About Sagging Meniscus

“Here’s a press with a name to remember. Here’s a press to impress. Here’s a press that takes chances and dances and remembers to put in its false teeth. Here’s a press in which wild cobras wear no bras. Here’s a press in which gods undress."—Jack Foley

“Punch the truth hard."—M.J. Nicholls

“Our favorite publisher of the unexpected."—Seattle Review of Books

Sagging Meniscus Press publishes nonconformist, aesthetically self-determined literature—books that want to be themselves.

☞ Read our extravagant manifesto.

From 2015–2020, Sagging Meniscus books were designed by Royce M. Becker.

From 2020–present, our Art Director is Anne Marie Hantho.

We publish the quarterly journal Exacting Clam.

We have an internship program.


Wholesale Distribution

☞ In the US, our primary distribution to libraries and brick-and-mortar booksellers is through Asterism Books.

☞ Most Sagging Meniscus books are also distributed in the US, Canada and Australia by Ingram Content Group.

☞ In the UK, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East, we are distributed by Gazelle Book Services.

Retail Information

Customers can buy our titles through Asterism.

All our titles may also be ordered from independent bookstores, or purchased directly through online retailers worldwide such as:

Bookshop.org

Blackwell’s

Barnes and Noble

Amazon


Frequently Unasked Questions

Why the odd name “Sagging Meniscus”? What does it mean?

Meniscus, from the Greek μηνίσκος, means literally crescent moon, but can also refer to a number of other crescent-shaped things:

  • a disk mounted above a Greek statue, to protect it from bird droppings.
  • a concave-convex lens.
  • the shape made by the surface of a liquid such as water in a container, curved because of surface tension (for water, concave, for mercury, convex).
  • in anatomy, the crescent-shaped cartilage found in certain joint cavities, especially the knee.

All of these interpretations resonate in our name, but as it happens the original context was the following sentence from the novel Hoptime:

They slopped around in the mud awhile, and finally cast their nets into more abundant waters, namely, the Ocean-At-Large, with its enormous meniscus sagging tautly over the chiffon of my mind. (from Part One, Chapter 18/XII)