By Mo Daviau

For most of my writing life, I wrote in coffee shops. The steady thrum of people and the clink of cups helped me focus. Then, the events of 2020 brought my productive habit to an abrupt end. Since then, I got married. We bought a house. One of the three bedrooms became my office. I painted the walls magenta, purchased a large computer monitor, stuffed three bookshelves with books, and then closed the door and took to writing on the couch with my laptop.

When we visited Morgantown to celebrate the publication of my novel, Epic and Lovely, my husband and I found the Blue Moose Coffeeshop and made ourselves comfortable. I got an egg sandwich on a bagel, even though the thought passed through my mind: Should I be ordering a bagel in West Virginia? But the menu said it was made at the bakery next door, so I figured I’d give it a try.

Just a few days earlier I’d had a bagel in New York City. I have friends who have bagels shipped across the country from New York, stalwart in the notion that only New York produces worthy bagels. They badmouth the singular bagel culture of Montreal without having tried those harder, smaller, drier versions, and won’t even give my favorite local shop in Portland, Oregon (where I live), Bernstein’s, a chance, even though I think their bagels are quite good.

The Morgantown bagel ran laps around the Manhattan one, which I swear – and I am prepared to lose friends over this—tasted like a dry supermarket bagel. It came from a shop I will decline to name but has national notoriety, and it was a corporate, soulless, bland, unremarkable bagel. It could have come right off the shelf next to the low-carb tortillas. The Morgantown bagel, meanwhile, was soft, warm, and had a fantastic chew. It complimented the egg and the cream cheese with ease and perfection. It had little grill marks on the bottom. In my estimation, it was (gasp!) a perfect bagel. There was also a humble innocence about it—this bagel was sustenance. It wasn’t trying to impress anyone.

Based on what I see as an author and a bookseller, I’m of the opinion that Morgantown, West Virginia and West Virginia University Press – and the other university towns and small press publishers of this country – are turning out better bagels, and better books, than the big publishing (and baking) behemoths in Manhattan. They’re chewier, denser, and life-giving. They’re made by the writers, editors, and publishers that value poetry and prose for its own sake, not just as a commodity.

Here, let us sing the praises of the university press. University presses publish academic works but also poetry, novels, short stories, and essay collections. Sometimes, they publish the work that the big guys in New York overlooked: literature that is unique and interesting but doesn’t immediately present as commercially viable. Novels and short stories about church ladies, child abuse-preventing harpies, commercial fishermen, an island that is the home of the souls of formerly enslaved Africans, and the disabled daughter of an age-gapped Hollywood couple who only wants the baby she never thought she’d have to know love. WVUP and other small presses don’t make dry, soulless books. We as readers are fortunate to have them. Without them, some very worthwhile work would not be available to readers at all.

I work at a bookstore in Portland. No, not that one. Portland has several small, beloved, neighborhood bookstores, and the one where I work, Annie Bloom’s, has been nestled in a small residential neighborhood for nearly fifty years. It’s shops like mine that promote and support the delicate eco-system of small presses, creating space for books from WVUP and Two Dollar Radio and Red Hen Press and all the university presses and so many more. These small presses are where the wise, wonderful, strange, and inspiring bagels are coming from (okay, no more bagel metaphor, I promise).

There is a challenge in all of this: the big publishers have the resources to promote and market their books in a way that us little guys can’t. Nobody buys a book they can’t find, or they don’t know about. With the consolidation of media over the past few years, book reviews and other types of literary publicity are becoming a scarcer resource. Only a handful of books seem to get all the attention these days.

That is what it is. But, I’d like to share with you something Than Saffel, our fearless leader, said to me in a recent email, because it’s really special: With a press like WVUP, your book will be remembered and tended—it’ll become part of the family, if you will, and family, in West Virginia, is EVERYTHING—including families of choice. Your book’s life will be long, and it will be cared for. You and your novel have become a part of our family.

I can’t think of anything better than that.

I would love to let the world know about the great books coming from West Virginia University Press. And that’s what I hope to serve you here at Booktimist! Letting you and everyone else know about the wonderful ideas, stories, and scholarship coming out of our press and the region. As a novelist and bookseller, I’ll also bring you insight from the wider eco-system of the sometimes infuriating world of publishing.

Meanwhile, can someone tell the bakers at Zeke’s they make an excellent bagel, and help me find a coffee shop as warm and cozy as the Blue Moose here in Portland?