Belladonna Series

Belladonna* was started as a reading and salon series at Bluestockings, a bookstore on New York City's Lower East Side, in August 1999. The first publications were postcards by kari edwards for the May 4, 2000 reading at Bluestockings. Following the edwards postcards, and in collaboration with Boog Literature, Belladonna* began to publish commemorative "chaplets" (staple-bound pamphlets typically with fewer pages than a chapbook, produced in very small print runs) of its readers' work.

In 2006 Belladonna* published chapbooks by Erica Hunt and Akilah Oliver and co-published its first full-length book, Four from Japan: Contemporary Poetry & Essays by Women, in collaboration with Litmus Press. The following year, Belladonna* published its first full-length books independently: Open Box by Carla Harryman and Mauve Sea-Orchids, a book of poems in Spanish and English with facing page translations, by Lila Zemborain (translated by Rosa Alcalá and Mónica de la Torre). In celebration of its ten-year anniversary in 2009, Belladonna* published The Elders Series: eight multiply authored perfect bound books highlighting the continuity and transformation of the ideas, poetics, and artistic/political concerns of its poets' circle. Each book was conceived as "an anthology and a conversation between the guest curator and the elder(s) she hosts". Since 2009, Belladonna* has published, on average, two full-length books and 14 chaplets a year.