LargeUp: Akashic Books has been one of the most active publishers of Caribbean writers and Caribbean-themed books recently—the Haiti and Kingston Noir books, now “Go De Rass to Sleep.” Was there a void you noticed and wanted to fill or was it more of a personal interest/mission?
Johnny Temple: Outside of the Caribbean, the only publishing company more dedicated to Caribbean literature than Akashic is Peepal Tree Press, a visionary UK-based publisher. Akashic’s commitment to Caribbean writers stems from my own personal interest in the region, and fortunately I have a staff who are fully on board with this mission. I became very interested in Jamaican culture as a teenager when I worked for the Washington, DC-based reggae record label RAS Records. That and punk rock were the foundations of my cultural education.
LU: What is your own personal connection to the Caribbean?
JT: I first traveled to Jamaica in my mother’s womb in 1966, the year Haile Selassie visited Jamaica. I next visited as a teenager when I was working for RAS Records. My parents let me travel there alone at age 16 with some very questionable “guardians.” Since then, Jamaica and the wider Caribbean have been in my blood.
LU: Where do you find the greatest demand for your Caribbean-themed books?
JT: Assuming you mean outside of the Caribbean . . . we try to sell our Caribbean-themed books to everyone. A good example is Jamaican author Marlon James. We published his debut novel John Crow’s Devil a number of years back, and he now has an audience all over the world. His books have been translated into German and Italian, for example. Having said that, my hometown of Brooklyn, and New York City in general, is obviously a good market for Caribbean writing. In many ways, Brooklyn is actually an outpost of the Caribbean.
LU: Are you involved in any outreach, related to literacy or otherwise, in the region?
JT: Hell yeah, we’re involved in a number of ways. One current project that I’m excited about is a new Caribbean-based publishing imprint called Peekash Press that we started with Peepal Tree. Together we are building a publishing company that we hope will one day stand on its own as a Caribbean-based company committed to Caribbean writers still living in the region. (Many of the most famous Caribbean-born writers now live in the US, UK, or Canada.) Another goal of the project is to help foster a healthier, more robust publishing infrastructure in the Caribbean. While there are indeed a number of great publishers in the Caribbean already, there are few that focus on the type of literary work that Akashic and Peepal Tree devote ourselves to.