O:JA&L’s FREE PRESSES
Literature Under Pressure:
Discover O:JA&L’s HOT BUTTON PRESS
Hot Button Press: Contemporary Controversies gathers provocative fiction, poetry, and commentary confronting culture’s flashpoints. From satirical stories and counter-revolutionary prizewriting to war icons, crossroads poems, and argumentative essays, the imprint invites readers into contested public questions where literary pressure, political friction, and aesthetic risk become urgent creative form today.
HOT BUTTON PRESS: Contemporary Controversies, an imprint of OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L), publishes fearless literary work for readers drawn to the arguments, fractures, and transformations shaping contemporary culture. Through free digital broadsides, pamphlets, chapbooks, and serials, HOT BUTTON PRESS creates an accessible home for provocative poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction, satire, experimental discourse, cultural criticism, and commentary on urgent public questions.
At HOT BUTTON PRESS, controversy is not treated as spectacle. It is a source of artistic pressure: the place where language meets history, ideology, identity, war, technology, memory, aesthetics, and civic life. The imprint welcomes works that test received ideas, unsettle easy consensus, and approach difficult subjects with formal ambition and intellectual independence. Whether a project speaks through a single concentrated poem, a writer’s portfolio, a speculative narrative, an argumentative essay, or an extended serial, each title invites sustained attention rather than the quick verdicts of the news cycle.
The catalog reflects the range of contemporary literature itself. Readers will find innovative poetry and haiku-related forms, Americana and cowboy poetry, socially engaged fiction, flash discourse, performance texts, experimental writing, creative commentary on international events, and essays on contemporary culture and the arts. Across the Broadside Series, Pamphlet Series, Chapbook Series, and Serials, established and emerging writers encounter a publishing space designed for work that is timely enough to matter now and substantial enough to remain discoverable later.
As part of O:JA&L’s Free Presses, HOT BUTTON PRESS extends the reach of independent literary publishing by making many projects available online as free PDF publications. This open-access model connects writers with readers, teachers, students, researchers, and literary communities worldwide while preserving compact works that might otherwise disappear in the rapid churn of digital media. The result is a growing archive of contemporary controversies as interpreted through literary art: not a single platform or position, but a charged field of voices, forms, and counterarguments.
Explore HOT BUTTON PRESS to discover contemporary poetry, provocative short stories, literary chapbooks, free pamphlets, experimental prose, cultural criticism, and independent writing that refuses to look away. Read across the series, follow the questions from title to title, and return often as O:JA&L continues to publish work built for debate, discovery, and lasting conversation.
Hot Button Press: The Broadside Series
2026
Titles in press.
Hot Button Press: The Pamphlet Series
2026
Hot Button Press: The Pamphlet Series
2025
Hot Button Press: The Pamphlet Series
2024
HOT BUTTON PRESS|2024 Pamphlet Series|Americana|Based Fiction||Mick McGrath|”Woes Innumerous”
Hot Button Press: The Pamphlet Series
2023
This project was made possible, in part, through support from
Richard Stimac and his new book BLOOD, WATER, AND STONE
available now from Spartan Press.
Hot Button Press: The Chapbook Series
2026
HOT BUTTON PRESS: Contemporary Controversies|ChapbookSeries|Fiction||Samantha Isasi|”The Apology”
These projects were made possible, in part, through support from
Grayling and Wraith, a growth marketing company.
Hot Button Press: Serials
HOT BUTTON PRESS|2023 Serials||Mick McGrath|”The Deplorable”||Installment 1
HOT BUTTON PRESS|2023 Serials||Mick McGrath|”The Deplorable”||Installment 2
HOT BUTTON PRESS|2023 Serials||Mick McGrath|”The Deplorable”||Installment 3
HOT BUTTON PRESS|2023 Serials||Mick McGrath|”The Deplorable”||Installment 4
These projects were made possible, in part, through support from
Grayling and Wraith, a growth marketing company.
OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprints Buttonhook Press, HOT BUTTON PRESS Contemporary Issues, and HIGH BUTTON PRESS Contemporary Art, supports writers and artists worldwide.
O:JA&L’S BUTTONHOOK PRESS MASTERS SERIES
CLICK ON THE TITLES TO EXPLORE THE FREE PDF CHAPBOOKS IN THE MASTERS SERIES
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Brian Clements on Prose Poetry
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Mark Budman on Flash Discourse
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Ray Gonzalez on Prose Poetry
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Michael Martone on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Roberta Allen on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Peter Conners on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Maxine Chernoff on Prose Poetry
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
MORE TITLES IN PRESS
