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 professional resources to support the author’s work through the editing, production, and marketing process.  Ragged Sky Press has historically 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 includes 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.

Abigail Johnson, Communications Director

Abigail Johnson is a writer, editor, and multi-media artist based in Princeton, NJ. Her work seeks to bridge gaps, blurring the lines between the disciplines, the personal and the objective, the natural and the artificial. Her work has been featured in the Trenton City Museum, MIT’s Computer Music Journal, and One Sentence Poems. By day, she edits books about physics and astronomy.

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.

Jeremiah Underwood, Assistant Editor

Jeremiah is a 30-year-old poet who was born and lives in Southern West Virginia. Having an almost insatiable thirst for poetry, passion is what drives him to be widely read and always learning more about the craft. His goals are to make contemporary poetry more available and enjoyed throughout his home state, while reading and writing the best poetry he can.

Acknowledgments

Paul Foos, our Webmaster, built our 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.

Ragged Sky is a nonprofit organization under the auspices of Co Works, Inc., a 501c3.

 

HISTORY

Ellen Foos, MacDowell fellow and member of the U.S.1 Poets’ Cooperative, founded Ragged Sky Press in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1992. Since then, Ragged Sky moved to Princeton, NJ, then Rochester, NY and produced over 40 books of poetry and inspired prose.

Aside from individual poetry collections, a novel, translations, and a memoir, Ragged Sky produced two lively and provocative poetry anthologies Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems and Dark As a Hazel Eye: Coffee and Chocolate Poems.