Flamme Flames On

It started as a literary fanzine with two dedicated newspaper journalists pumping out texts and 10 subscribers. Ten years later, Flamme is a freestanding sister publisher to Cappelen Damm in Norway, with 50 some titles and a Bragepris literary prize - the country's most prestigious - to its credit.

"We had an idea of starting a book publishing house with a fairly distinct profile," says Bendik Wold, one of the two founders. "A niche publisher with not only high quality books but also a larger context with more meaning to the literature. We presented the idea for someone at what was then Damm, who took it on to top management. I think they liked our energy and that we both write ourselves and worked with books at different newspapers before. That's how Flamme started, on April 1, 2008." 

Together with his fellow founder Nils-Øivind Haagensen, Wold runs the publisher from a small storefront in Oslo's trendy Grünerlokka neighborhood. Wold and Haagensen serve both as editors and publishers, write blogs at flammeforlag.no and handle the marketing and book launches. Wold says that they should serve as a kind of laboratory for new literature, and that they publish nearly an equal amount of prose and poetry. In general, there is plenty of variety. At the Flamme FAQ, they write that "nearly anything could be a Flamme book, but almost nothing is." 

"We thought we should be a publisher of literature, but suddenly we'd put out non-fiction," says Haagensen. "We thought we should stick to books for adults but then we ended up with a children's book. So it's not really possible to say what kind of book we publish. However, we're keen to support new authors rather than subsist on scraps from the big publishing houses. Most often our books are from first-time authors. The youngest was only 19."

The common thread probably can be found easiest in the look. The design of the books is a chapter in itself. The design agency Yokoland has since the beginning designed everything that Flamme produces, including posters and other print material. There is a lot of focus on the choice of materials and a common look to the publications.

"You should be able to recognize what we put out, like Penguin books," says Wold. "Everything we print gets its own number, for example, books and other things such as posters and catalogues." Wold points to the F°1 poster on the door to the storefront office.

The most recent book, Monica Isakstuen's Alltid nyheter, is No. 91. Flamme always tries to do something special for each launch, with the idea of putting things into a bigger context.

"We don't do your normal launch party," says Wold. "Instead we think about what the book is about and try to work from there. When Linn Strømsborg's book Roskilde came out, we had a mini music festival, for example. And Bård Torgersen's Hei Horunger was launched in a hotel room - the author 'lived' in the room and read his poems while lying in bed. We filmed everything on video so you can buy the DVD as well."  (You can get a taste of the video here.)

And the name?

"It's from one of the super heroes in the Fantastic Four, the one who always sets himself on fire and says 'flame on!' [flamme på in Norwegian]," says Haagensen.

And so we leave the two trail-blazing publishers for now. Stay tuned!