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"Back Patio is consistently delivering the good shit" - Popscure

Back Patio Press is a small, DIY press that focuses on weird writing outside the purview of established literary publishing. The press was founded in 2019 by Cavin B. Gonzalez, with an accompanying literary magazine. We published 10 books before taking a hiatus ~2022-2023, but have recently reopened to focus just on publishing books. The press is currently run by Zac Smith. We are not entirely sure who runs the twitter account.

We publish slim volumes of poetry and literary fiction, typically by debut authors. We work directly with authors, customers, and, sometimes, book stores. No agents, distributors, or PR companies. We stock and ship orders made through Flat Dog Distro by hand, but we also use Amazon KDP print-on-demand services for expanded distribution for most of our books. Our titles typically sell between 20 and 300 copies during their initial runs and have not resulted in anyone getting rich or famous.

our books

For wholesale orders, please contact us via email.

Death Egg by Nathaniel Duggan
Poetry / 99 Pages / Soft, matte cover
Death Egg is a collection of ~60 poems about unemployment, love, jellyfish, despair, and apocalypses. Each poem is a bleak, dense rumination on contemporary American life, creating both powerful levity and despair with its exploration of the banal through dramatic, video game-like conceits, honing in on the uniquely modern insanity of knowing everything and nothing all at once. Cinematically tongue-in-cheek yet deeply earnest, unique yet relatable, this is the final egg: the death egg, fortress of loss and takeout receipts.

Excerpts:
2 Poems
3 Poems
X-Parasite
3 Poems
Variant
Vasectomy
4 Poems

Press:
Interview on the Lo-Fi Lit Podcast
Interview on the Beyond Heat Death Podcast
Interview on the Self Exposure Podcast



Purchase via Flat Dog Distro or Amazon

Check it out on Goodreads

Sad Sad Boy by Michael O'Brien
Poetry / 69 Pages / Soft, matte cover
Maybe you're Sad Boy. Maybe you're not. Eat acorns to kill your soul. Catch moths. Break horses. Live with a heart the size of Danny Devito.Your father has died. There is nothing in the bag of carrots. Blending poignant and strange haiku-like imagery with a minimal, laconic style, Sad Sad Boy is a calm, bleak, weird, and inventive collection of short fiction by internationally renown poet Michael O'Brien.


Excerpts:
Being Sad is Sad, Bro

Press:
Read & loved by Dennis Cooper

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Liver Mush by Graham Irvin
Poetry / 134 Pages / Soft, glossy cover
Liver Mush is a book about liver mush. Liver mush is a pork liver and cornmeal based food eaten mostly for breakfast and mostly in Western North Carolina. Liver mush is a hard sell because most people don't want to eat liver and most people question meat called mush. Liver Mush is a collection of stories and poems based on the conflict of bad sounding things being good. Good seeming things being bad. Most things being unidentifiable. Memory being blurry and vague. Home being slathered on a biscuit. Home being a cat named Bambi. Liver Mush is a book for people who feel bad after eating too much but keep on eating. It's a question that doesn't matter and an answer that does: Yes, I want some liver mush.

"I enjoyed Liver Mush—a fun, funny, playful, original, food-heavy, Bambi-including book of poems and prose." -Tao Lin

Excerpts:
Liver Mush is an Essay About My Mom
3 Liver Mush Poems
7 Short Liver Mush Poems

Press:
Review in Misery Tourism
Review in Triumph of the Now
Interview on Vol. 1 Brooklyn
Interview on Hobart
Interview on the Textual Healing podcast
Interview on the Life of Writers podcast
Interview on the Writing the Rapids podcast

Author Contact:
grahamirvin90 [at] gmail.com
Neutral Spaces page

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Good at Drugs by KKUURRTT
Novel / 242 Pages / Soft, glossy cover
The last American music festival. Psychedelics, nose drugs, and house music. Except this time something feels different. Not sure what? End of the world? Drug-induced conspiracy? Nah. An adventure in the mind of an adventurous mind. Tripping, rolling, and dissociating through the musical and/or pharmacological ropes course that is a three day music festival.

"Good At Drugs is a garrulous book full of despicable characters, unabashed heathenism and the nearly unintelligible ramblings of a degenerate drug abuser on the cusp of a midlife crisis. In short I wish I had the talent and experience to write a novel as pure and beautiful myself." - Steve Anwyll, author of Welfare

Excerpts:
Whoops Did Too Much
John B2B Paul B2B George B2B Ringo

Press:
Review on BoingBoing
Interview in X-Ray Lit Mag
Interview on the Textual Healing podcast


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Watertown by Dan Eastman
Poetry / 109 Pages / Soft, matte cover
Watertown is a book of poems about traffic accidents, dive bars, drunk dads, Wrestlemania XIV, peanut butter sandwiches, piss stains in the snow, first kisses, and those little trees that dangle from your rear view mirror as you slip over black ice on the way to your minimum wage job. It's a nostalgia trip for people who hate nostalgia trips. It's about loving something that will never love you back. It's a place somewhere upstate. It's Watertown.

Excerpts:
A Town Called Gravity

Press:
Interview on WPBS
Interview on the Writing the Rapids podcast
Interview on Another F*cking Writing Podcast
Interview on the People are the Enemy podcast

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Numbskull by No Glykon
Novel / 130 Pages / Soft, matte cover
Numbskull is a cat-type thing. It’s a safe word for having serious conversations. It’s graffiti scrawled on a broken speaker. Framed by No Glykon’s fine-tuned minimalism, Numbskullis a hazy shot tracking youth in decay: four f**kheads flickering through basement noise shows, the gun aisle in Walmart, internships out in Endless Summer, and trepidatious texts about maybe getting some drinks tomorrow night. Everything in Numbskull is a little blurry or out of focus or whatever. So go ahead and tear up your clothes for fashion. Grow some golden antlers. Put an apple on your head and let 'Numbskull' pull the trigger.

"Numbskull is like the dream you have after getting high and staring at the sun for too long, a dream you don't want to wake up from. It's populated by people you know and people you want to. Its images slot into the folds of your brain and stay there... You will want to read Numbskull on an endless loop, like leaving a song on repeat until it becomes part of the texture of your life." -- Cassandra de Alba, author of Ugly/Sad

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Venice by T. J. Larkey
Novel / 168 Pages / Soft, matte cover
Ty has escaped to Los Angeles. Stuck in a cycle of wandering the boardwalk in search of a dealer and attending group interviews for minimum-wage jobs, Ty soon finds himself even more broke than before. Can he get it together? Ideally, maybe. That might be a stretch, though. Told through the dry nonchalance of an American everyman, T.J. Larkey weaves a darkly funny adventure full of isolation, self destruction, and breaking bread with a mouse.

Excerpts:
Tough / Mouse


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Time. Wow. by Neil Clark
Short stories / 87 Pages / Soft, glossy cover
A love story spanning 65 million years. A kid with a skyscraper growing on his head. The fate of a note sitting in a jacket pocket for decades. A rumour of a black hole hiding in the ocean. In Neil Clark's stunning debut collection, the cosmic and the mundane collide, drawing the reader through breathless twists of fate and exposing the poignant truths hidden where you least expect them. Clark's succinct and imaginative prose glints like old starlight on a new diamond ring.

Excerpts:
Watermelon Skies
Two Earthlings
+0
Pen

Press:
Review in Bending Genres
Review in Lily Poetry Review
Interview with Tommy Dean

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Photographs of Madness by Alec Ivan Fugate
Novella / 107 Pages / Soft, matte cover
There exists an apartment that omits a warm and comfortable smell. Many have lived in it. All have gone missing, met a form of madness in that wicked place. Photographs of Madness: Inside Out is a poetically styled flash fiction collection composed of four parts. Each section spans years between the last, linking each of the four unique character through the horrors they experienced in their cursed lives. Observe as the larger sickness at hand unfolds, dare to unveil the secrets behind that secret, damp door that reeks of cardamon pods. Using an abstract writing style and unique typesetting, Fugate showcases rapid mental decline and surreal imagery in this emotionally provocative and unnerving work.

"It’s the kind of text that is imbued with all of the best stuff: hidden meanings, implied silences and phantasmagorical imagery. The use of repetition here is fastidious and honestly, astounding. This is real work— work that reads like it was translated meticulously, without losing or sacrificing any of the heart." - Mike Kleine, author of Kanley Stubrick

Excerpts:
Part One: Flask Drowning

Press:
Review on Biblioculus

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Note: We do not accept pitches, proposals, or unsolicited manuscripts at this time.

FAQ

Q: Will you publish my book?
A: No, we publish only via direct solicitation.

Q: When will the magazine come back?
A: Yeah sure why not.

Q: Is Cavin still involved with the press?
A: Just like in the movie Snowpiercer, Cavin will always be the heart and soul of Back Patio Press, even if he's not handling the business side of things.

Q: What is Flat Dog Distro?
A: Flat Dog Distro is our primary online storefront. It stocks Back Patio books as well as other books/art/items by Back Patio authors or associates from the online indie writing world extended universe. Items are packed and shipped by hand and usually include freebies. Flat Dog City is/was also a temporary imprint for limited edition books, such as orz by Troy James Weaver and I Hope You Enjoy the Food by Zac Smith.

Q: Will you stock my book(s) at Flat Dog Distro?
A: If we're already buds, hit us up. If you're a stranger, we probably won't.

contact

please direct all publicity, wholesale, and/or other questions to backpatiopress at gmail dot com, or zac directly, if you have his info

friends

if you like us or our books, here are some other publishers you may like:
muumuu house
house of vlad
future tense
rejection letters
malarkey books
gob pile press
word west
apocalypse party
trident press
ghost city press
expat press
maudlin house