BOOK JUNKIE: Celebrate Small Press Month

March is Small Press Month.

[Read all about it after the jump.]

Small Press Month is, their Web site touts, a "nationwide celebration highlighting the valuable work produced by independent publishers....[that] raises awareness about the need for broader venues of literary expression."

Who is this year's cover boy for Small Press Month? None other than Seattle' s own Sherman Alexie who states, "The small presses represent what is most brave, crazy and beautiful about our country and our literature. So let us sing honor songs for the independent publishers."

What can you, perspicacious reader that you are, do in honor of the month? What honor songs can you sing? You could go to Pilot Books on Capitol Hill. They have a bevy of literary goings-on throughout the month. And Reading Local Seattle has the low-down on other various events. Or, you could buy and read books that are being published right here in Seattle, whether it's something from Sasquatch Books to Mountaineers, or from the heady University of Washington Press to the imaginative Fantagraphics Books — the city's small book publishing enterprise is much larger than you might imagine.