Rustic Press is the independent creative imprint behind the work of Silas Fen, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It brings together poetry rooted in landscape, breath and the long view; fiction, including The Hollow Veil, a five-book dark fantasy series set in the living and the lost streets of Bucharest; collaborations with photographers and artists; the Rustic Embers journal and letters; and handmade keepsakes that carry the words into the world.
Every piece is shaped with care from first draft to finished work: hand-selected poems, paired imagery, and a trust that readers come to this work seeking something that holds. Rustic Press exists to give that work a home that takes it seriously as both art and object.
How Rustic Press work is made
Words first
Every poem keeps its full form: twenty-four lines, six stanzas of four. Every story goes through draft after draft, an edit and a final proofread, and nothing is published until it is ready.
Paired with images
Each poem is paired with an image made for it, and each chapter of The Hollow Veil opens with its own illustration, so the work can be experienced twice: once in words, once in light.
Designed as objects
Our books are designed by Amy Dakos and printed in paperback and hardcover, with an ebook edition for every title; keepsakes are made by hand.
For booksellers, libraries, collaborations, review copies and press requests: