For Cardboard House Press, a Phoenix-based bilingual publisher of Latin American and Spanish poetry in translation, the everyday material in its name is central to how it thinks about\u2014and makes\u2014books. Cardboard House\u2019s catalog is largely inspired by the cartonera publishing movement in Latin America, says founder and editorial director Giancarlo Huapaya. The grassroots phenomenon began in Argentina in 2003 and centers on the production of handmade books using cardboard, which is cheap and readily accessible.<\/p>\n
Since its start in 2014, Cardboard House has hosted 120 bookmaking workshops across the country, from Brooklyn to Bloomington, Ind., to Santa Cruz, Calif. In addition to its chapbooks and cardboard books, which are assembled by hand in community workshops run by a team of volunteer bookmakers called the Cartonera Collective, the nonprofit press also publishes full-length paperback poetry collections, which are printed by Ingram and Bookmobile but feature handmade jackets.<\/p>\n
In its publishing and its programming, Cardboard House has developed a sort of polyglot ethics, pointing toward what Huapaya describes as \u201ctwo broader goals: to create spaces for language justice and to re-form and reformulate audiences.\u201d The press\u2019s workshops, readings, board meetings, and conversations with volunteers generally occur bilingually, between English and Spanish. <\/p>\n
Cardboard House has so far built a list of 48 titles, all of which are bilingual editions. Its most popular sellers include Album of Fences<\/a> by the Mexican poet Omar Pimienta and Boat People<\/a> by the Puerto Rican poet Mayra Santos-Febres, both of which address life and politics along different U.S. borders, as well as The Equestrian Turtle and Other Poems<\/a> by the Peruvian poet C\u00e9sar Moro, the only Latin American to participate in the original Surrealist movement. All titles\u2014whether made by hand or by machine\u2014receive ISBNs and are distributed by Asterism.<\/p>\n The press generally prioritizes authors who have not yet been translated into English, and hopes to serve as a springboard for them to find homes at larger presses. In 2023, Cardboard House introduced anglophone readers to the Peruvian poet Tilsa Otta with the publication of And Suddenly I Was Just Dancing<\/a>; Graywolf Press went on to publish her collected poems, The Hormone of Darkness<\/a>, the following year.<\/p>\n \u201cThe way poetry is written in Latin America is not institutionalized in the same way writing is in the United States,\u201d Huapaya says. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to sustain oneself in a publishing market shaped by institutional power, the MFA, competition, and the author-as-brand and dominated by English.\u201d<\/p>\n With typical print runs of 800\u20131,000 copies for paperback collections and 350\u2013550 copies for chapbooks and cardboard books, Cardboard House can\u2019t sustain its efforts through book sales alone. Grants and individual donors help fill the gap, says board member Honora Spicer, but the press has long \u201coperated on a shoestring budget through the work of volunteers and many in-kind donations of space, materials and expertise.\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time, \u201cpart of what makes Cardboard House and other small presses exist is working at a scale that\u2019s sustainable for us,\u201d says Cartonera Collective member Ryan Greene. \u201cThere are modes of engagement with books beyond simply buying them. These are things we make together.\u201d<\/p>\n