a literary arts organization & small press based in HTX. 501c3.
The gesture of passing salt is the sharing of resources. Salt used to be payment or a highly traded commodity. It is still sought after and used in the everyday. It amplifies flavor. Uplifts. And does so much more than we can probably imagine.
Here at pass the salt presse, we believe in passing the salt as a gesture of sharing wealth. And that’s what we want to share, but in the wealth of poetry, knowledge, and creativity. Our mission is to preserve and continue the craft of poetry to empower all. Through our nonprofit literary arts organization and small press, we push to continue tradition and go against the grain of tradition. We seek a part among parts as a publisher of first poetry books to jumpstart emerging poets. Our impact projects, such as The Unbroken Wheat Project, seek to empower voices that often go unheard of or overlooked. Each grain matters.
We want poetry that sings and stings.
Under the auspices of pass the salt presse are table//FEAST Literary Magazine, bar//DRINK Reading Series, The Unbroken Wheat Project, The Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan First Book of Poetry Prize which launches in the summer of 2027, and more that are in development.
Our primary focus for our press is poetry.
To learn about our impact project where we work alongside unhoused youth to write and we pay them for their poetry, click the Donate page.
To learn more about what we offer, enter a query into the Contact page.
Board Members, Interns, & Volunteers
The individuals below are dedicated to the mission of pass the salt presse and the enrichment, preservation, and continuation of poetry in not only HTX’s culture within - but outside as well.
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Founder, Editor, President & TreasurerColin James Sturdevant is a poet and writer living in the melting pot city that is Houston, TX. His work has appeared in Crab Creek Review, Bluestem Magazine, The Bayou Review, Peach Fuzz Magazine, and Mid/South Sonnets. He is an MFA in Creative Writing - Poetry candidate at the low residency program at Western Colorado University. He's more interested in your story.
He founded the literary magazine table//FEAST which gave rise to pass the salt presse. The publication and press that followed were conceptualized during the height of Covid 19.
In the summer and fall, he works alongside the unhoused youth at Montrose Grace Place where the said youth are paid for their original poetry. Their poems are then anthologized and sold to support the ongoing impact project that is The Unbroken Wheat Project.
Come the summer of 2026, he will launch the first reading call for poetry manuscripts for the organization’s first publication which will seek to publish a poet’s first book.
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Unbroken Wheat InternBritt Bustos (she/they) is a poet, editor, writer, educator, and musician taking up space in Houston, TX. Their works appear or are forthcoming in new words {press}, Heavy Feather Review, table//FEAST Literary Magazine, McNeese Review, The WAC Clearinghouse, Atticus Review, and elsewhere. She serves as an associate poetry editor for West Trade Review and has served as an associate editor of the Texas Review. They received their MFA and MA from Sam Houston State University, where they currently teach English.
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Vice PresidentStalina Emmanuelle Villarreal (she/they) sees, hears, feels, and communicates across mediums and cultures. She’s a deep-watching ekphrastic poet, a photographic eco-essayist, a broad-stroke sketch artist, a sonic improv performer, a sound-sensitive literary translator, and an assistant professor of English. Their bilingualism stems from her 1.5-generation experience being both Mexican and Xicanx.
Her debut collection of poetry called Watcha is out now from Deep Vellum Publishing. Their poetry can be found in the Rio Grande Review, Texas Review, The Acentos Review, Defunkt Magazine, and elsewhere. Her published translations of poetry include Enigmas by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Photograms of My Conceptual Heart Absolutely Blind by Minerva Reynosa, Kilimanjaro by Maricela Guerrero, and Postcards in Braille by Sergio Pérez Torres.
Stalina is the recipient of the Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Poetry and one of the BIPOC Arts Network and Fund 2025 Artist Awards. Their visual poetry—spanning queer erotica, interactive digital art, and video installation—was part of the Antena@Blaffer exhibit at University of Houston’s Blaffer Art Museum.
She is currently writing ekphrastic elegies about her interpretative drawings of portraits and a memoir about her photographs of nature—revealing her ability to look backward and within, to write new ways forward.
(Photograph by Lynn Lane)
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Communications & Liasson Press InternKarsyn Coxie is a writer and editor based in Houston. She holds a BA in Communication with a minor in Graphic Design and is currently pursuing her MS in Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville. A former Editor-in-Chief of her university’s student publications, her reporting and photography have earned national recognition, including two CMA Pinnacle Awards. She likes unique design, emotionally charged stories, and the kind of curiosity that won’t sit still.
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SecretaryDavid Leftwich grew up in urban Texas and rural Missouri and currently lives in Houston with his wife and daughter. Before returning to the Bayou City, he lived on the East Coast, where he worked at a grocery store, a bookstore, a book wholesaler, and a book publisher. While in Houston, he has worked in book publishing and as a stay-at-home parent, writer, and editor.
His poetry manuscript at dawn, the first of the first to sing won 2025 Omnidawn 1st/2nd Poetry Book Contest and will be published in Fall 2027. His chapbook The City was published by the Little Red Leaves Textile Series. He cofounded and was editor of Sugar & Rice, a Gulf Coast food and culture journal, and was editor of Edible Houston. His work on the intersection of food, culture, immigration, and history has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, Sugar & Rice, Edible Houston,Food+City, Houston Food Finder, and Cite.
Presse Shop
This is our initial volume of Unbroken Wheat that features poetry from some of the youth served by Montrose Grace Place in Houston. The youth are often at risk or facing housing struggles and are predominantly LGBTQ+ and/ or BIPOC. For each published poem, youth are rewarded 10 dollars. All proceeds from anthology sales go back to Montrose Grace Place to help the youth.
This is the fourth issue of our print literary magazine. Limited stock left. We have reduced the price to help move inventory.