ABOUT GRAYWOLF PRESS
Graywolf Press is a nonprofit literary publisher of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and work in translation.
Graywolf Press publishes risk-taking, visionary writers who transform culture through literature.
When writers are free to do their most ambitious work, their books serve as portals to new possibilities and enable deeper understanding between people. Readers are changed by Graywolf’s books, which are fearlessly acquired, attentively edited, and energetically promoted.
OUR 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.
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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 Executive 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 and International 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.
“Literature reminds people that they have will and agency. Art is dangerous—that’s why governments shut down arts organizations and cut funding. Keeping literature alive is a revolutionary act.”
Carmen Giménez, Executive Director and Publisher
STRATEGIC PLAN AND Financials
accessibility
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 ([email protected]) 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 ([email protected]).