Founded | 2001 |
---|---|
Founder | Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians |
Country of origin | United States |
Headquarters location | Brooklyn, New York |
Distribution | Penguin Random House Publisher Services (US) Turnaround Publisher Services (UK) [1] |
Publication types | Books |
Imprints | Stop Smiling |
Official website | www |
Melville House Publishing is an American independent publisher of literary fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. The company was founded in 2001 and is run by the husband-and-wife team of Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians in Hoboken, New Jersey. [2] The company is named after the author Herman Melville. [3] It has a reputation as an "activist press" and publisher of left-leaning books.
The company was founded by husband-and-wife team of Dennis Johnson and Valerie Merians. [4] Johnson wrote a blog called "MobyLives" and after the 9/11 attacks collected poetry related to the event and published it as a book to great success, which launched the company. [4] They intended Melville to be a low volume boutique that specializes in poetry and "highly literary" novels issuing less than six a year. [2] The company has a reputation as a "activist press" [5] and became known for works of "political reportage with a leftist streak". [6] Johnson once said they formed the company with the notion of "getting Bush out of office" in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. [4] [7]
In 2007, they were named by the Association of American Publishers as the winner of the 2007 Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing. [8] [9] The Little Girl and The Cigarette published by Melville was part of the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) "50 books/50 Covers" cover design award for 2007. [10]
In 2008 Melville House moved to Dumbo, Brooklyn, to a location that includes a bookstore with their offices. The opening was on January 19, 2008. [11] In 2013, Melville House started a sister company in the United Kingdom, Melville House UK. [12]
Melville House publishes books in several series. These include the Art of the Novella Series, which The Atlantic called an "ongoing celebration of the form", and which includes classics by Miguel de Cervantes, Anton Chekhov, Virginia Woolf. [3] The Neversink Library, "a collection of lost, forgotten, and 'foolishly ignored' books from around the world". [3] [13] The Last Interview series, which collects interviews with prominent writers, including the last interviews given before their deaths, has included Ernest Hemingway, Philip K. Dick and Nora Ephron. [14] [15]
In 2014, it published the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture in just 19 days; [6] and later that year, an edition of the Pope Francis' Laudato si' , an encyclical on climate change, soon after the Pope released it. The speed of publications has been called "extraordinary" for the industry. [5] [4] In 2016, Melville House published The Making of Donald Trump by David Cay Johnston. [7] Melville used a process they call "crashing the book" to work around the clock and bring the book out in 27 days. [7] [4]
Stop Smiling was an arts and culture magazine founded by J. C. Gabel in the Chicago suburb of Darien, Illinois. [16] He started the magazine at age 19 in 1995. [17] The company ended the magazine in 2009 and became an independently owned imprint of Melville House Publishing. [18]
Kurt Vonnegut was an American author known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. His published work includes fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works over fifty-plus years; further works have been published since his death.
Paulo Coelho de Souza is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters since 2002. His 1988 novel The Alchemist was an international best-seller.
Cat's Cradle is a satirical postmodern novel, with science fiction elements, by American writer Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut's fourth novel, it was first published on March 18, 1963, exploring and satirizing issues of science, technology, the purpose of religion, and the arms race, often through the use of morbid humor.
Nora Ephron was an American journalist, writer, and filmmaker. She is best known for writing and directing romantic comedy films and received numerous accolades including a British Academy Film Award as well as nominations for three Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a Tony Award and three Writers Guild of America Awards.
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Katharine Meyer Graham was an American newspaper publisher. She led her family's newspaper, The Washington Post, from 1963 to 1991. Graham presided over the paper as it reported on the Watergate scandal, which eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. She was one of the first 20th-century female publishers of a major American newspaper and the first woman elected to the board of the Associated Press.
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Dennis Nurkse is a poet from Brooklyn. He is the author of twelve poetry collections. His work has been reviewed in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement (UK), translated into a dozen languages, and featured at the Jaipur International Literary Festival (India) and the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival (UK).
Lewis Warsh was an American poet, visual artist, professor, prose writer, editor, and publisher. He was a principal member of the second generation of the New York School poets,; however, he has said that “no two people write alike, even if they’re associated with a so-called ‘school’ .” Professor of English at Long Island University and founding director (2007–2013) of their MFA program in creative writing, Warsh lived in Manhattan with his wife, playwright-teacher Katt Lissard, whom he married in 2001.
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Stop Smiling was an arts and culture magazine founded by J. C. Gabel in the Chicago suburb of Darien, Illinois. He started the magazine at age 19 in 1995. The magazine was published on a bimonthly basis. The headquarters was in both Chicago and New York. Each issue followed a theme and consisted of feature-length interviews, essays and oral histories. With a focus on preservation, Stop Smiling published some of the last in-depth conversations with Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Altman, Lee Hazlewood, and George Plimpton. The company ended the magazine in 2009 and became an independently owned imprint of Melville House Publishing.
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Publishing the Torture Report cemented their reputation as a self-described 'activist publishing company.'
works of political reportage with a leftist streak