Writer, publisher, and former bookseller, James Reich is a force to be reckoned with in the world of small press letters. Born in 1971, in Stroud, Gloucestershire in the west of England, Reich calls Bath his English home. It’s where he was a bookseller for ten years. Since 2009, Reich has lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His time in this country has been quite productive. It’s where he wrote his first book—I, Judas, published by Soft Skull in 2011—and founded Stalking Horse press in 2015. 

Founded with a condition that each author select a charitable or humanitarian organization to receive a percentage of book sales, Stalking Horse Press began with a righteous ethic combined with a mission committed to radical voices in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. It’s first and maybe still most notable title is Patricide by D Foy, a dark and gritty novel that deservedly found its way onto several “best of 2016” lists. But the range of work is what marks Stalking Horse’s reputation with books such as: The Messenger Is Already Dead, Jennifer MacBain-Stephens’ poetry collection reinforcing Joan of Arc’s status as a 21st Century feminist icon; Pax Americana, Kurt Baumeister’s dystopian novel of a future America, at turns quirky, hilarious, and darkly prescient; Jason DeBoer’s Annihilation Songs, a collection of three short stories, all reformations the words from a different Shakespeare play each; and Duncan Barlow’s haunting metaphysical noir novel, The City Awake. 

The end of 2017 also saw the release of Reich’s fourth novel, from Anti-Oedipus Press, Soft Invasions. The setting is a stylized wartime Los Angeles reminiscent of Steve Erickson’s forays into “historical” fiction while telling the story of analyst Max McKinney, his wife, their wounded son returned from the field of battle, and Sid Starr, a screenwriter and Max’s doppelgänger. Soft Invasions comes off like a psychoanalytic noir in the vein of Hitchcock’s “Spellbound,” but it reads like Raymond Chandler with a greater maturity, vocabulary, and ear for semantic nuance. The sentences themselves are something to relish. They assert and turn, a one-two punch, baiting and switching the reader between each period. Even the most utilitarian sentence has a subtle beauty. 

James Reich and I chatted through email about his new book and what it is to be a small press publisher. 

—Jordan A. Rothacker

THE BELIEVER: You were a novelist before you became a publisher, but your two most recent novels came out with Anti-Oedpius Press. Why not publish yourself? It’s certainly not unheard of at small presses.

JAMES REICH: It was fine for Ferlinghetti, right? When I think about William Blake, the Marxist in...