A Brief History of Canopic Jar & Canopic Publishing:

Canopic Jar began in 1986 as a tiny lit journal. Phil Rice and P.A. Merrill, who had graduated from Maryville College together in 1982, were desperate to keep their minds in literature despite the growing demands to submit to Corporate America. Full of idealism and beer, they pieced together the first issue on an old typewriter and discreetly used the copy machine at the Nashville Marriott where Rice was then employed as an accounts receivable clerk. Fifty issues were printed, stapled, and handed out in random fashion. Two more issues followed in similar fashion, with each issue adding new contributors. Following a brief hiatus, Canopic Jar returned in 1995 as a 32-pager, this time printed on a 6-color Heidelberg press in the dead-of-night at Nashville's Rand McNally printing facilities. Merrill had retired from the scene by this time, but Tom Tyner and Doug Hoekstra each lent an editorial hand to more than pick up the slack. A successful live stage show at Nashville's The Pub of Love followed that same year, with an equal mix of reading and musical performance filling the bill.

The Canopic Jar website debuted in 1999, and soon contributions appeared from a diverse sampling of literary and visual artists, including Will Campbell, Charles E. Rice, Carroll Dale Short, Corey Mesler, and Mary Sue Koeppel. Rethabile Masilo, a multi-lingual poet whose work graced the early print issues, signed-on as web-designer and co-editor in 2004 and the international energy has been flowing at an expanding rate ever since.

Canopic Publishing became an independent press in 2003 with the publication of The View from My Ridge by Charles E. Rice. The tremendous critical acclaim showered on this debut publication fed the fires for the second Canopic title, Between the Bones, a poetry collection by Mary Sue Koeppel. Bothering the Coffee Drinkers, musical fiction and essays by Doug Hoekstra was next on the docket. Already a successful singer-songwriter, Hoekstra broke new ground for himself and Canopic when Bothering the Coffee Drinkers received a Bronze Medal for Short Fiction in the 2007 Independent Publisher Book Awards (the IPPYs).

Leatherneck Sea Stories: Recollections of Marines, Korea, and the Corps of the 1950s by Dave Easton was published in 2007 and continues to garner high praise for its accessibility as a military memoir and as a prime example of down-to-earth storytelling. Despite its obvious appeal to members of the Marine Corps past and present, Leatherneck Sea Stories has received equal praise from readers who are not typically drawn to military themes, a quality attributable entirely to author Dave Easton's ability to shape a story for his general audience.

Currently there are five books bearing the Canopic imprint. After a brief unavoidable lull, the sixth title can now be sighted on the horizon. Keep checking back or drop us a line and ask to be included on our mailing list for full details.

--Phil Rice (phil@canopicpublishing.com)