About Graywolf Press

In 1974, Graywolf's founder Scott Walker embarked on a publishing adventure. Originally working out of a space provided by Copper Canyon Press in Port Townsend, Washington, Graywolf soon moved in to a shop of its own, or rather into Scott's backyard in a small outbuilding affectionately called the "print shack."

It was in this small, cramped building that the first books were produced for the reading public. Each book was painstakingly hand-set and hand-printed on treadle-operated machines. After six months of fourteen-hour days, the first full-length poetry book, Instructions to the Double by Tess Gallagher, was given life. The small print run of fifteen hundred copies sold out in four months.

Since then, Graywolf has expanded its list to include novels, short stories, memoirs, essays, as well as poetry, and has discovered and/or promoted such writers as Elizabeth Alexander, Charles Baxter, Sven Birkerts, Linda Gregg, Eamon Grennan, Tony Hoagland, Jane Kenyon, William Kittredge, Carl Phillips, William Stafford, David Treuer, and Brenda Ueland. A commitment to quality, and a willingness to embrace or invent new models, has kept Graywolf at the forefront of the small press movement. Today, Graywolf is considered one of the nation's leading nonprofit literary publishers.

Graywolf Press was incorporated as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in 1984, and in 1985, thanks in part to generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts and from local philanthropic organizations, Graywolf moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota.

In 1987, Graywolf published the classic If You Want to Write by Minnesota writer Brenda Ueland, which has become the Press's best-selling title, with over 200,000 copies in print. In 1988, the Press published the groundbreaking anthology Multi-Cultural Literacy as the fifth volume in the Graywolf Annual series.

In 1992, Graywolf was one of 28 presses to participate in a pioneering Wallace Funds program and one of nine in a simultaneous Mellon Foundation program.

Graywolf published its largest number of titles in a single year (23) during 1993. In March of 1994, Scott Walker resigned and the Press was run by board president Page Cowles until October 1994, when Fiona McCrae was named as the new director.

By 1995, it was clear that Graywolf had emerged even stronger as a result of the transition period. Graywolf's continued leadership in the field was affirmed by a major grant from the Mellon Foundation to support its new phase of development.

In 1996, Graywolf published Otherwise: New & Selected Poems by Jane Kenyon, which has sold over 50,000 copies to date, and began the Graywolf Forum series of anthologies of creative nonfiction. With support from USWest, Graywolf also launched its award-winning web site.

1997 saw the beginning of Graywolf's innovative collaborative partnership with the College of Saint Benedict, which has grown to include an author residency program, the S. Mariella Gable Prize for fiction, and a dramatic reading series at the Jungle Theater in Minneapolis.

Graywolf celebrated twenty-five years of independent publishing in 1999 with a series of national events and the publication of the Graywolf Silver Anthology.

In 2002, Graywolf moved its distribution to the prestigious New York publishers Farrar, Straus & Giroux, an alliance that confirms Graywolf's position as a significant American publisher and one that has allowed the Press to increase its services to our readers and writers

We have claimed our piece of the literary landscape by introducing and promoting the most exciting and creative writers of our times. We invite you to browse through these pages, share your thoughts, and help keep fine literature off the extinction list.