by Giordana Segneri, M.A. ’10

For more than three years, Adam Robinson, a student in the M.F.A. in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts program, has been bringing power to the people. Through his Baltimore-based publishing company, Publishing Genius, he allows creative writers like himself to share their novellas, chapbooks and online journals with the masses. And nothing represents the concept of spreading literature as much as Robinson’s project IsReads does: He stages guerrilla poetry dissemination, attaching submitted poems to various surfaces around the city.

Q. I like your company’s name. Is it aspirational or, um, self-descriptive?

A. Ha, no, “Publishing” is a transitive verb here. I’m in the act of publishing the genius of others. I’m kind of uncomfortable with the swagger, but I can’t bring myself to change it.

Q. How many and what types of publications have you published?

A. By June, Publishing Genius will have put out 13 paperback books, ranging from 24 to 240 pages. The first novel I did, Light Boxes by Shane Jones, was contracted to Spike Jonze to produce as a movie, then was sold to Penguin and translated into, I think, eight other languages. Also, there have been a couple dozen electronic chapbooks, short works that can be read online or printed off at home. Then there’s Everyday Genius, a guest-edited online journal that gets updated daily. Several works from this series are going to be republished in a collection called The Best of the Web from Dzanc Books.

Q. Are you still publishing IsReads? Can you briefly explain the concept and motivation behind it?

A. Not only is the outdoor journal, IsReads, still being published, but it is expanding across the country. As of the start of 2010, poems are being posted on light posts and in shopping carts and on abandoned buildings (and so on) in 10 different cities, like L.A., Chicago, Phoenix, Louisville and, of course, Baltimore. The idea is to disseminate fetching poetry to people who wouldn’t otherwise think to think about it.

Q. What is your advice to someone who wants to be published?

A. Work hard and know the community. I can think of several writers who started publishing in small online journals just a couple years ago and now have big book deals. Their talents took them to a point, and the community carried them farther.