I’m starting off the first week of the newsletter with multiple posts. I’m not sure that’s sustainable long-term, but I thought it would be fun to give an update on where things are at for your favorite nonprofit comics publishing house. Top line update - 2026 has been hell!

But first, let’s start with the good bits. For the third year running, SOLRAD, the online literary journal for comics, has earned an Eisner nomination. This is obviously a great honor, as it speaks to the hard work that all of our writers and Daniel Elkin, SOLRAD’s publisher, have done to make the site what it is. Fieldmouse Press was originally established to publish SOLRAD, and most of the “profits” of our book publishing program go to fund the literary magazine. That said, while it’s an honor to be nominated for an Eisner award, it would be even greater to win one…

2026 marks the third time that Fieldmouse has been at the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo (CAKE). MariNaomi was a special guest in 2023 with their book I Thought You Loved Me and we’ve been able to have authors at the show every year we’ve been there. This year, Tyler Cohen was in town seeing friends and was there to sign & sell copies of their book Feather, and Jesse Lee Kercheval was also at the show on Sunday to support her book French Girl. Gentleman and scholar Rob Clough rounded out the crew.

CAKE is a lovely show, and it looks like it might have finally found the right home at the Irish Heritage Center. Previous iterations of the show have been extraordinarily loud (due to massive whining overhead fans) or extraordinarily hot (due to poor AC). Moving the show to spring rather than compete with the summer heat seems like a great choice, and I was happy to be in Chicago despite the rain/snow mix on Friday night.

One of the fun things about shows is the chance to wheel and deal, to start conversations about new projects, and to see what other publishers are doing. Diskette Press has been publishing some really great new books, including Girl Yaoi by Ana Two (a future Fieldmouse Press author ✨) and Moulder by Freya J.N. I picked up a few of their new books at LICZ and got Ironscrote at CAKE. Another book of the show (for me) was Drew Lerman’s Conversations with Don DeLillo and Other Conversations, published by Cram Books. Drew is incredibly incisive and his journey through the “American cannon” has been nothing short of delightful on Instagram, so I was really pleased to pick up a print copy at the show.

Speaking of conversations about new projects, I had a lovely chat with Mili St. John about working together in the future, and got to catch up with Pingnan Lu. Fieldmouse is working on a new edition of Pingnan’s Ignatz Award-nominated Gift Box, and its the most complex book we’ve worked on to date - exposed spine printing, embossing, pantone printing, and foil all in one. Part of what Gift Box so special is the care and attention Pingnan put into the original hand-made zines, and we want to do our best to emulate that with our own release, which will likely come out in 2027.

One of the big problems of running a small press is timing. This gets to be a bigger issue the more titles you are printing. I would say we’re “medium-sized” in the sense that we have publication plans and seasons scheduled, we have books that are supposed to be getting made at specific times and being in warehouses at other times. We have an indie-focused distributor. What we don’t have the flexibility of print on hand (e.g. like Diskette Press, where they actually have the materials and machines on hand to do actual printing) so we have to work with other companies to help make our books a reality. If we were bigger, we would be working with a longer lead time, and we’d have books in the warehouse long before their release date. Being in the middle gives us the space to do some exciting things, but it has its downsides; the first four months of 2026 have reminded me of the astounding lack of control I have as publisher at times to make sure things happen when they’re supposed to happen.

The migraine-inducing case in point here is the first two books of our Spring 2026 season, TINGUU’s The Cannibals and Jared Sarnie’s The Machine is Broken. Both were printed by Jelgavas Tipogrāfija in Latvia, and they’ve been a good printer to work with, but the transit company they’ve hired to move our books from port in Latvia to White Squirrel’s warehouse has been an absolute mess. If you’ve been following along with our Kickstarter campaign for The Cannibals, you can see all the messy details, but basically, this process has been a lot longer and more ridiculous than it had any right to be. Books are finally back on track to get shipped today (if I’m lucky), but honestly they were supposed to already be here by now. We even had to reorganize our print plans to include an additional small print run of The Machine is Broken in order to make sure we would hit the mark for the huge number of promotional activities and signings Jared has diligently planned over the last few months.

There have also been issues with printing one of our last zines for upcoming shows - Emily Zullo’s The Most High Girl in the World has floated between printers and quotes in a way that I’ve never had to deal with before. The book has (obvious) drug use as a part of its storytelling, and was censored by our Chinese-based printer. Turns out if you don’t exlpicitly say “drugs are bad and you shouldn’t do them” in your book about how doing the drugs is a bad time, you can’t print the book in China. Luckily we were able to pivot and have the book printed in the United States.

The end result of all these delays is that we won’t have most of our books in time for TCAF (June 6-7), when normally we would have had them in late April.

Debuting at Small Press Expo this September, Fieldmouse is publishing a collection of zines by Jenny Zervakis, titled My Name is Bumbalo. I was so excited by Spit and a Half publishing The Complete Strange Growths, because it was a collection of material that spoke to me in a way that I didn’t think comics could, from a time period when I really was just a child. Strange Growths reminds me that every person has a story, and every person has the potential to make meaningful art. Jenny’s voice is a crystalline treasure. When Jenny pitched us a collection of more recent work, Rob and I jumped at the chance. I couldn’t be happier to share a snippet from the collection.

Be not sad what you are.

As much as I love working on Fieldmouse Press and making comics, there are moments in life that remind you that there is more than your art-making. I said at the top that this year has been a real shitter, and that’s largely because of non-Fieldmouse things. From a family perspective, this year has been a brutal one. I’m at the age where my parents are starting to have major health concerns, and this year and last have been tough. My father had a series of extreme health emergencies this winter, emergencies that took almost everything I had to get through. You can’t choose when a health crisis strikes and you’re called on for caregiving and oversight. This year has been a year of medical errors, close calls, and horrible luck. Luckily I think we are on the other side of the valley, but given a different coinflip along the path somewhere, and I’m not sure I’d be able to say that. I’m thankful for the excellent partners I have in Rob and Daniel at Fieldmouse, and for the patience and grace of our authors who rely on me to get things done.

I’m hopeful that the rest of 2026 will settle into a more familiar rhythm, and that I’ll be able to do the things I love (including working on comics). But, perhaps for the first time, I’ve realized that my time is not just my own, despite my plans and schemes. It’s borrowed at best.

Thanks for stopping by sequential.li, a newsletter by Fieldmouse Press’ publisher Alex Hoffman. If you enjoyed today’s post, and you aren’t subscribed, please do so! Subscribing is free and helps make sure you get every update from the newsletter. If you are subscribed — thank you! If you’d like to be generous, send this to someone who might find it interesting.