We are an Independent Art House Press that explores the dialogue between contemporary artists and classic books in benefit of social justice organizations.

40% of proceeds go to organizations served by each collection.

Halcyon House was founded in 2019 and is an experimental model to teach our children how to make a living through sustainable, creative community service.

Our small run books aim to be as beautiful outside as they are thoughtful, within.

Halcyon House is a Sister Press to Mercury House, the oldest Independent publisher in California.

There's a party at my house. Nine, ten (?) teenagers...boys and girls, like a pack of puppies. I'm not sure who will be sleeping over but I find kids all over the place, curled up like toddlers.

My house is the place that they all just walk into. The place where they gut fish they've caught off the pier and experience the on-purpose closeness of girls next to boys that comes from purposefully having too many kids in one small bedroom. The place where they sneak joints and make atrocious food at 2am and run wild through the house with impunity as long as they agree to not break my shit and leave when I tell them too. The gossip! The intrigue! I can feel the ebb and flow of their energy from the oasis of my bedroom.

It's very joyful and maddening and my heart might explode because of their earnest excitement and boundless belief that anything could happen.

Meanwhile, Ayla is trying on new clothes and we are putting outfits together. This with that, the language of Middle School cool writ large in oversized sweatpants and small t-shirts.

After her first week of Middle School she has been summarily appointed 'cool girl' because of Finn's infamy. She is a favorite of the 8th grade girls crushing on Finn and she is wary of their affections.

She's trying out for volleyball this week. There was a written application just to make it to try out round.

She wrote phrases like 'maximizing potential' and I marveled at her. I asked her where she learned to write like that...she said 'it's common sense'. She's my American girl, natural heir of confidence and straightened teeth and glossy hair.

Anyway, she wants a place on the volleyball team and I have never seen her so driven. Youtube tutorials, elaborate practice drills.

It's the very fierceness I always marveled at in others. It's slightly terrifying and now I know for sure you need to be born to it, without interruption from poisonous parents and squalid abuse.

I stole away to the farthest place from my family and erased their very existence and behold, Ayla walks free, trailing strong genes and drawing from an endless wellspring of American Exceptionalism.

It is my greatest achievement. I have given her all the doors. all of them. to do with as she pleases.