PRAIRIE X MINOR MATTERS

We Are Relaunching Our Series Women We Love. Michelle Dunn Marsh From Minor Matters And I Have Known Each Other For Several Years. Michelle Embodies The Values We Hold At Prairie Underground And We Love To Feature Our Clothing On The Individuals Who Wear Them. As Celebration Of Our Mutual Interest And Support, Michelle Suggested We Visit Some Of Our Neighbors, Red Soul And Housewright, In The Georgetown Neighborhood Of Seattle Where Our Warehouse And Flagship Boutique Is Located. Michelle’s Inclusion Of Other Neighborhood Proprietors Was A Reminder To Move Outside Of Our Established Routines And To Celebrate Community.

INTERVIEW WITH MICHELLE DUNN MARSH / BY ELISA CLEMENTS

10/25/2023

How did Minor Matters start? Tell us more about your business? 

Minor Matters is a collaborative publishing platform I conceived, and in 2013 launched with my friend Steve McIntyre. We develop books with visual authors, and publish them with the engagement and agreement of an international audience. We look to and for projects that reflect concerns and interests of our time, realized by creative practitioners with demonstrated expertise in their craft, and distinctive, often lesser represented, viewpoints. Books that move forward through public pre-purchase of 500 copies are thoughtfully edited, designed, and printed, and often include original scholarship that adds insight to the visual work presented. Our books and authors have been featured by NPR, The New York Times, The Atlantic, the Boston Globe’s Love Letters podcast, Slate, and numerous other indie and mainstream press outlets. We do not sell our books on Amazon, choosing instead to work with independent retailers nationally and internationally.

We are a small entity. Steve built and refines the infrastructure of our online existence, does all the work on our site, manages lists, newsletters, marketing channels, responds to inquiries—what happens on screen is his domain. He studies our process and advances in online retail to keep us efficient and effective. When we’re weighing risks, he is often the person saying “YES! Go!” when I am leaning toward “no”. I acquire, develop, design, edit, and manage production on our books, write sales and marketing text, and manage distribution. We also have a cadre of incredible colleagues, from image separators to copyeditors to print reps and warehouse and fulfillment experts, many of whom have worked with us for over a decade.

If you wouldn’t mind telling us a bit about your background? Tell us a bit about your career?

I was born in Seattle and grew up in Puyallup, Washington. Since 2000 I have split my time between Seattle and Manhattan. I am of mixed ethnicities. My Indo-Burmese, Irish, small town, farming, car loving, food-informed, colonially-impacted heritage crops up in obvious and surprising ways in my life.

I started counting characters and printing photographs for layouts working on my junior high school yearbook, and have maintained a fascination with the integration of words and images ever since.

I have worked for and with numerous publishers and cultural institutions on both coasts in the production of books, exhibitions, and other public programs. Along the way I have also maintained a professional existence as an educator, and held leadership positions in arts institutions. But when a stranger in an elevator asks me what I do, my instinctual answer is: “I’m a designer.” I see design as problem solving, and problem solving is a daily pursuit, regardless of what title I hold at any given moment. 

Who has influenced you the most? For example, fashion icons, artists, writers, musicians…those who have left a mark on you?

Oh, good question, and a long list of answers in no particular order. Clark Gable. Michael Jackson. Prince. Cyndi Lauper. Aung San Suu Kyi, Vishnu, Catholicism, James Joyce, Rumi, Billy Joel, Ray Charles, Duran Duran, Freddie Mercury, CS Lewis, Audrey Hepburn, The Book of Kells, Minor White, Chinua Achebe, Carrie Mae Weems, Harley Davidsons, every Cameron Crowe and John Hughes movie, the Princess Bride, Sinead O’Connor, Salman Rushdie. All the photographers I’ve worked with have left some trace, along with my siblings, Alistaire Marsh and cousins on both sides of my family who have loved and accepted me and helped me gain an understanding of self.

It’s an incredible privilege to have worked with emerging, mid-career and master artists throughout the last thirty years. I’ve learned to honor craft, expertise, determination, and continuous study as a result. I’ve been a part of hundreds of books, yet I am also conscious that each one is unique. There is an element of starting anew every time we begin a publication, and then drawing upon knowledge that has been acquired through decades of making, and ongoing curiosity about the history of the book.

Who would you like to work with in the future? Alive or dead.

Shared confidence and shared respect are the hallmarks of our strongest collaborations.

We are currently developing titles with Selena Kearney here in the Northwest, and with Adrian Burrell, who is based in California, and have a few other discussions underway that are not yet in contract. I really hope Will Wilson will do a book one day. The world deserves a monograph of and by Derrick Adams, ditto Kambui Olujimi. Russell Johnson has been photographing the work of significant glass artists for decades and I hope we can showcase his subtle and important contributions to that medium. I would like there to be a book witnessing what my friend Yoko Ott contributed to the arts community in King County. I would like one or several small volumes articulating the iterative process of how Matt Adams from Red Soul creates. I would like a book about and by the Black Constellation. This list goes on and on.

Adjacent to the artists, though, is the public. What is truly distinct about Minor Matters is that we, and our authors, have also entered into collaboration with our audience, and we publish (or not) with the engagement of the reader, the collector, the librarian, the consumer. We do not want to be utilizing the resources necessary to produce a printed book if there is no community willing to receive the vessel we’ve created, willing to encounter the material within it.