We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Yago Cura a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Yago, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

For several years I ran an online literary journal, “Hinchas de Poesia”, that sold no advertisement, but managed to squeeze out 25 issues. Since we generated no revenue, and there were several editors that helped me to select entries from hundreds of entries and guide the 25-issue aesthetic, I realized that professionals will donate their time and passion to help you reach your goals if you trust them-trust in their professional and subjective opinion and believe in their output. The genesis of HINCHAS Press (www.hinchaspress.com) is directly related to the unjust and graphic death of independent journalist James Foley. The first book we published, “Ghazals for Foley” (2016) is a collection of ghazals by writers that attended the Poets & Writers Program at UMASS-Amherst with Jim.

Yago, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

HINCHAS Press is a Los Angeles-based micropress that publishes zines, poetry, poetry in translation, and library science non-fiction. HINCHAS supports social justice literacy initiatives, and advocates for bilingual literacy endeavors, especially along portions of the Américas that are monolingual.

We’ve published two books of note, two poetry anthologies, that add space to the poetry community in Los Angeles. In April of 2021, HINCHAS Press, published a poetry anthology of ten women BIPOC poets that live and work in and around Los Angeles, “X LA Poets” (ISBN #978-1-7324848-3-2). The anthology highlights the poetry of ten womyn-identifying poets pushing the boundaries of the written word, and presents a panoply of voices that celebrate LA’s diversity through its dialects and diasporas. The books is also edited by Linda Ravenswoood, the super-fierce literary genius behind the Los Angeles Press and author of “Cantadora” (Black Spring Press, 2023) and “a poem is a house” (Madville, 2024).

In October 2021, HINCHAS Press published “Tlacuilix: Tongues In Quarantine” (ISBN #978-1-954640-90-0), a collection of contemporary poetry inspired by the paintings of Sandy Rodriguez and the Florentine Codex. The interesting thing about this project is that the poets arranged in “Tlacuilix” (Project 1521) wrote through the COVID-19 pandemic, much like their scribe counterparts did during the 1560’s pandemic in Mexico after the arrival of Hernan Cortés.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

One of the most insidious secrets that publishers keep is that when you buy ISBN (International Standard Book Numbers) in bulk they cost you exponentially less money. For example, ask Bowker how much they will charge you for 1 ISBN versus what it charges you for 100. In other words, if you buy 100 ISBN, then it costs you about $6 to embed bibliographic data into this book and the real costs become production, promotion, and percussion (distribution). If you, yourself, know how to lay the book out in InDesign, and you know how to promote and market it on social media, the real question becomes how much of your time are you willing to donate to your success and auto-promulgation. In the case of HINCHAS Press, which came from the online journal, Hinchas de Poesia, James Foley lent us $400 dollars in 2009 to buy service space in Canada for three years, and I got to teaching myself html to design, layout, and collate 25 issues.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

We’ve had many cheerleaders and supporters along the way. Obviously, early cheerleaders were independent bookstores that typically take chances on little guys in Los Angeles, like Book Jewel in Westchester and North Figueroa Book Shop in Highland Park. In the case of HINCHAS Press, which came from the online journal, Hinchas de Poesia, James Foley lent us $400 dollars in 2009 to buy server space in Canada for three years, and I got to teaching myself html to design the layout of the initial issues. Then, our inglorious Poetry Editor, Jim Heavily, and a supremely talented website designer and photographer, Jennifer Therieau, colluded more integrally with me to achieve 25 ad-free issues.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.hinchaspress.com
• Instagram: hinchas_press
• Facebook: Hinchas Press

Image Credits
Gus Harper / Linda Ravenswood / Cynthia Guardado.