Galena House Publishing.The Amber Thread
A magazine of place, from Galena House. Essays, stories, and portraits in words of the people and places worth keeping, made slowly in the Colorado mountains.
Each issue follows one thread through a handful of lives and rooms and roads, and the thread is the reason for the issue. It is read free in the Epopteia Reader. Its first print edition is being made now, and the people who keep a place for it decide how many copies the press sets.
A portrait, by invitation
A portrait in The Amber Thread is a likeness made in words: of one person, or of one place, written from life by someone who stood in the room. It is not a profile and it is not an advertisement. It is the slow kind of attention a painter gives a sitter, given in sentences.
The portraits are made by invitation, and only by invitation. The magazine chooses its sitters one at a time, and none is bought or commissioned. A portrait is Avery Lane Maxwell's work: the sitter's life or the place's history, seen through one writer's eye and set down in his hand.
- The invitation
A letter from Avery, by post or by hand, asking whether you, or the place you keep, would sit for a portrait. There is no fee in either direction.
- The sitting
For a person: a private room online, with a set of questions in the house's hand, answered at your own pace, with photographs if you like; then a conversation, in the studio in Dillon or wherever you are. For a place: a visit at the hours it is most itself, and a conversation with the people who keep it.
- The writing
The portrait is written alone, at the desk, over weeks rather than days.
- The reading
You read it before it prints, to set any fact right. The words stay the writer's.
- The keeping
It is set in The Amber Thread, in print and in the Epopteia Reader, and the sitter is sent the issue it appears in.
For the keepers of places
If you keep a place with a story (an old inn or lodge, a ranch, a cabin that has outlasted four families, a chapel, a shop, a garden), a portrait is a record of it made to last: set in the magazine and in print, in the hands of every reader who keeps a place for the edition, and read by you before it prints. The magazine looks for places like yours. It cannot be bought; it can only be found.
If there is someone, or somewhere, you believe belongs in a portrait, you are welcome to tell the press. Write, by post, to Galena House Publishing, Post Office Box 5152, Frisco, Colorado 80443. Every letter is read; the invitations remain the magazine's to make.
Keep a place for it in print
A print run is a promise made before anyone knows who will keep it. The press would rather know. Put your name down for the first printed edition of The Amber Thread and the press will write to you, once, when it is ready to order, with the price and the date. It costs nothing to keep a place, and it commits you to nothing.
The patrons of the press
A small press makes beautiful things slowly because a few people choose to keep it lit. Patrons are not donors. They are the reason the paper is good, the portraits take as long as they take, and the magazine goes to print at all. Every patron receives a key to the Reading Room.
- The Lamp · $40
A month of light. The lamp stays lit, the press stays warm, and the house sends you its founders' letter.
- The Colophon · $500
Your name, set in the colophon of the next book the house binds, printed in every copy.
- The Founders' Circle · $5,000
A founding seat in the house itself, a patron's key to everything the house presses, and the first seat at the table as it grows.
The Amber Thread is a magazine of Galena House, set by Galena House Publishing and edited by Avery Lane Maxwell in Dillon, Colorado.