Described by Alan Squire Publishing, publisher of The Richard Peabody Reader, as the “godfather of indie literature in DC…[and a] writer extraordinaire,” Richard Peabody, a bohemian titan of an author, poet, editor, indie publisher, teacher, and literary mentor, offers up some tough love for anyone thinking of writing and publishing.

His advice? Don’t follow his example. Write now. Considering starting a small press? Don’t do it. (But if you’re going to anyway, read on.) And if you’re contemplating submitting to Gargoyle, his acclaimed international literary magazine, be quick about it. (Lest you end up with a horse’s head in your bed.)

I’m going to start by looking forward. What’s your next chapter? 

My wife and I are both retired. The magazine has moved online, and I think I’ve also published the last two books in print via the press. I’d like to post another six or seven issues online. I turn 75 in 2026, and Gargoyle will turn 50. But mainly, I’d like to do my own writing now.

With Paycock Press and Gargoyle, you’ve moved from print to e-books. What’s been the upside? The downside? What kind of books would you love to publish in the next year or two?

The cost of paper, printing, and shipping has only gone up since I began in 1976. Covid impacted it. Doing e-books frees you up from minimum print runs, mailings, and much of the rigamarole. I’d like to do a run of e-books in the next few years. Reprint some out-of-print indie book classics from the 60s and 70s. Maybe some original works as well. And I have two or three old anthology ideas that never saw the light that I’d like to tweak and do as e-books. Maybe do a collection of fiction by the women writers who wrote blurbs for the seven volumes of the Grace & Gravity series that I produced. All of them used to live in the DC area.

You’ve called yourself a “lazy” writer. I have your collected works, a signed copy, and they are anything but the work of a lazy writer. Is this description still apt?

I was lazy because I wasted so much time in my 30s and 40s when I should have been madly writing. I always wrote from midnight until 5 a.m. Marriage and babies blew all of that away. I have been inching back into that zone, though now, our dog loudly announces that he wants me in bed. I have a collection of poems and another of stories that are sitting at two presses I know and love. I have another collection of stories almost completed. And I have three novels I want to complete by tomorrow.

What advice do you have for someone thinking of starting an independent small press?

Don’t do it. Folks always come to me for advice, and I warn them that there’s no money in this business. They laugh and think I’m exaggerating, tell me they “have to break even.” Any poet or writer who has been doing this a decade or more knows that I’m not exaggerating re: making money or breaking even. The end of Small Press Distribution [the largest distributor for indie presses, which abruptly folded in March] is a death knell. But if you HAVE TO, then run an online zine for a while. Get your feet wet and then move on from there.

Speaking of zines, Gargoyle opens for submissions on November 1st. How many do you usually receive? Do you have a submission period for your e-books published via Paycock Press?

We begin reading for #10, which will be posted in 2025. We get enough submissions to fill an issue in 48 hours. I haven’t yet put out a call for e-books. I expect that to happen in 2025. You know, if the creek don’t rise.

*****

Gargoyle #9 will be published by the end of October, and Peabody gave me a sneak peek at the cover and table of contents. The Washington, DC, native always includes a stellar selection of area writers in his magazine, and this issue is no exception. DMV writers Alice Stephens, Nathan Leslie, Kateema Lee, Nancy Naomi Carlson, Sid Gold, and Colleen Kearney Rich are among the 70 contributors featured. Photos by one of my favorite photographers-about-town, Bruce Guthrie, are also included, and the cover art is by Roberta Allen, a New York City artist, fiction writer, and teacher. The quote on it — “Space in the mind for whatever comes next” — reminds Peabody of the late, great John Lennon.

Like so many DC-area writers, I owe a debt of gratitude to Peabody for publishing one of my first pieces of flash fiction (“The Critique Group”) in an early Grace & Gravity volume. The anthology series, founded by Peabody, has now been handed off to the talented Melissa Scholes Young.

In his almost half-century working as a writer, editor, and publisher, Richard Peabody has been a driving force behind the DC area’s transformation from literary backwater to dynamic literary hub. Yet Peabody, the heart, soul, and, yes, godfather of the DMV writing scene, is far from finished.

Caroline Bock writes stories — from micros to novels. She is the author of the novel The Other Beautiful People, forthcoming from Regal House Publishing in summer 2026. A graduate of Syracuse University, she studied creative writing with Raymond Carver and poetry with Jack Gilbert and Tess Gallagher. In 2011, after a 20-year career as a cable television executive, she earned an MFA in fiction from the City College of New York. She has short fiction forthcoming in the Hopkins Review. She is the co-president and prose editor at the Washington Writers’ Publishing House. She lives in Maryland with her family.