Raptor Press 

Raptor is a publishing house and design studio based in Jackson Heights on Canarsie, Matinecock, and Munsee Lenape Lands. It was founded by Tara J. in Spring of 2015, and has grown into a collaborative publishing, bookmaking, and art outfit centered around cultivating nourishing spaces and opportunities for writers and artists. Each Raptor book, broadside, and art piece is lovingly designed, printed, made, and bound by Raptor and our various collaborators.

Mission

In every project, Raptor prioritizes accessibility, ethical integrity, and generating income for all artists involved in making and launching the books. For each item Raptor sells, collaborators receive half of the list price as royalties. Raptor is a press of community, and we work hard to make sure that everyone involved is compensated equally. Publishing is not a privilege—writers are a gift, and it is up to the publishing community to sustain the art that gives us life.

Services

By choosing to partner with Raptor, collaborators receive transparent production timelines, editorial support, and thoughtful design as we produce 20-40 bespoke chapbooks or broadsides for readings, anthologies, or other events. The profits from sales are split evenly between the press and the author.

Cash

Raptor holds fundraisers and accepts donations in order to cover the costs of production and events. Our financial model is such that we strive to pay authors 50% in royalties for book sales, with the other 50% going towards paying our staff and keeping the press running. 

Investing

Looking to invest in a small press? Email us at houseofraptor[at]gmail[dot]com! Investors receive special editions of each of our books, as well as opportunities to participate in and learn about the bookmaking process, among other perks.

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Staff

Tara J. | Founder, Producer, Editor-In-Chief

Tara Jayakar_2022

Tara Jayakar grew up in a suburb of Chicago. She has a BA from Boston University, and MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. Alongside building Raptor, they’ve worked in restaurants, non-profit publishing, poetry organizations,  and record stores.

Before focusing on Raptor and their studio practice full-time, Jayakar was the Senior Content Editor at the Academy of American Poets, where she was a member of the Poem-a-Day editorial team, managing and curating the Guest Editor program.  They also managed, edited, and produced several issues of American Poets Magazine, a print publication that goes out to the Academy’s over 9,500 person membership base. She built, assigned, and edited content for Poets.org; managed permissions for poems, interviews, and essays to be hosted on the site; grew and maintained the curated database of poet biographies; produced, assisted with, and hosted virtual and in-person events; trained interns and staff; copyedited all Academy-produced newsletters, press releases, and announcements; and project managed the Academy’s annual Poetry Coalition programming, among numerous daily tasks. 

Her first publishing gig was at 826CHI, a non-profit creative writing and tutoring center in Chicago for students grades K-12, project managing and publishing their fourth Compendium anthology of student work from start to finish. After moving to Brooklyn in 2014, Tara started Raptor Editing, worked on two books as the Special Editorial Projects Intern at the Academy of American Poets, and became the 2015-16 Diana and Simon Raab Editorial Fellow for Poets & Writers Magazine.

While at Sarah Lawrence, Jayakar co-directed the 15th Annual Sarah Lawrence Poetry Festival, the largest student-run poetry festival in New York state. As part of the festival’s free program of events, she laid out and designed a chapbook with a poem from each of that year’s featured readers, including Nicole Sealey, Chen Chen, Tyree Daye, Patrick Rosal, Angel Nafis, Mai Der Vang, Rajiv Mohabir and more. 

Sara M. | Head of Marketing & Communications Emeritus

Sara Munjack holds an MFA from Rutgers-Newark. She has managed social media for several clients such as Martín Espada and Raptor Press. Her poems have been featured in Cosmonauts Avenue, Pigeon Pages, BOAAT, Gandy Dancer, ISO Magazine, and tele-art mag, with work forthcoming in Grist Journal and The Common. Sara runs and curates the reading series Jersey City Reads Poems, and you can find her at sarabellamunjack.com.