Diane Kruchkow
Small press writer, publisher, and pioneer
Bio
Diane Kruchkow entered the small press space as a student in the late 1960s at University of New Hampshire, where her interest in the expatriate scene in Europe during the 1920s led her to seek contemporary movements similarly focused on breaking away from the corporate domination of literature and publishing.She soon after joined COSMEP (Committee of Small Press Editors and Publishers), and eventually was elected to Chair the organization.While helping promote decentralized writing and publishing movements, Diane published a little magazine, Zahir, featuring poetry, prose and essays, and Stony Hills, a small press review which broke ground documenting this new movement.After creating and teaching a course on the small press at the Free University at UNH, Diane dropped out of graduate school and continued writing and publishing in small press, eventually settling in New Sharon, Maine after some time in NYC and Newburyport, Massachusetts.For many years she taught at the University of Maine at Farmington. She has since served on the board of the Arts Institute of Western Maine (now Arts Farmington) including as Board President, and taught skiing at and is serving on the board of directors at Titcomb Mountain.Diane is the mother of Hannah, a mother and City Councilmember in Edgewater, Colorado, and is the co-editor of Green Isle in the Sea (December Press, 1986), which documents the small press movement of the 1970s through first-person narratives of those at its helm.