Article on Arsenal Pulp Press

Arsenal Pulp Press is a book publisher in Vancouver, Canada, with 135 titles currently in print, ranging from fiction and poetry to cultural, gender and multicultural studies. It began life in 1971 as Pulp Press Book Publishers, founded by a collective of university students and associates disenchanted by what they perceived to be the academic literary pretensions of Canadian literature at the time. Pulp became Arsenal Pulp Press in 1982, having survived the bankruptcy of its national distributor by selling off its typesetting and printing operations. In 1992, Jerome Gold interviewed Brian Lam, then co-owner and co-publisher of Arsenal Pulp Press. How did they decide on Pulp Press as a name for the press? It was basically a satirical name. It's a take on the idea of pulps being disposable kinds of literature. . . And the word "Arsenal" in Arabic means "house of skill"—
	Multicultural books published during the 1980s included Stoney Creek Woman, the award-winning biography of Carrier elder Mary John.
On how the press began. Pulp Press began in 1971. They financed it with a small printing operation that they started. They bought a second-hand printing press and set up a shop in a little warehouse and just printed poetry books on their own. And started the printing business on their own to finance the books. And with those poetry books they published chapbooks and posters and that sort of thing. It came out of the hippie movement of the late '60s and had a lot of anarchist roots as well. In fact, Pulp Press's most notorious moment was in the mid-'70s when it published a pamphlet called The Application of Fire to Public Buildings, which was a satire instructing people on how to go about guerrilla warfare. . . someone in Ottawa got hold of one and was shocked to find out it was a publisher which had just begun receiving Canada council money. It was actually debated in the House of Commons.
	In 1988, Arsenal established a series "Little Red Books," tiny books of quotations and anecdotes on provocative issues and personalities. The wide range of subject matter runs the gamut of popular culture, from gardening slugs and Don Cherry to old age and film noir.
Many people see the small press movement as something that's social or political or economic or however they want to look at it. Do you see yourself as part of a movement, or—? Yeah. Very much so. BC has a really vibrant writing and publishing community. I think that comes from the fact that we are so far removed from the rest of the country. Physically, Canada is such an enormous, spread-out country. I think there's the sense that the Rocky Mountains which divide BC from the rest of Canada are a real physical border that separates us and makes us different. There are quite a number of publishers that have made a success of just servicing and publishing for the community here in British Columbia.
	Arsenal began publishing books on gender studies and gay and lesbian literature in 1993, with the publication of Queeries, the first book of gay male prose ever published in Canada, edited by Dennis Denisoff.
On being in Canada versus the US. One good thing about being in Canada is that we get a lot more funding than what I hear is available in the US. I think a lot of the reason we're all still around is because of the grants that are available. There's no way we could be where we all are today without them.
	American Whiskey Bar, Michael Turner's extraordinary novel, appeared on "Best of the Year" lists in The Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, and Quill & Quire; Michael Turner's story of punk band Hard Core Logo's reunion tour was turned into a film and released in the US in 1998 by Quentin Tarantino's Rolling Thunder Films.
Let's get back to your background for a moment. What kind of work did your parents do? Totally unrelated to book publishing. My mother worked as a secretary. My father worked with a fruit wholesaler. My own experience, I guess, just came out of a real interest in books and that sort of thing. I'm second generation Oriental, and so my experience has always been a Canadian one as opposed to a Chinese one. . . I've always grappled with the issue of "Who am I?" Given my heritage and given my experience. Particularly in being a visible minority . . . you're always identified as being part of something that you may not necessarily be a part of. I don't find it so much offensive as just really interesting that people make assumptions about—I'm always interested in issues of identity and whether it's cultural, sexual or—and that sort of led me to what we're trying to accomplish at Pulp Press, which is getting involved with projects that challenge the status quo. My background has led me to that desire, I think. In 1996, Arsenal Pulp Press celebrated its 25th anniversary in the business of book publishing. As such, it is well-established as a publisher of provocative and stimulating books. Visit the website at www.arsenalpulp.com.