Dispatches from the Avant-Garage : The Alternative Press

The innovative countercultural movement from one of the most notable twentieth-century presses.

In this long-awaited book, Rebecca Kosick chronicles the rise, work, and legacy of the Alternative Press, a grassroots art and poetry publishing initiative founded in 1969 in Detroit, Michigan. Operated by Ken and Ann Mikolowski out of their home, the Alternative Press published original countercultural artwork and poetry by nationally renowned artists, including Alice Notley, Victor Hernández Cruz, and Robert Creeley, and Detroit-based powerhouse artists, such as Jim Gustafson, Donna Brook, Ray Johnson, and John Sinclair. The postcards, bumper stickers, bookmarks, and broadsides produced by the Alternative Press circulated among poets, creatives, and subscribers across the United States. Kosick's research reanimates the Alternative Press's unconventional publications with more than one hundred full-color images, while illuminating the national impact their avant-garde interventions had at the intersection of politics, art, and life in the twentieth century.