Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Paige Johnson. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Paige, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
About 5 years ago I met founder of Outcast Press, Sebastian Vice (https://canvasrebel.com/meet-sebastian-vice/), on a writing site, where he had a group called The Transgressive Mind. I never heard the term for that fiction before, but it was a popular space for amateur writers to post dark stories with an artsy cannibalistic logo, and the high literary examples included my favs: American Psycho, Lolita, and A Clockwork Orange.
When I was in school, I always used to say, “I read so much but like so little,” but that was because I didn’t know what to call what I was looking for: degenerate or ironic tales about outsiders like criminals or fetishists, stories that would let me glimpse more exciting underground lives like you’d see on Soft White Underbelly interviews.
Many writing critique sites I was on catered too much to the opposite: light romance written by religious teens or dime-a-dozen fantasy written by unsubtle fan-ficers. I craved the taboo but literary. A place where readers could get past complaining about “immoral” themes and focus on the mechanics and entertainment.
Though I’d entered dozens of short story contests, I’d never gotten past the final rounds (minus school ones) until Sebastian’s Transgressive group. So appreciative of the cash-prize second-place I got, I started talking to Seb more one-on-one. Soon and since, we were talking every day like best friends, him recommending books like Choke by Chuck Palahniuk or Tampa by Allissa Nutting that immediately slid into my top ten.
Once the writing site got as bland as everyone I’d been on before, the group was banned for other writers ironically complaining of too much cursing and lack of censorship. That’s when Sebastian decided we should start our own truly free venture. We had (and still do) the Discord server where we used to host weekly workshops and our own crit site called Interest Circle. Then about 2 1/2 years ago, we Kickstarted our brand of transgressive/dirty realism literature we simplified into calling outcast fiction, thus Outcast Press was born and has given me purpose during a very turbulent time.
Paige, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am the main editor and co-owner/founder of Outcast Press, with Sebastian Vice being the head. We strive to put out a subversive book every month, whether that’s drug-drenched internal-search novels, novellas/memoirs with prosey dark humor, or illustrated, rock ‘n’ roll-flavored poetry. We also love and got our start doing 20-sstory anthologies, like In Filth It Shall Be Found or Diner Noir with transgressive legends Craig Clevenger or Lauren Sapala or talented newbies we’re proud to showcase,
Lately, we love partnering with similar indie publishers who take pride in grit lit or charity ventures. Ex. Urban Pigs Press w/ the short story collection Hunger for food banks, Anxiety Press’ (who does most of our cover art) Mirrors Reflecting Shadows w/ LGBT suicide prevention via The Trevor Project. Soon w/ the latter, we will also be releasing a Forgotten Peoples antho for displaced Palestinian children.
As for me alone, I am thrilled to be in Cowboy Jamborees’ latest shorts book about a setting that has always fascinated me: MOTELs. By the end of the year, I hope to release a couple small poetry chapbooks and at least one larger collection of psychedelic, illustrated poetry named Citrus Springs. My first poetry book was Percocet Summer: Poetry for Distancing Dates & Doses.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
Though I double majored in business and English, hands-on learning is all that really counts for either. I’ll never be impressed by an MFA or the like and hope to cultivate authors and readers who appreciate the experimental but polished nature of raw talent. As for editing, it’s obvious to say Stephen King’s On Writing or simply analyzing what’s your favorite style in all mediums: music, news and tabloid articles, movies, even commercials, novels, prose, YouTube video essays.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
In general, the book that’s affected me most is Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho because it hit me at just the right time. High school and college feminists were all telling me not to read it because of the “misogynistic” ultraviolence of the rat-eating-a-woman scene, etc. But I was so fed up with reading normal boring books, I cracked it and was straightaway drawn in by the dark to deadpan humor, or high fashion, dichotomies of opulent and grotesque settings. That book made me question everything, especially the oh-so-political people I was around who blindly rejected anything over topic versus intent.
Now, I give no credence to such “sensitive” ideologies. Especially since this was around the time I tried partnering with a sex abuse charity for a book and the members and followers were incredibly vague or rude to me, saying how dare I question bills that took further advantage of abuse victims by slipping in a hundred irrelevant, expensive, or dangerously vague earmarks. They even accused me of lying about or deserving my own attack because of this. This charity based around discussing rape said I couldn’t do so in a “triggering” matter they wouldn’t elaborate on. How the subject isn’t inherently is beyond me. If you really want a dialogue or true stories, you can’t censor them.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.outcast-press.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/outcastpress1/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OutcastPress1
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/OutcastPress1
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@outcastpress
Image Credits
1. Outcast Press logo 2. Percocet Summer by Paige Johnson 3. The first 8 books in Outcast’s catalogue 4. The new Urban Pigs Press’ Hunger anthology many of our writers feature in 5. The new Cowboy Jamboree MOTEL anthology Paige Johnson features in 6. The newest Outcast Press anthology, Diner Noir, as curated by Craig Clevenger