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About Graywolf Press
Graywolf Press was founded in Port
Townsend, Washington, in 1974 by
Scott Walker. Graywolf’s first publications were limited-edition chapbooks of
poetry, which were printed on a letterpress and hand sewn by Walker and his
colleagues. Over the years Graywolf has expanded its list to include novels,
short stories, memoirs, essays, as well as poetry. The Press has discovered
and/or promoted such writers as Elizabeth Alexander, Mary Jo Bang, Charles
Baxter, Sven Birkerts, Robert Boswell, John D’Agata, Percival Everett, Nuruddin
Farah, Tess Gallagher, Albert Goldbarth, Linda Gregg, Eamon Grennan, Tony
Hoagland, Jane Kenyon, William Kittredge, Don Paterson, Per Petterson, Carl
Phillips, Salvatore Scibona, Vijay Seshadri, William Stafford, David Treuer, and
Brenda Ueland. 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 reissued the classic If You Want
to Write by Minnesota writer Brenda Ueland, which has become the Press’s
best-selling title, with over 300,000 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,
the Press was recognized as a leader in the field by grants from major national
funders, including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Lila
Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund.
Graywolf published its largest number of
titles in a single year to date (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 55,000 copies to date.
With support from USWest, Graywolf launched the first incarnation of its 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 and the S. Mariella Gable
publication series.
Graywolf marked its twenty-fifth
anniversary in 1999 with a series of
national events and the publication of the Graywolf
Silver Anthology. Graywolf entered the Bush Foundation’s Regional Arts
Development Program.
In 2002, the Press began a
distribution relationship with the prestigious publishing company Farrar,
Straus & Giroux, a historic alliance that both confirmed Graywolf’s
position as a significant American press and increased Graywolf’s services to
its readers and writers. Graywolf re-entered the important field of literary
translation, thanks to funding from the Lannan Foundation.
Graywolf celebrated its thirtieth year of
distinguished literary publishing in 2004,
with major events across the country and the launch of our redesigned web site,
thanks to support from the Bush Foundation’s Organizational Effectiveness
Program. Graywolf’s anniversary year was crowned by winning the Sally Ordway
Irvine Award for vision (from Saint Paul’s Ordway Center) in January 2005.
In 2006,
Graywolf completed its ambitious Advance Fund campaign, through which we raised
$1 million, primarily from individuals, to support editorial and marketing
initiatives through 2009. This achievement is unprecedented in the field. One
program supported in part by the Advance Fund is the Graywolf Press Nonfiction
Prize, which was launched in 2006.
Norwegian writer
Per Petterson’s novel Out Stealing Horses
won the 2007 International IMPAC
Dublin Literary Award, the world’s prize for a single work of fiction published
in English. It was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review and Time, and went on to become a national
best seller.
In 2008, Elegy by Mary Jo Bang won the National Book Critics Circle Award
for poetry, and Modern Life by
Matthea Harvey was named a finalist. Salvatore Scibona’s novel, The End, was named a finalist for the
National Book Award.
Graywolf poet
Elizabeth Alexander was chosen by Barack Obama to read an original poem at his
historic presidential inauguration in 2009.
The Press began a new collaboration with the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference,
through which it published the winners of the Bakeless Prizes.
In 2009,
Graywolf moved its offices from Saint Paul to the Traffic Zone Center for
Visual Art in
Minneapolis. The Press’s archives were purchased by the Elmer L. Andersen
Library
at the University of Minnesota.
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