Daniel Durand and Matías Heer talk about Chapita
Matías Heer and Daniel Durand
The independent pubishing houses of Argentina are one of the best selling books of Proa Library. Daniel Durand and Matías Herr created Chapita, one of this independent projects, and talked with Proa abouit it.
How did you started with Chapita?
We started to make Del Diego (another independent publishing house) in October 1998 with some guys like Jose Villa, Mario Varela and other poets who now have their own publishing house, as Damian Rios Interzone, Washington Cucurto of Eloísa Cartonera or Garamon of Mansalva. They were the authors of Del Diego, which lasted until 2001, factual books with covers made in computer and as we reached the budget to do more, and for political and economic reasons, fail to do so. In total we published about 50 authors and over time the collection was formed in argentina most characteristic poetry of the ’90s, where more authors of this generation are edited and are best known. Then we started with Chapita project.
How do you conceive your project?
For us, the main function of the publishing house is to spread good literature and poetry. We don´t have a social or political mission, because we relieve that publishing good authors and making good books we are fullfilling our mission. We want to make the best books that we can and spread many authors that we consider the bests. And around that objective there are other activities.
On one hand we have a translation in which we are working for several years, which translates to writers and poets, specially anglo speakers. But do not translate in a traditional way, but with a system that we developed, which is to translate in “chapita,” which is a slang that could be classified as rioplatense but that is something else, something just because it is itself something “chapita”. On the other hand also to teach other kids and groups of editors to edit their own internal books. We travel to the provinces, I told the guys like this trade, we spread among them, because we believe it is something we can teach. Inside the country and also in Buenos Aires is very impressive what happens to the independent book fairs, which are places where there are lots of talented people. We’re in these places and we are interested in exchange for more people to be able to edit their own books, to have their own publishing houses.
We do everything in my house. First I buy the board, I cut, then bent, attach it, if we have the interior design text in InDesign, PageMaker or Quark Press, printed inside and attach the lid. At the top, before pasting into the screen: the bottom first, then font, then what we call the “running”, which are the things you put up the covers, as chapitas or things we are going up. One day we had the chapita that perfect shoe, an easy way out and was giving the name and is very good. It is all handmade, each book is unique, and why our system is not for appropriation, as in general the exchange between libraries and publishers. We sell books directly to bookstores, because we believe it is important each one by itself.
Our plan is comprehensive. We are now publishing young authors, up to 25 years. There are other larger, but many under 25, and Matías Heer, a great poet and translator, despite his few years. Like him, his age, we publish “He painted the rapture,” Oscar Fariña, a text that originally appeared on blogs, in a photo. Then people saw it and wondered if he had emerged from the blog. Born Chapita much of blogs, and indeed one of the names we had thought at first it was “de-blog” (laughs).