Native-owned independent literary house · Klamath Basin, Oregon

Mythic, land-rooted fiction of the American West.

Basalt Sea Press is a Native-owned literary house in the Klamath Basin of southern Oregon and northern California, a country of basalt desert, lava beds, forests, and river canyons. We publish Native writers working in myth, oral tradition, and the history of the region.

See the catalog Publishing & inquiries

Our mission

Story as inheritance, and as evolution.

Basalt Sea Press is a Native-owned independent literary house. We publish Native writers, and work that grows out of the land and the oral tradition of the American West. The list runs from mythic fiction to historical fiction to hybrid forms that draw on Indigenous oral tradition and hold up as literature on their own terms.

Our first book is The Spiral Cycle: twelve Modoc origin myths told as one continuous story. It carries the old cosmology and sets it alongside things like evolution and the geology of the Basin, so the making of the land and the making of the people end up being the same story.

What we publish

Native-owned, and proud of what that means.

Basalt Sea Press is owned and run by an enrolled member of the Klamath Confederated Tribes. We publish from inside the tradition, not about it.

Native voices

Told from the inside

Own-voices work by Native writers, shaped by the culture and the land it comes from, not flattened into someone else's frame.

Mythology & oral tradition

The old stories, told whole

Origin myths and oral tradition brought into print with care, so they reach the next generation intact.

Stories of resistance

The histories that survived

The stories the official record buried: what removal did here, and what survived it, told from the ground itself.

Catalog

The Spiral Cycle

The complete cycle: all twelve spirals and a companion guide in one volume, and available as individual ebooks and audiobooks.

The Spirals of Kemush

Paperback $19.99 · the complete Kemush Cycle

All twelve Kemush myths, gathered with a full scholarly companion guide that works through their cosmology and the forces that shape the world of the cycle. The complete edition of the Kemush Cycle.

Paperback on Amazon

★★★★★
"Interesting take on how native stories can incorporate modern concepts like evolution and tie it into how the basin and people are made. Loved the interpretive material in the companion guide."
"Culturally Important" — Amazon review

Spirals of Kemush

iOS app · $4.99

The illustrated edition. The full cycle with 190 painterly panels, optional read-aloud, and fully offline. No accounts, no tracking; nothing leaves your device.

Download on the App Store

Forthcoming & companion sites

Forthcoming novel

Yellow Bird

John Rollin Ridge, the Cherokee writer who signed himself Yellow Bird and is remembered as the first Native American novelist.

johnrollinridge.com →

Forthcoming novel

The Renegade Enos: Witness to the American West

The 1846 conquest seen through a renegade guide: Frémont and Kit Carson, the Klamath Lake killings, and the gallows at Battle Rock.

renegadeenos.com →

The documented record

Kintpuash — Captain Jack

The primary-source record behind Captain Jack & The Original Renegades: the sources, notes, and documents, told from inside Modoc memory.

kintpuash.com →

Publishing

An imprint with the standards of a literary house

Basalt Sea Press holds to the editorial standards of a literary house while staying open the way a small press can. We are building a home for Native writers and for land-rooted writing from the American West. We especially want to hear from Native writers working in myth, oral tradition, and stories of resistance. Inquiries are welcome.

Inquire →