Alumni-Founded Drop Leaf Press Brings Out First Book, 'Prima Vera'

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE -- Sitting in a semicircle around Jill Tomasetti’s Inner Richmond apartment, the members of Drop Leaf Press gathered last week to discuss their first book, Tomasetti’s “Prima Vera” collection of poems, which they launch Friday, March 20. The five — Amy Bell, Jennifer Cheng, Sarah Heady, Lauren Peck and Tomasetti — met at San Francisco State University and for the past two years have been meeting, within a larger group, for what they call “crafternoons.” “We’d just get together and bring whatever craft things we were working on, just to hang out and sort of talk and craft,” Bell said. Tomasetti added, “I think that’s a really huge factor in our approach to the press. We all consider ourselves makers in some way, and being a writer informs how I make things. Just bringing the two impulses together, to books. … What if we made the things that we really care about?”