For 13 years, from 1980-1993, THE SEGUE DISTRIBUTION PROJECT distributed over 300 small press books, journals and videos through its annual catalogue. Now THE SEGUE DISTRIBUTION ARCHIVE located at its offices is using that effort as the basis to form an important documentation of small-press literary history during those years. Segue also currently sponsors publication of the literary journals BIG ALLIS and OPEN CITY, the visual arts journal M/E/A/N/I/N/G, PURGATORY PIE PRESS (an art letter-press) and since 1979, the acclaimed Saturday reading series at the Ear Inn in New York City.

Segue's INCISIONS PRISON ARTS PROJECT sponsors poetry classes and workshops in various NY State correctional facilities, including Sing Sing, Creedmoor, Rikers, and Bayview. Segue has also sponsored numerous successful individual artists grants in dance, film and performance arts. Some recent projects sponsored include FOUR WALLS, a space for discussions emanating from and around the work of visual artists, a trip by well-known a capella group SWEET HONEY IN THE ROCK to the historic Beijing Women's Conference in 1995, THE HOMEGROWN THEATRE, an avant-garde theatre space located on Manhattan's upper-west side, and a new video by filmmaker Henry Hills "Elvis Elsewhere" for the Kronos Quartet.

In 1987, SEGUE sponsored the renovation of an abandoned city-owned property at 303 East 8th Street into 12 artist live/work coops and a 1200 sq. ft. performance space, the only successfully completed Manhattan artist housing project of the eighties. Our newly expanded offices and archives, as well as film editing facilities, are housed there. THE SEGUE PERFORMANCE SPACE is utilized as low-cost dance and theatrical rehearsal space during daytime hours and in the evenings we sponsor regularly-scheduled ongoing reading, film, dance, and music series.

The Foundation is directly supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Speakers Bureau of Film/Video Arts, Meet the Composer, Poets & Writers, The Andy Warhol Foundation, Experimental Television, and Materials for the Arts, as well as other project contributions from corporations, foundations, and individuals. We are a NYS registered charity and Federally tax-exempt under IRS 501(c)(3).

If you are interest in finding out more information about either SEGUE or any of our SEGUE sponsored organizations, please contact us directly at 212-674-0199. Segue also invites arts organizations and individual artists interested in arts sponsorship to contact us for more information on our arts sponsorship program.

The Segue Distribution Archive is a special collection of several thousand rare and hard-to-find small press books and journals based on the Foundation's 13 year tenure (1980-1993) as a major non- profit literary distributor. The archive also contains audio recordings from SEGUE's Ear Inn Reading Series on Spring Street and its Reading Series at its own Segue Performance Space. The Archive is housed and maintained at The Foundation's Offices located at 303 E. 8th Street, directly below THE SEGUE PERFORMANCE SPACE, and is open to the public for viewing by appointment. The curators of the archive are Sharon Lattig and Stephen Mounkhall, both of whom are poets and doctoral students in contemporary literature at the CUNY Graduate Center.

The Segue Distribution Archive effort was initiated by the Foundation, because it was felt that important aspects of history of small-press poetry and criticism needed to be preserved and made available to a new generation of writers and scholars. Because of the limited runs of many small-press efforts over the years, many titles are now only available on the bookshelves of the writers themselves, or in the specialized poetry collections at Universities outside of New York City such as SUNY Buffalo and UC San Diego. Other Independent resources such as Poet's house on Spring Street in New York are understandably committed to representing many different elements in American Poetry publishing and not specifically experimental traditions.

It is for these very reasons why Segue felt strongly that an independent collection specifically championing books and journals featuring avant-garde and experimental poets and critics needed to be formed. Our goal is to provide visitors to our archive with a context within which to view both the work and publications. We are attempting to provide this context by assembling the complete works by important experimental poets and critics; the complete runs of important independent journals associated with these writers; and the complete poetry and poetry criticism runs of important independent publishers of avant-garde titles. Segue has meticulously converted all of its 13 years of distribution catalogues to disk and is now using that as a guide for what is currently in its collection and what it has yet to obtain to complete that collection.

To make an appointment to view the archive, please leave a message for The Archivists in the Archive Voice MailBox at 212-674-0199 x3. If you are a small-press publisher interested in having your books represented in our Archive or an individual interested in donating extra copies from your collection, Segue would be glad to present you with a certificate of tax-deductible donation for the fair value of those items.

The complete Segue Catalogue should be available on-line in the near future. In the meantime, a copy of The Segue Catalogue can be obtained by sending your request accompanied by a check or money order payable for U.S. $10 to The Segue Foundation, 303 E. 8th Street, New York, NY 10009.