Now married 21 years, Danielle Dutton and Martin Riker are a literary power couple. Both serve in the Department of English in WashU Arts & Sciences and run Dorothy, a publishing project, a small feminist press they founded in 2009. They also are writers themselves. Dutton is known for her short-form and experimental fiction, which has appeared in The New Yorker and Harper’s Magazine, while Riker’s novels and criticism have garnered top reviews from The New York Review of Books, Los Angeles Times and other acclaimed publications.
“We’re very different people in our reading and tastes,” said Riker, who grew up in central Pennsylvania. “But somehow, when it comes to Dorothy, we just agree a lot. It sort of magically became a cooperative shared space.”
Dutton echoed the sentiment.
“We don’t read the same books at all or watch the same shows almost ever,” said Dutton, who is from central California. “But this place brings us together.”
The couple also shares a passion for writing and teaching, Riker said.
“I love that my relationship to books and people and readers and writers has all these different forms, that I’m not just a novelist or just a book publisher,” Riker said. “We’ve somehow managed to be just enough of each thing that it doesn’t make our lives, you know, a living hell of busyness. But the fact that we get to interact on all those different levels and be on this side of the table here and that side of the table there — it’s just my favorite thing.”
‘Joy, laughter and just delight’
Dutton is a professor of English and the director of WashU’s Creative Writing program, working with both master’s in fine arts (MFA) candidates and undergraduates. In 2024, Dutton won an Excellence in Teaching Award from Arts & Sciences.
Riker serves as the inaugural director of the publishing specialization in English, which explores the history, philosophy and business of publishing. Teaching from his own experience, Riker offers students the opportunity to practice the day-to-day tasks of a publisher and hear directly from leaders in the publishing world.
Both Riker and Dutton were drawn to WashU because of the reputation of the MFA program and the faculty.
“I felt extremely lucky to get a job here because the well-respected creative writing program is so incredible,” Dutton said. “At the time I came in, some of my favorite writers were already on the faculty — especially Katherine Davis, in fiction, and Mary Jo Bang, in poetry.”
Riker felt similarly, with Stanley Elkin and William Gass serving as his inspiration.
“Creative writing at WashU has a great legacy of innovative writing,” he said.
While many of these faculty members have since died or retired, Dutton has stayed at WashU for the community.
“My colleagues are lovely people and my students are lovely people — I feel lucky to come to work and interact with all of them on a regular basis,” she said. “Teaching brings me a lot of joy, laughter and just delight.”
One lesson Dutton and Riker both emphasize to students is the value of exploration. In their respective 20s, Riker “bummed around” as a musician while Dutton worked at a bookstore in England and in music management in Los Angeles. They met in Chicago, moved to Denver to earn their PhDs and then settled in Urbana-Champaign, Ill., where they joined Dalkey Archive Press, the publishing house where Riker previously had worked in Chicago. That’s also where the couple launched Dorothy.
“I think it’s really important for people to be open to that kind of not-knowing,” Dutton said. “Though there were times where it felt really scary and terrifying and disheartening, there were times when it felt exciting and freeing. The path was never clear to me at any particular stage.”
Dancing to their own drum
When Dutton and Riker are not in the classroom, they are at the Dorothy headquarters, i.e. their St. Louis home. Aside from a few WashU MFA students whom they select as interns, the press is just the two of them. Dutton manages design, layout and production of the books and Riker handles royalties and contracts, while they mostly handle editorial and marketing work together. Working far from major publishing hubs such as New York makes the press unique.
“Being in the Midwest, we can dance to the beat of our own drum,” Dutton said.
Whereas other small publishers compete for authors and publish multiple books per year, Dorothy publishes only two titles annually. Their commitment to remaining small helps them keep the bar high — for themselves and their authors — and set a schedule that accommodates their own teaching and writing.
“When some of our books started to take off, we had to resist the desire to change what we’re doing,” Riker said. “When you have success, it always comes with a kind of a pressure to get bigger or to try to recreate that success commercially. We had to be careful not to fall into that trap.”
Around 80% of the authors they publish go on to publish works with bigger presses. Riker suspects that writers and their agents have noticed this trend, which is why Dorothy gets so many submissions now. He said that helping Dorothy authors find success is among the most fulfilling parts of the job.
New York Review of Books: Dorothy Sampler
‘The Complete Stories,’ Leonora Carrington
‘The Taiga Syndrome,’ Cristina Rivera Garza
‘Suite for Barbara Loden,’ Nathalie Léger
‘The Long Form,’ Kate Briggs
‘The New Animals,’ Pip Adam
‘Event Factory,’ Renee Gladman
“I definitely didn’t think it was going to take off the way that it eventually did,” Riker said. “My sense was that it was going to be very much a community thing, not a ‘reviews in The New York Times’ kind of thing.”
Fan fiction
This attitude of prioritizing caliber over volume trickles back into Dutton’s philosophy about writing. Dutton’s best-known work is her 2016 historical novel “Margaret the First.” She also has written three other books — another novel and two collections — and several collaborative books with visual artists.
Dutton said she finds meaning in even the most technical or mechanical decisions throughout the writing process.
“I take pleasure in making sentences that please me, which turn into paragraphs that please me, which turn into transitions between ideas,” Dutton said. “It doesn’t really matter which genre, the pleasure in writing is basically the same to me.”
Riker’s most famous work is his 2023 novel “The Guest Lecture.” He also has written another novel, “Samuel Johnson’s Eternal Return,” as well as reviews and critical writing published in The New York Times Book Review and The Wall Street Journal.
Riker’s favorite thing about his own writing is how he has ended both of his books.
“For both my novels, the endings were hard-fought for,” he said. “It took a long time for me to see how the books were going to end, but by the time I found them, they felt so special.”
Dutton’s favorite piece of Riker’s writing is the book he is working on now. All he will say about that work is that he hopes to finish it soon.
And Riker loves Dutton’s most recent book, “Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other,” particularly the “Prairie” section of stories, set mostly in Missouri.
“I’m a big Danielle Dutton fan,” Riker said.
Dutton feels the same way about Riker.
“The work of someone you care about is different,” she said. “Obviously, when I’m reading Marty’s work it’s alive for me in all sorts of ways it might not be for someone else, but this is true for books by friends as well, and it’s true for the books we publish. We get attached to our authors. Each time a Dorothy book comes out, it’s like we’re holding our breath, hoping other people will love it as much as we do.”
