
Spartan Press - Our premiere imprint, features the work of established writers proactively publishing, touring and actively engaging readers through appearances in person as well as via broadcast media, blogs, podcasts or other forms of social media.
Additional imprints include: Stubborn Mule, KungFu Treachery, and Luchador.
WTF (Write the Future) — Serves author-directed endeavors, where the author assumes a greater role in content, editing, and presentation.
Kraken & Bear — A joint publishing project with Club Medici arts nonprofit. Featuring new-release original work, re-issues of best-selling out of print Spartan titles as well as one-off projects and of classic titles.
OAC Press — A joint publishing project with the Osage Arts Community featuring work created in residence and in cooperation with the OAC arts residency program.
Spartan Press does not accept unsolicited manuscripts. You may send a query letter describing why your book of poems fits into one of our ongoing series.
We publish authors working across all styles, but with a focus on the indie writers who tour and performs frequently. We only publish full-length poetry manuscripts.
Jason Ryberg
spartanpresskc@gmail.com
Jason Ryberg is the author of over twenty books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, several angry letters to various magazine and newspaper editors, and a box full of notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel. He is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community. He lives part-time in Kansas City, with a rooster named Little Red and a billy goat named Giuseppe, and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.
W.E. Leathem
w84gdo2@gmail.com
Co-founder and co-owner of Kansas City’s legendary Indy bookstore, Prospero’s Books, Leathem is a poet, essayist and fiction writer with several full-length books, dozens of published short stories, essays and fictions. He is founder and Executive Director of the Arts Nonprofit Club Medici.