Chris Molnar ’18 and Etan Nechin ’19 Publish 'Unpublishable,' Launch New Press

This October, alumni Chris Molnar ’18 and Etan Nechin ’19 will publish Unpublishable, a collection from their notorious underground reading series of the same name at the POWERHOUSE ARENA. Unpublishable will be one of the first titles from powerHouse Books’s new press—with Molnar and Sarah Lawrence poetry alumnus Nicodemus Nicoludis at its helm—Archway Editions.

The book Unpublishiable will include work from Molnar and Nechin, as well as other recent Columbia alumni: Nifath Karim Chowdhury ’18, Naomi Falk ’17, Mina Hamedi ’17, Evan Gorzeman ’18, Jean Kyoung Frazier ’18, Daphne Palasi Andreades ’19 and Anya Lewis-Meeks ’19, as well as Adjunct Associate Professor James Cañón. Simon and Schuster is slated to distribute the book.

Molnar and Nechin met in Professor Cañón’s workshop during their second semester in the Fiction program. Molnar said, in a comment to the university, “James Cañón is one of the school’s secret weapons–both Etan and I had taken our first workshops with marquee professors (Ben Marcus for me, Deborah Eisenberg for him) and while they were both even more wonderful than we expected coming in, discovering a professor and writer like James might have been the first time I knew I was attending a real deep-benched, legendary school.”

The reading series has seen many contributors and alumni of the program become published authors. Frazier, whose Pizza Girl came out from Doubleday this year, and Jakob Guanzon ’17, whose Abundance comes out from Graywolf next spring, both read for Molnar and Nechin’s initial Columbia-based reading series, Ungallery. Molnar said, “A tradition began where we asked a professor to read at each one, giving the series their imprimatur. Rivka Galchen, Ben Metcalf, Christine Schutt, and Binnie Kirshenbaum all made the trek to POWERHOUSE to read.” Ungallery then became Unpublishable, and will now grow into the eponymous collection.

Molnar cited Adjunct Associate Professor Elissa Schappell as a huge source of support behind Archway Editions. “One of my mentors and strongest advocates at SOA (and in the early days of Ungallery) was Elissa Schappell," he said.

A September 8 press release from Archway Editions formally announced the October publication of Unpublishable: “Collected works from the notorious Brooklyn reading series, from notable and emerging writers alike...Unpublishable has now become Archways, an even more hotly attended reading series which is the lifeblood of this imprint, and the barrier-defying ethos it represents is a critical part of Archway Editions' DNA.”