This week, Phoebe Bosche, the managing director and copublisher of Raven Chronicles, is being interviewed by Jeff Brown for a segment on PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer about the plight of small-press magazines in the United States. They're going to do the interview in Raven Chronicles' office at Richard Hugo House. Bosche will probably talk about postal rates. Rates for magazines went up 200 percent in May. (The new criterion is size, not weight, so a book—to say nothing of a piece of junk mail—is now cheaper to send than a magazine.) But the economics of the postal service is not the only setback facing Raven Chronicles. They may soon not have their Hugo House office at all.

According to Bosche, Hugo House Executive Director Lyall Bush "called me a couple months ago and said, 'Oh, by the way, we're kicking you out by the end of the year.'" More recently, Bosche says Bush told her, "We're going to gut your space and we're going to offer it at commercial rates—$1,000 per month—and if you can't pay that you'll have to leave by November 15." Raven Chronicles has been around since 1991 and has had office space at Hugo House since 1997. In an e-mail, Bosche equated losing Hugo House's support to "the tearing up of every single principle that Hugo House stands for or did stand for."

According to Bush, "I gave [Bosche] seven months notice and I told her we had income goals and nothing is forever. Raven Chronicles has had an amazing subsidized life for a long stretch." Since 1997, Raven Chronicles has been paying $100 a month in rent, an understanding between the magazine and Hugo House that was never written down. "There are a million small presses and magazines and to prioritize two"—Raven Chronicles and Floating Bridge Press, which has enjoyed a similar sweetheart rent deal with Hugo House—"I'm not sure what the argument in favor of that is, except history," Bush says.

Raven Chronicles' history includes publishing early work by the then-unknown writer Sherman Alexie, and its roster of past editors includes Kathleen Alcalá, John Olson, and Matt Briggs. "My main thing is that small presses are still the backbone of the writing community and without them most writers couldn't get started in writing," Bosche says.

Bush wouldn't mind seeing several small presses—Raven Chronicles included—sharing the office space and splitting the rent. "On the one hand, change seems so good to the revolutionary spirit," Bush says, "and on the other hand, people do react interestingly." recommended

frizzelle@thestranger.com