Our Mission
Skull + Wind Press strives to publish diverse voices of national importance while we closely tend to our regional responsibilities. As an organization based in, and in love with, our local community in Albuquerque and our wider communities in New Mexico and the Southwest, we also strive to foster an inclusive community that can support these voices. The long history of art, artists, and artist communities in New Mexico—from the earliest Apache, Dine, and Pueblo artists up through the Taos Art Colony and into the present day—will always inform, guide, and inspire how we run our press and position ourselves on the land we occupy and the space we take up in our community.
Our Founder and Publisher
Trevor Ketner is a non-binary poet, critic, seven-year publishing professional, and born-and-raised Burqueñx. Their vision for Skull + Wind comes out of their experience working for amazing literary organizations wherever they go. Formerly the Assistant Poetry Editor for Slice Magazine , they’ve also worked in editorial, marketing, and admin positions for the illustrious Graywolf Press in Minneapolis and the upstart Catapult in New York City. In Minneapolis, literary organizations like Graywolf, The Loft Literary Center, Milkweed Editions, and Coffee House Press act as centers of the local and regional writing community. In coming home to Albuquerque, Trevor’s real hope is to establish Skull + Wind Press as the nucleus and catalyst for a similar literary community in New Mexico. If you are interested in learning more about Trevor and their own writing, you can visit their website here: trevorketner.com.
Our Community Commitment
Literacy rates in New Mexico are low as anyone familiar with New Mexico knows. What’s amazing about presses is they can act as lightning rods and rallying points for community literacy. They can, as the Loft and Catapult both have, expand into offering community classes. Additionally, poetry’s current massive cultural impact and popularity both show that people want to read. They just need to be given them something worth reading. We want to give them poetry that is important, to them and to the world. We want to give them something they’ve been missing.
We hope, in small but growing ways, to do what we can to amplify voices that have been
neglected, to open up the idea of what an inclusive literature looks like, and to make ourselves into something that every city, but especially Albuquerque, needs—a literary hub with resources for our community.
Using small presses like Graywolf Press, Coffee House Press, and Milkweed Editions as models, we hope to establish Skull + Wind as a nexus for community in Albuquerque, a literary entity open to the needs of the community of which we are part. Beyond offering writing classes and supporting literacy efforts, future hopes include establishing a brick-and-mortar indie bookstore in Albuquerque, sustainable reading series, and creating paid positions starting with paid part-time internships and eventually including full-time positions beginning with development and marketing.
Specific Vision for our First Year:
Across two seasons (fall and spring) we will publish two chapbooks and two full-length poetry collections. Here’s how we hope things will break down:
Fall
One bilingual chapbook
One full-length poetry debut
Spring
One bilingual chapbook
One full-length 2nd or 3rd poetry full-length collection via our Seconds + Thirds Series
(While these are our publishing goals it is worth noting how impossible it is to commit to anything before we see what work comes our way and is offered to us when we ask so
anything could happen—it’s part of what makes publishing exciting! This is our hope and we will work toward it and then with what we fall in love with along the way.)