Pathwise Press grew out of the establishment of Bathtub Gin, a literary and art magazine founded in 1997 by Christopher Harter in Bloomington, Indiana. The magazine was initially co-edited by Harter and Tom Maxedon of Muncie, Indiana, until Harter took on sole editorship in 2000. Bathtub Gin's motto positioned it as a "bootlegger of ideas, untaxed and unregulated," which spoke to the eclectic nature of the work presented in its pages. Issues of the magazine featured poetry, short fictions, excerpts of longer prose work, photography, artwork, drama, interviews and reviews. The magazine published the work of small press veterans such as Kell Robertson, Harland Ristau, A.D. Winans, Tom Kryss, Lyn Lifshin, Hugh Fox, Richard Krech, and others, as well as previously unpublished writers and artists. Bathtub Gin included both local and international contributors through the twenty issues that appeared between 1997 and 2007. Issue five was a special issue devoted to the state of small press and literary magazine publishing in the late 1990s.

Pathwise Press, originally known as Pathways Press, produced twelve chapbooks of poetry and short fiction beginning with the Abstract Still Life by Harter (1998) and ending with a reissue of Kell Robertson's Bear Crossing in 2007. Other authors included Bloomington, Indiana, poets John Gohmann and Joseph Kerschbaum, as well as Gordon Annand, Carmen Germain, Saar Hendelman, Mike James, Mark Terrill, and Lindsay Wilson. A compilation chapbook intitled Writers Writing Writers included works by contemporary poets referencing the work of previous poets.

Bathtub Gin and Pathwise Press published from Bloomington, Indiana; Erie, Pennsylvania; Champaign, Illinois; and New Orleans, Louisiana, between 1997 and 2007.

Note provided by donor.