Building a Home Port for Stories: The Vision Behind Planck Length Publishing

Stories shape the way we see the world. They preserve the past, make sense of the present, and imagine new possibilities for the future. They are, at their core, one of the most powerful tools we have for building and evolving culture. That belief has been a driving force behind everything I’ve done as a writer, podcaster, and editor—and it’s the foundation of Planck Length Publishing (PLP).

PLP is a small press for speculative literature, my personal favorite kind of writing, and it’s also an incubator for creative cultural projects and literary imprints—a space where other artists, writers, and storytellers can explore the boundaries of their favorite crafts together while building meaningful connections with their local communities.

A Natural Evolution from EPIC Carteret to PLP

PLP is a direct result of what I’ve learned through EPIC Carteret, my local culture and storytelling podcast. Over the past few years, EPIC has introduced me to artists, activists, and entrepreneurs whose work has helped shape the identity of coastal North Carolina. Through those conversations, I’ve come to see how vital community-driven publishing can be—not just for preserving local culture but for proactively evolving it to make space for more diverse, experimental, and impactful stories.

This is where PLP comes in. While our imprint EPIC Carteret Books will focus on local, feel-good, community-centered storytelling, same as the podcast, PLP embraces the stranger currents—the weird, the uncanny, and the speculative. Together, these two imprints form a broader publishing ecosystem, ensuring local culture isn’t just archived and ossified but also expanded, challenged, and reimagined.

A Small Press as a Cultural Incubator

Small press publishing has always been a place where the most interesting, radical, and necessary stories emerge, and we want to be a part of that tradition. We see PLP as an experimental publishing space that nurtures speculative storytelling while fostering new models for creative sustainability.

We also believe that local publishing—when done with intention—can serve as a kind of cultural incubator, helping artists and communities shape their own narratives rather than relying on larger, external forces to define them.

How It All Started

While EPIC Carteret helped me build necessary skills and refine my vision for PLP, this idea has been with me for much longer—since before Jack and I were married, back when I was a single mom and a high school English teacher working 90-hour weeks. In those early days, the dream of creating my own press felt like merely a dream, a maybe someday project that existed only in the margins of my lesson plans and early-morning writing sessions.

But Jack believed in the potential of my dream from the start. One of his first acts as my official ride-or-die was to buy the domain for Planck Length Publishing, so that when I was ready—when we were ready—we could make it real.

What’s Next for PLP

2025 will be a big year for us. This spring, our first imprint, EPIC Carteret Books, will launch with the release of our new EPIC Carteret host Emily Carter’s warm, witty essay collection A Spork in the Road. Later in the year, we’ll open submissions for Weird Tales from Waves End Retreat, an anthology of speculative fiction inspired by the eerie, liminal spaces of coastal life. And in the fall, we’ll release Far Offshore, an immersive docudrama podcast that explores memory, myth, and the mysteries of the sea.

These projects are just the beginning. We’re building something bigger than a press—we’re dredging out a home port for stories that challenge, transform, and expand the way we understand the world.

If you believe in that mission, we’d love for you to be part of it. Follow along, get involved, and help us build something extraordinary.

Welcome to Planck Length Publishing.