The Brooklyn Rail

Kevin Sampsell has been a small press trailblazer and literary mentor for decades. He founded the independent press, Future Tense Books, in 1992 and published works by Garielle Lutz, Chloe Caldwell, Wendy C. Ortiz, and Eric Spitznagel, among others. He is also the events coordinator and head of the small press section at the historic Powell’s Books, in Portland.

Sampsell’s writing is by turns subversive, endearing, doleful, and agog at the wonders of the world. His artistic eye is a kaleidoscope, so it’s fitting that he works with collage as a medium in addition to the written word. He released I Made an Accident, a collection of poems and collage pieces through the iconoclastic Clash Books in 2022.

He is also the author of the novel This Is Between Us, the memoir A Common Pornography, the short story collection Creamy Bullets, and the short story collection Beautiful Blemish, which I published through Word Riot Press in 2005.

I chatted with Sampsell over email to discuss his newest novel, Baby in the Night, which was released in March 2026 from Impeller Press. The book follows a toddler narrator, Tony Volcano, who searches his downtrodden city neighborhood for his father.

Jackie Corley (Rail): You've had a lengthy tenure as an indie publisher. There are so many ups and downs, so much financial juggling in small press life. What’s enabled you to keep this thirty-four-year-old one-man band going?

Kevin Sampsell: I’ve had some great helpers along the way, especially my current co-editor Emma Alden, who lives in Philadelphia. I’ve always wanted to make Future Tense a lifelong creative project because there’s such joy in creating books and promoting the authors I work with. I sort of live vicariously through their work and the uniqueness of their voices.

Financially? It truly is juggling! I barely make anything from it, but I’ve never expected to either. It’s not about the money, but it’s nice when I can get some. It’s all about the art and this weird way we communicate with each other through words—funny, sad, absurd, magical. Future Tense can be hard work, but it’s also family. Future Tense forever!

Rail: The publishing path for Baby in the Night wasn't easy. I imagine it would have been easier, at times, to put it in a drawer, but you didn't. What motivated you, and how did you keep pushing?

Sampsell: I just always knew this was a special book. I fell in love not only with little Tony, but with his mom and all the people around him. The people on the streets at night that he encounters. I wanted them to live outside my own brain. But it did take a very long time to get it done because I was working on many other projects with other writers, not to mention my obsession with collaging, which has become a big part of me. Baby in the Night was written over the course of nine years and then COVID started, and it was really hard to find an agent, so I started sending to smaller presses. I had one who was going to put the book out in 2024, but they ended up being super flaky and bad communicators. Impeller Press came to the rescue, and they’ve treated the book like the magical freaky beauty that it's always wanted to become.

Rail: Were there any adult books written from a children's perspective that haunted you as a reader or inspired you as a writer?

Sampsell: I love young narrators, but Tony is definitely the youngest I can think of as far as main protagonists go. One of my all-time favorite stories is “Owls” by Lewis Nordan and it’s about a young boy who’s on a nighttime drive with his father, who was drunk driving, and they see a road sign that says either SLOW or OWLS. They stop on the side of the road in the pitch black and hear the sounds of owls circling overhead. I love that misunderstanding of the language in that story and the father-son tension in it. Your question made me realize that this may be one of the hidden inspirations in my head while writing about Tony’s worldview. Thank you.

Rail: Tony Volcano's toddler adventures trying to find his dad—who he thinks is the moon—in his gritty neighborhood and encountering a motley group of characters reminded me of a surreal, trippy adult reimagining of Goodnight Moon. Were there any kids' books replaying in the back of your head as you went through the writing process with this?

Sampsell: I thought about Harold and the Purple Crayon a little. Maybe Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen. They weren’t really that much of an inspiration, though. Even though it’s a baby telling the story, it’s a book for grown-ups for sure. Something I thought about just recently, as far as another book it could find parallels with, is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. There are some fantastical elements to Tony’s adventure that could be seen in a surreal, falling-down-a-rabbit-hole way.

Rail: What challenges did you face as a writer in adopting a child's voice? Even a precocious child like Tony can be a tough perspective to sustain and maintain the reader's rapt attention the way this novel does.

Sampsell: This was a challenge in many ways. Some early readers of the manuscript would definitely bring up things like: how would the baby know about this, but not know about that? I did make some adjustments to some parts because of these readers’ comments or concerns. But for some weird reason, that child-like voice and POV were easier to get into than I expected–not to mention it’s just a really fun challenge. It’s a naive sort of thought process because he’s still learning about the world and also the language that guides us through it. And I think I’m kind of naive about things in the world around me sometimes too. The world is so full of things that are begging to be misunderstood.