return to main ABOUT page How did Soft Skull Press get started?
Sander Hicks founded Soft Skull Press in 1992 as a guerrilla publishing operation run under-the-table at the Kinko’s where he was employed. The first book with the name Soft Skull on it was Hicks’s first novel, Foam.With partner Susan Mitchell, Soft Skull Press took off, publishing Hicks’s Kinko’s play Cash Cow, the novel Angelus Novus by Morgan Meis, Lee Ranaldo’s Road Movies, an art book from Spencer Tunick, and poetry from indie musicians Todd Colby, Cynthia Nelson, and John S. Hall.Soft Skull Press went above-board in 1996 and became incorporated in New York State, with the business mentorship of Stuart Bagwell, then Managing Partner, Kinko’s of Manhattan. The company continued to grow; in 1998 the press published The Haiku Year, Sparrow ‘s Republican Like Me, Intermission by Nuyorican Champion Tracie Morris, and Lee Ranaldo’s JRNLS 80s.The company gained national attention, both positive and negative, when Hicks acquired the Bush biography Fortunate Son, recently dropped by St.
