Future Tense Books
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Future Tense Books began in Spokane, Washington in 1990 with publisher Kevin Sampsell and after a brief stint in Fort Smith, Arkansas, it moved to Portland, Oregon in the summer of 1992 and soon flourished in the rainy city's book-friendly environment. Brian Tibbetts, Michael Walsh, Stephen Kurowski, Jeff Meyers, and Melody Jordan were some of the first Portland writers featured by Future Tense. There was also a zine passed around for a couple of years called Dead Star--an obituary zine with poems about recently deceased celebs.
Future Tense also organized many events around Portland like the Future Tense Reading Series at Umbra Penumbra, the Kamikaze Reading Series at The Raindog, the Typing Explosion weekend at the GroundSwell, the Booty Call series at Disjecta, and readings at various bookstores & cafes and gigs featuring both spoken word and music artists.
Future Tense is dedicated to publishing work by people often thought of as weirdos or outsiders. The contents of these books vary greatly. Most of the titles are chapbooks but some have appeared as paperback books as well.
In 1998, the Future Tense web site was launched by Paul Earhart. In 2000, Paul Ash took over the web site and redesigned it (using artwork and lettering by Kurt Eisenlohr). In 2001, Future Tense published a book by teen phenom Zoe Trope called Please Don’t Kill the Freshman. The book was reviewed in several media outlets and gave Future Tense a much bigger audience than before. Zoe’s book was picked up and re-released in longer form by HarperCollins. Shortly after, another book first published by Future Tense, Grosse Pointe Girl, by Sarah Grace McCandless, was bought by Simon & Schuster. In 2005, Sampsell and Future Tense teamed up with legendary San Francisco publisher Manic D Press to start a new series of paperback books called The Future Tense series. This venture allowed Sampsell to publish books he wouldn't normally be able to afford. The first book in this series was an anthology called The Insomniac Reader. The second is Fast Forward: Confessions of a Porn Screenwriter by Eric Spitznagel. The third was Dahlia Season by Myriam Gurba, which has been nominated for awards and listed on various year-end lists.
