The Taqwacores is a novel that was photocopied, sold from the trunk of a car, and passed around in the DIY tradition of punk zines for at least five years before seeing formal publication from Soft Skull Press this past winter. It’s centered on Muslim punk youth culture in Buffalo, NY, and when readers came looking for the scene, ready to dive in like so many teenagers and so many music-based subcultures that have come before, they found it existed only in the mind of author Michael Muhammad Knight. So they began to form their own Islamic punk bands and the taqwacore movement moved from page to life. Read More »

We love Soft Skull Press, an imprint of Counterpoint. They’ve got a book on the short list for The Believer Book Award this year, pioneered the “fiction subscription,” put out Mary Robison’s new novel this month, and have published many excellent books in the past: a compendium of David Rees’ “Get Your War On” cartoon, a fictionalized biography of Virginia Woolf’s pet monkey by Sigrid Nunez, the screenplay of “Secretary,” the definitive Daniel Johnston handbook, the essential Bill Hicks… the list goes on.

So we were sad to learn this morning that Soft Skull’s Editorial Director, Richard Nash, also an Executive Editor at Counterpoint, is leaving for “consulting and freelancing” according to the Soft Skull blog. “My departure is actually about my passionate belief in the future of publishing, in the future of community built around long-form edited narrative texts, in the future of connecting writers and readers, in a Web 3.0 that’s about the filters.” We’re on board with discussing the future of publishing — enough of this “death” stuff already — and we’re glad to hear that Counterpoint will maintain the imprint.

Best of luck, Richard!