ABOUT

• HISTORY
• ABOUT US

HISTORY

Ellen Foos, MacDowell Colony fellow and member of the U.S.1 Poets’ Cooperative, founded Ragged Sky Press in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1992, when Fred Mertz, a parish priest, asked her to help him publish his novel, The Ore and the Dross. That was followed by Mile End, Alan Grayson's searing autobiographical novel, and Michael R. Brown’s poetry collection, Susquehanna. Since then, Ragged Sky has moved to Princeton, New Jersey, and produced 13 books of poetry and inspired prose.

In 2005, Ellen and four other poets began to meet and share their work. A year later, Ellen decided to compile their work as the five-volume Ragged Sky Poetry Series, including works by Elizabeth Danson, Ellen Foos, Carlos Hernández Peña, Elizabeth Anne Socolow, and Arlene Weiner.

In 2009 Ragged Sky produced the lively and provocative poetry anthology Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems, edited by Ellen, Ruth Zamoyta O'Toole, and Vasiliki Katsarou. One hundred contemporary poets—local stars and literary luminaries such as Kim Addonizio, Margaret Atwood, Billy Collins, Elaine Equi, Jorie Graham, Maxine Kumin, Paul Muldoon, and Charles Simic—joined together in this anthology to celebrate clothing in its many forms and functions: as desire, as ghost, as body, as poetry, as talisman, as transformer of the soul.

ABOUT US

Ragged Sky is a small, highly selective cooperative press.  We work with our authors closely.  Authors retain copyright and we use our experience and varied resources to support the author’s work through the editing, production, and marketing process.  Ragged Sky Press has focused on mature voices, overlooked poets, and women's perspectives. 

Become a part of the Ragged Sky community. Visit our blog, news page, Facebook page, and Twitter scroll. Sign up for our list to receive updates. Get to know who we are and the kind of literature we enjoy.

Ellen Foos, Publisher

Ellen, and therefore Ragged Sky, are about both community and poetry. Ellen's service to poetry and community include founding a poetry reading series at the Princeton Public Library and organizing poetry slams at the Arts Council of Princeton. Ellen is a production editor who has worked professionally in publishing for over twenty-five years.

Vasiliki Katsarou, Managing Editor

Vasiliki Katsarou is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet who studied comparative literature at Harvard and philosophy and film at the Sorbonne.  She holds an MFA in filmmaking from Boston University.  Her poems have been published in U.S.1 Worksheets and wicked alice.  She co-edited and wrote the Introduction to Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems.  She has also written and directed the prize-winning short 35mm film Fruitlands 1843.  She lives in western New Jersey.

Ruth Zamoyta O'Toole, Publicist and Web Content Manager

Ruth is an experienced production editor, and author of Otsu and Other Poems (2008, Bronze by Gold Press), a collection of poems in response to Miyamoto Musashi's Book of Five Rings. Her novel Clarissa@Loveless.com, a variation on Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, was published serially by classicnovels.com in 2002. A freelance Web copywriter and social media consultant, Ruth believes in the power of the Tweet and the Wall, especially for shared, logo-centric interests such as poetry.

Arlene Weiner, Editor

Arlene adds vision to the team, based on her experience as scholar, teacher, and professional editor. Her poems have appeared in a variety of journals, have been anthologized in Along These Rivers (Quadrant) and Eating Her Wedding Dress (Ragged Sky), and have been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac. In 2008 Arlene was a MacDowell Colony fellow.

Acknowledgments

Paul Foos, our Webmaster, built our beautiful Web site and helps us out when there's a glitch. The crisp, colorful design of this Web site is the creation of Trina Robinson, a freelance writer and designer, production editor at the New York Times, and a poet as well. The images used in the design and on several of our book covers are details of paintings by Jean Foos.