our mission

Birds, LLC is a small, independent editor-run poetry press born out of friendship and a spirit of collaboration, possibility, and care. Specializing in close author relationships and beautiful objects, we believe great books are a partnership between authors, editors, and artists. Our guiding principle of “making authors’ dreams come true” informs an alternative publishing model focused on only 2-3 books a year, ensuring a more engaged audience and a more sustained lifecycle for each title. This approach emphasizes depth and breadth over quantity and speed and includes large print runs and reprints for all titles. In addition to ethically sourced financial and material support for the working lives of our authors, we also organize events, audiobooks, videos, podcasts, and class visits. We also use our platform to support the communities and causes we and our authors and audiences hold dear, raising money for and awareness of the social, climate, and racial justices we are all fighting for.

A vehicle for mutual aid and social justice

Our small independent poetry press Birds, LLC, is an anti-capitalist press which we try to use as a vehicle for social and environmental justice causes and mutual aid whenever and however possible to help our communities and those of our authors. We currently are hosting a fundraiser to continue the education and pay for living costs for two Palestinian students whose homes and schools were destroyed, and recently collaborated on fundraiser for Gaza in our ongoing solidarity for the liberation of Palestine. Recently, we were a major partner in the Poets for Appalachia relief effort after Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina. We also made all of our books free for educational and activist use during the pandemic, and we have used our press as a fundraiser for The Maria Fund, an organization dedicated to supporting emergency relief efforts as well as long-term organizing to build an equitable Puerto Rico, as well as fundraisers and donations to Black-led grassroots collectives & bail funds: Black Visions Collective (an organization dedicated to Black liberation and to collective liberation), The Okra Project (a collective that seeks to address the global crisis faced by Black Trans people by bringing home cooked, healthy, and culturally specific meals and resources to Black Trans People), and National Bail Out (a Black-led and Black-centered collective of abolitionist organizers, lawyers and activists building a community-based movement to support our folks and end systems of pretrial detention and ultimately mass incarceration); in solidarity with and support of anti-racist movements, we also donated sales and funds to Black & Pink (a national prison abolitionist organization), The Frances Thompson Education Foundation (a Black trans education fund), and House of Tulip (housing for trans people experiencing homelessness), and we’ve donated sales and raised funds for Sacred Stone Legal Defense Fund, providing legal support services for those involved in direct action against the Dakota Access pipeline, as well as for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, the Standing Rock Medic & Healer Council, Stand with Standing Rock, and Sacred Stone Camp in solidarity with Standing Rock and support the #NoDAPL struggle to name some of the efforts we’ve used our press as a vehicle to help.

Birds, LLC’s Impact

It’s important for us to examine our reach not only through metrics and analytics, but by the impact our authors and their books have had on the lives of our readers and our shared communities, as well as society and culture at large, from art exhibitions, city murals, movies, theatre productions, podcasts, TV series, musical concerts, literary criticism and theory, college courses, and even whole new academic disciplines inspired by our books and their ideas, not to mention letters, emails, and testimonials from individual readers whose lives have been changed by one of our books—fallen in love; felt heard, understood, connected, less alone; or even started their own presses. We also measure our reach by the public good we are able to affect through the platform of our press, whether by raising thousands of dollars towards a more just, sustainable, and equitable society and planet, or by simply bringing more poetry, beauty, and art into the world.

Current Fundraisers