On Rick Harsch & Writing

They tell the writer, “Find your tribe.” They say this because writing can be lonely, and few accomplishments in this world are actually done totally alone. Social media should be the logical place to search for one’s tribe in our current era. But despite the word social describing this ubiquitous media of our era, it is a lonely place fraught with pugnacious personalities and environments which frequently foster hostility. For us writers, a balanced in-group of likeminded authors can be hard to come across, especially if your art could be described as rarefied or outsider—at least outside the mainstream. Should we even manage to truly find our tribe, a tribe of fellow authors doesn’t always equate to readers.

I found my tribe on Instagram—a corner of social media we bookworms sometimes refer to as Bookstagram. It took quite a while to find the niche I was looking for. But it became far easier once I found Rick Harsch and the press he ran called Corona\Samizdat Press. I found C\S by way of a book. I can’t recall the details, but I know it was a description of a book titled Oskar Submerges by the author Zachary Tanner (who I would later interview about that very novel). The novel sounded odd. Not well-known. It sounded good. And I needed to read it. That’s how I found Corona\Samizdat. That’s how I found Rick. And through Rick, my social media world undeniably expanded.

It’s also undeniable that there are other accounts which helped refine Bookstagram experience while also expanding it. W.A.S.T.E. Mailing List, Tony from A Life On Books Podcast and cohost Andy (AKA Metafictional.meathead), among other individuals with a larger or smaller following whose platforms do not extend beyond Bookstagram. But Rick seemed to be a central point around whom the rest of the my tribe revolved.

I consider myself lucky because my niche of Bookstagram has not just bookworms, but also writers and podcasters, and even publishers. I’ve rarely seen such cohesion and mutual support contain this kind of diversity of specialization. We’re passionate about many of the same books and, importantly, the same authors: László Krasznahorkai, Simone de Beauvoir, Carlos Fuentes, David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon, Clarice Lispector, William T. Vollmann, Toni Morrison, Jorge Luis Borges, and many others. Plus, we read books by the authors within our tribe. And I’ve seen my own books on the shelves of the people I follow on Instagram. We’re a tribe without a specific discord, without a password for entrance, without a rule book. But we’re still a tribe of people devoted to books in often a multiplicity of ways.

Corona\Samizdat Press published my collection Blabber, Chat, Shouting Match: 50 Dialogue-Only Fictions in July of 2025. The press sold the majority of its books to the English-speaking world. The U.S.A. was (I believe) the number one buyer of all C\S titles, the rest of the sales coming from various European countries as well as the U.K. Despite publishing mostly English-language titles, C\S was actually located in Izola, Slovenia. The press specialized in pocket-sized books, though they did publish the odd, regular-sized paperback (or even large) novel. My short story collection was one of the pocketbooks. The book design was done by Zachary Tanner (I believe the only C\S author who also worked for the press). My book sold copies steadily until one day in August when the sales nearly stopped.

Blabber, Chat, Shouting Match was for available to purchase for just about anyone anywhere in the world for less than two months, then Slovenia halted parcels and goods from being shipped to the U.S.A. where I live due to the tariffs our government had implemented. I can’t blame them, but it really hurt my book sales. Then, not long after this, Rick had a stroke. C\S was unable to send books. The man and press both went silent. The center point around which our tribe seemingly revolved simply ceased engagement, creation, and support.

But we continued to support one another. And to support Rick through donations to a charity ran by Nick Voro. Rick remained off of social media during his convalescence. What I understand is that he was in the hospital for a long time before being moved to rehab earlier this year. I do not know if he ever made it home or at least out of medical facilities. I do know that the C/S author Louis Armand visited him on August 6th, saying that Rick had pneumonia but was expected to recover just fine. But Rick passed away the next day.

I miss Rick and his Rick Bricks (the distinctive parcels of books he packaged himself with every order from his press). I miss the videos where he smoked and cursed and spoke pointedly against fascism and talk with passion and praise about his authors and their books. Of course spoke about us as he did; he invited us. Corona\Samizdat didn’t accept submission ever. He invited the talent he wanted his press to represent. No wonder he was a center point—a force—for outsider art. And he cannot, surely, ever be replaced. While still alive, we all missed his presence, his fire; I think we all held out hope that he’d return to Instagram and YouTube when he had the strength and ability. Alas, we instead lost him after having become strangely used to his silent social media. But nonetheless, we all grieved, gave tribute, and celebrated his life and all that he meant to our community.

Corona\Samizdat Press is no more. This means I have an out-of-print book. This is not an unusual thing; since the printing press made mass-book production possible, going out-of-print has been the fate of most every title ever published. But I live in a world where uploading one’s books to some self-publishing platform is a relatively easy thing to do. I have no illusions that doing so will make my book immune to going out-of-print, but it would at least make it available. So do I self-publish a new edition of Blabber, Chat, Shouting Match or do I hold out in hopes that a future publisher of the novels I’m writing will be willing to take it on? On the one hand, short story collections simply don’t sell that well, so putting time and effort into it may not help me as a professional author or be the best use of my time. On the other hand, readers who want a copy of my book would be able to at least obtain a self-published edition.

To be honest, I’ve never had any interest in self-publishing. The only reason I’m contemplating it now is that this book has been published professionally already, and I don’t feel like querying it to the few small presses which would consider a previously published title. At any rate, I don’t feel like it right now. I’d rather hold off until I land an agent and publishing deal for a novel, then pitch it. But I also have the sense that the book never got its due. The window of opportunity for readers to even buy the book was incredibly short—shorter still for the press’s primary reading market. I feel like my collection deserves another chance. The question is, is now the proper time to get my book back out there through the “indie author” route, or is focusing elsewhere a better use of my time? Could waiting perhaps be more advantageous for me and my book?

I think the best course of action would be to see if I end up having free time as the next stage of my life begins. For a long while I wrote during the days while still working 32 to 40 hours a week (it’s amazing how short the workweek feels when you cram fulltime employment into two or three days a week). I wrote Descriptions of Heaven, most of the dialogues in Blabber, Chat, Shouting Match, and the initial longhand draft of my current novel-in-progress as well as many other stories, half-started novels, and an unpublished novella (which I plan to expand into a novel) between October of 2014 and December of 2021. Then I had a child and became a fulltime dad during the weekdays instead of a fulltime writer. My writing decreased to quite the trickle these last four years despite my best efforts to maintain a few daily hours at the desk as often as possible. I admit, even when I kept hours, I was sometimes exhausted beyond ability to write well. Still, I made progress. Wrote things. Published things. Founded efforts like my author interview series which ended unintentionally when I suddenly found myself chasing around a bipedal toddler. I also chased other streams of income, chastised myself for not writing faster—for having a banker’s box labeled Projects in Progress which is disturbingly full. Rasing my daughter has been beautiful and stifling, has expanded me as a person and restricted me greatly. But I also knew that there was a clock. And it’s going to strike on the 3rd of next month.

Preschool. I’ll be able to write uninterrupted with an entirely regular schedule again for the first time in close to five years when my daughter goes to school. My priority is to finish my novel, but I also have so many other stories and creative writing projects I’d like to get to work on. Will I realistically have time to learn the ropes of self-publishing a book which, though few in number, has been published—copies of which have been read or are sitting on bookshelves, waiting to be read? I don’t realistically think so. But I also don’t know what exactly this new phase of my life will look like. The one thing I know for sure is that I’m excited, incredibly excited to get to writing.