What?

Lintel, Sash, & Sill is an independent literary media company. We publish books and e-books of quality fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and all that straddle those genres through LS&S Press. We run the on-line journal Suss, which publishes original works of literature, interviews with writers and artists, recommends cultural highlights we find inspiring and think you might also, and provides space for literary-minded folk to talk about how they go about getting others to read, create, and/or talk about good writing. We are also responsible for From the Doorway and The LS&S Sideshow, the former a podcast intent on examining the spaces between the spaces of our lives and the latter a semi-regular real-world event featuring Suss and From the Doorway contributors, LS&S Press authors, and assorted musicians, artists, comedians, and other worthwhile folk coming together for a variety show that is part reading, part performance, part theatre, part interview, part advertising, and part cultural movement.


Why?

Like so many before us, we intend to make the world a little more entertaining and interesting a place to exist than it was when we found it. We intend to bring literature-loving folks smart, exciting, and moving work to experience through their favorite medium — be it beautifully designed hardcover or paperback books, e-reader text files, audio files, or live performances. We intend to use as much as we can of what technology has to offer us; to interact as much as possible with our readers, listeners, and fans; and to make thinking about and examining the cracks of our lives as fun, as entertaining, and as engaging as it should be. And we intend to do it all with an eye toward the communities we are part of — large and small, equally — and a commitment to an ethical and open business design.

Everything under the Lintel, Sash, & Sill umbrella is sprung from the same vision, with the same intent: quality work that aims to foster a literate community, encourage intelligent and engaged conversation, embrace what technology has to offer, and earnestly attempt to make the world a little sillier, a little less sad, more understanding, more beautiful, or just plain better. There is, obviously, far more holding all of it together; but for us, for now, that is enough.

How?

Bestselling author and Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow once said, “We live in an era where anything that can be expressed as bits will be. I believe that bits exist to be copied. Therefore, I believe that any business-model that depends on your bits not being copied is just dumb.” Lintel, Sash, & Sill is doing its level best not to be dumb.

So.

LS&S Press publishes all of its work under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license, which means that when readers fall in love (as we have) with the works we publish, they are free to share, remix, tweak, and build upon them, so long as they do so non-commercially, credit the original work, and license each new creation under identical terms. Essentially, others – readers, artists, students, others – can download, link to, and redistribute the work as well as translate, hack, and produce new work based on the original (comics, t-shirts, fan fiction, short videos, on and on) for their own use. Ideally, all or most of this new work is displayed here or pointed to from our site. We believe this model encourages community, spurs creativity, and increases the eventual sales figures of our publication. Which means it affords us the opportunity to do more.

Additionally, our literary journal, Suss, intends to facilitate a conversation about reading, making, and teaching literature. In addition to new writing, interviews, and reviews of both writing and cultural ephemera, Suss is dedicated to prominently presenting a different educator’s ideas on how to teach and discuss literature to and with as wide an array of students and readers as possible. In doing so, we are compiling and curating an ever-increasing free library of lesson plans, writing prompts, ideas, and methodologies for getting anyone from elementary school students, teenagers, grad students, prison inmates, nursing home residents, or community book club members and beyond to engage with literature in some constructive way, either as a reader or a writer.

Lintel, Sash, & Sill believes the world can only be better with more and more quality readers and intend to help us get there. We are interested in all that we do with the less-clearly defined spaces of the world and the possibilities inherent therein; we grow and engage from that position.