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About Us

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Graywolf Press is a nonprofit literary publisher of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and work in translation.
Widgets

Mission

Graywolf Press is a leading independent publisher committed to the discovery and energetic publication of twenty-first century American and international literature. We champion outstanding writers at all stages of their careers to ensure that adventurous readers can find underrepresented and diverse voices in a crowded marketplace.

We believe works of literature nourish the readers spirit and enrich the broader culture, and that they must be supported by attentive editing, compelling design, and creative promotion.

 

Graywolf Press is committed to making our books, programming, publishing process, and workplace accessible to communities and individuals of all backgrounds and abilities. We invite accessibility feedback and requests for accommodation. Please contact us by email (access@graywolfpress.org) or by phone (651-641-0077) with any requests for ADA-related accommodations. If you have a general question about Graywolf’s books or publishing program, please use our general email address (wolves@graywolfpress.org).

First the letterpress seduced me, and then the name arrested me. . . I imagined a literal gray wolf, neither exclusively black nor white, something fierce and howling at the moon, like writers themselves.

Elizabeth Alexander

History

Graywolf Press was founded in 1974, in Port Townsend, Washington, 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. Graywolf 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, we moved to St. Paul, Minnesota. Fiona McCrae was appointed Director and Publisher in 1994. We joined forces with Farrar, Straus & Giroux for distribution in 2002, and we moved across the Mississippi River to Minneapolis in 2009. In 2022, Fiona retired and Carmen Giménez was appointed as the new Director and Publisher. 

Today, Graywolf is considered one of the nation’s leading nonprofit publishers, with a $4 million annual budget. We remain dedicated to publishing poetry, and our lists have expanded to include fiction and nonfiction as well. We publish 30–35 books each year by authors at all stages of their careers, from the United States and around the world. 

Our work as an organization has been recognized with multiple prizes, including the Sally Ordway Irvine Award for vision, the Minnesota Nonprofit Excellence Award, and the AWP Small Publisher Award, and with major grants from the Mellon Foundation, the Bush Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund, the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and many other foundations and cultural institutions.

In recent years, our books and authors have received significant national and international awards, including the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the Man Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award. Our archives have been housed at the University of Minnesota’s Elmer L. Andersen Library since 2009.

Right: Director and Publisher Fiona McCrae and Graywolf founder Scott Walker at the University of Minnesota in 2015. Photo by Jayme Hallbritter.

Working with Graywolf

Graywolf has a small staff and infrequent permanent job openings. However, we also offer a few paid internships each season as well as a part-time, ten-month paid publishing fellowship each year. Learn more by visiting our Jobs and Internships page.

A list of our current staff and board members can be found on the Board and Staff page.

Financials

Audited Financial Statements

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Form 990 Filings

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