North Atlantic Books

Last updated
North Atlantic Books
StatusActive
Founded1974
Founder Richard Grossinger, Lindy Hough
Country of origin United States
Headquarters location Berkeley, California
Distribution Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Key peopleTim McKee
Publication types Books, film
Nonfiction topics Beat Generation, raw foodism, yoga, martial arts, capioera, spirituality, religion, holistic health, sustainability, nutrition, occult, esotericism, mediumship, parapsychology, New Age, fitness, baseball
Imprints Evolver Editions, Blue Snake Books
Official website northatlanticbooks.com

North Atlantic Books is a non-profit, independent publisher based in Berkeley, California, United States. [1] Distributed by Penguin Random House Publisher Services, [2] North Atlantic Books is a mission-driven social justice-oriented publisher. Founded by authors Richard Grossinger and Lindy Hough in Vermont, North Atlantic Books was named partly for the North Atlantic region where it began in 1974, as well as Alan Van Newkirk's Geographic Foundation of the North Atlantic, an early (1970) ecological center founded in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, by radicals from Detroit. The publisher also cites Edward Dorn's 1960s poem, "North Atlantic Turbine: A Theory of Truth", which very early described the dangers of global commoditization by the Western World, as an inspiration in the company's name.

Contents

Genres published by North Atlantic Books include somatics, social justice, bodywork, health and healing, Buddhism, grief, and internal martial arts (through its imprint Blue Snake Books). In 1980, North Atlantic Books was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational organization.

Notable titles and authors

North Atlantic Books is the publisher of the first installment of the New York Times bestselling children's book Walter the Farting Dog by William Kotzwinkle and Glenn Murray, with a 10th anniversary edition of the book published in August 2011. [3] The publisher is also credited with publishing the complete thirteen-volume series of short stories from Nebula Award-winning science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon. [4] Other notable works from North Atlantic include Jon Klimos's Channeling: Investigations on Receiving Information from Paranormal Sources (1998), described by Newsweek as "the sacred text on channeling," [5] and Patrick Doud's The Winnitok Tales, a series the Midwest Book Review praised for "memorable characters, poetic language, and driving narrative to these timeless tales that recall the classic epic adventure stories." [6] Additionally, North Atlantic has published all four volumes of poetry by Pushcart Prize-winner BJ Ward.

A major motion picture adaptation of When the Game Stands Tall (2003), starring Jim Caviezel, Laura Dern, Michael Chiklis and Alexander Ludwig was scheduled to be released in fall 2014.[ clarification needed ]

Many notable personalities such as Oliver Sacks, [7] Henry Louis Gates Jr., [8] and Nancy Pelosi [9] have contributed forewords to North Atlantic titles, and the publisher counts Thich Nhat Hanh, [10] Noam Chomsky, [11] and Howard Zinn [11] among those who have endorsed titles.

According to filmmaker, author, and performer Miranda July, Grossinger and Hough's daughter, she and her brother were part of the company's early operations, which included "packing Jiffy bags with books for shipment." [12] July claims her upbringing, North Atlantic Books' presence specifically, instilled in her a love of writing "that is at the basis of all the things that I do." [13]

Bestselling author and writer Jonathan Lethem has also been tied to North Atlantic Books as the publisher's first paid employee, and later provided an introduction for Theodore Sturgeon's book The Man Who Lost the Sea. [14]

Awards and recognition

Evolver Editions

Launched in 2011, Evolver Editions is an imprint of North Atlantic Books presenting voices of the transformation movement of "psychic evolution," a spiritual counterculture that explores the concept of consciousness. The imprint is a collaboration between North Atlantic Books and Evolver LLC, which publishes the online magazine Reality Sandwich and online social network Evolver.net. [24] Topics covered by Evolver Editions' authors include shamanism, environmental design, theories in cosmology, and strategies for political organizing. [25] Key authors include Daniel Pinchbeck, José Argüelles (organizer of the 1987 Harmonic Convergence), [26] Tom Atlee, and Charles Eisenstein. [27]

Blue Snake Books

Blue Snake Books was founded in 2005 as a dedicated martial arts imprint of North Atlantic Books, [28] though the company has been publishing martial arts titles for more than 25 years. [29] Disciplines of martial arts featured include capoeira, karate, muay thai, tai chi, bagua , judo, and jujutsu. [30] Blue Snake Books authors include tai chi master Bruce Frantzis.

Io Magazine

While Grossinger attended Amherst College and Hough at Smith College in Massachusetts, they founded North Atlantic Books' progenitor Io Magazine, [31] an alternative college literary magazine in 1964, featuring work from Robert Kelly, Charles Stein, and Nels Richardson, among others. Over the next decade, Io became a counter-cultural journal mixing literature, science, and history, as it came out of Michigan, Maine, and Vermont with issues such as "Alchemy", "Doctrine of Signatures", "Ethnoastronomy", "Oecology", "Dreams", "Earth Geography", and "The Olson-Melville Sourcebooks". Io is credited with publishing early works by Stephen King (his poem, "Brooklyn August," was featured in Io Issue #10 [32] ), Jayne Anne Phillips, poets Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, Ed Sanders, Diane di Prima, [22] as well as the work of writers including David Wilk, Rob Brezsny, and Phoebe Gloeckner.

In 2009, North Atlantic books created the Io Poetry Series, [33] featuring collections from under-recognized voices in American poetry. Featured poets include Gerrit Lansing, Kenneth Irby, Lindy Hough, and Lenore Kandel. [34] [35] In 2010, Kenneth Irby's Io Poetry Series book The Intent On received the Poetry Society of America's 2010 Shelley Memorial Award. [36] In 2012, North Atlantic Books published Collected Poems of Lenore Kandel, which included several never-before-published poems by the Beat Generation writer and an introduction by poet Diane di Prima. [22] In 2013, it released Catching Light, a collection featuring many never-before published poems by Joanna McClure and a foreword by Michael McClure. [37]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ishmael Reed</span> American poet, novelist, essayist, songwriter, and playwright (born 1938)

Ishmael Scott Reed is an American poet, novelist, essayist, songwriter, composer, playwright, editor and publisher known for his satirical works challenging American political culture. Perhaps his best-known work is Mumbo Jumbo (1972), a sprawling and unorthodox novel set in 1920s New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael McClure</span> American writer (1932–2020)

Michael McClure was an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets who read at the famous San Francisco Six Gallery reading in 1955, which was rendered in barely fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums. He soon became a key member of the Beat Generation and was immortalized as Pat McLear in Kerouac's Big Sur.

Neeli Cherkovski is an American poet and memoirist, who has resided since 1975 in San Francisco.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grove Atlantic</span> American independent publisher

Grove Atlantic, Inc. is an American independent publisher, based in New York City. Formerly styled "Grove/Atlantic, Inc.", it was created in 1993 by the merger of Grove Press and Atlantic Monthly Press. As of 2018 Grove Atlantic calls itself "An Independent Literary Publisher Since 1917". That refers to the official date Atlantic Monthly Press was established by the Boston magazine The Atlantic Monthly.

Pattiann Rogers is an American poet, and a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry. In 2018, she was awarded a special John Burroughs Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Nature Poetry.

BJ Ward is an American poet. Ward is a recipient of the Pushcart Prize for poetry and two Distinguished Artist Fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He has published three full books of poetry and has been featured in many journals including: Cerebellum, Edison Literary Review, Journal of Jersey Poets, Kimera, Lips, Long Shot, Maelstrom, Mid-American Review, Natural Bridge, Painted Bride Quarterly, Poetry, Puerto del Sol, Prairie, Spitball, and TriQuarterly. His poem "For the Children of the World Trade Center Victims," is cast in bronze and featured at Grounds for Sculpture, an outdoor sculpture museum in Hamilton, New Jersey. Ward is an Assistant Professor of English at Warren County Community College and has served as University Distinguished Fellow at Syracuse University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leslie Scalapino</span> American poet, experimental prose writer, playwright, essayist and editor

Leslie Scalapino was an American poet, experimental prose writer, playwright, essayist, and editor, sometimes grouped in with the Language poets, though she felt closely tied to the Beat poets. A longtime resident of California's Bay Area, she earned an M.A. in English from the University of California at Berkeley. One of Scalapino's most critically well-received works is Way, a long poem which won the Poetry Center Award, the Lawrence Lipton Prize, and the American Book Award.

Richard Grossinger is an American writer and founder of North Atlantic Books in Berkeley, California.

Water Forest Press is an independent book publisher located in rural Pennsylvania. It was created as an imprint of magazine publisher Skyline Publications but moved to book publishing when Skyline shut down.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samiya Bashir</span> American writer

Samiya A. Bashir is a queer American artist, poet, and author. Much of Bashir's poetry explores the intersections of culture, change, and identity through the lens of race, gender, the body and sexuality. She is currently the June Jordan visiting professor at Columbia University of New York. Bashir is the first black woman recipient of the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize in Literature. She was also the third black woman to serve as tenured professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

Terry Randolph Hummer is an American poet, critic, essayist, editor, and professor. His most recent books of poetry are After the Afterlife and the three linked volumes Ephemeron, Skandalon, and Eon. He has published poems in literary journals and magazines including The New Yorker, Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, The Literati Quarterly, Paris Review, and Georgia Review. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship inclusion in the 1995 edition of Best American Poetry, the Hanes Prize for Poetry, the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence, and three Pushcart Prizes.

A. Van Jordan is an American poet. He is a professor at Stanford University and was previously a college professor in the Department of English Language & Literature at the University of Michigan and distinguished visiting professor at Ithaca College. He previously served as the first Henry Rutgers Presidential Professor at the Rutgers University-Newark. He is the author of four collections: Rise (2001), M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A (2005), Quantum Lyrics (2007), and The Cineaste (2013). Jordan's awards include a Whiting Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rane Arroyo</span> American poet, playwright, and scholar

Ramón Arroyo was an American playwright, poet and scholar of Puerto Rican descent who wrote numerous books and received many literary awards. He was a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Toledo in Ohio. His work deals extensively with issues of immigration, Latino culture, and homosexuality. Arroyo was openly gay and frequently wrote self-reflexive, autobiographical texts. He was the long-term partner of the American poet Glenn Sheldon.

Timothy Liu is an American poet and the author of such books as Bending the Mind Around the Dream's Blown Fuse, For Dust Thou Art, Of Thee I Sing, Hard Evidence, Say Goodnight, Burnt Offerings and Vox Angelica. He is also the editor of Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beth Ann Fennelly</span> American poet and writer

Beth Ann Fennelly is an American poet and prose writer and was the Poet Laureate of Mississippi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elmaz Abinader</span> American poet

Elmaz Abinader is an American author, poet, performer, English professor at Mills College and co-founder of the Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation (VONA). She is of Lebanese descent. In 2000, she received the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award for her poetry collection In the Country of My Dreams....

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patricia Lockwood</span> American poet, author

Patricia Lockwood is an American poet, novelist, and essayist. Her 2021 debut novel, No One Is Talking About This, won the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her 2017 memoir Priestdaddy won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Her poetry collections include Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals, a 2014 New York Times Notable Book. Since 2019, she has been a contributing editor for The London Review of Books.

Sandra Lim is a Korean American poet and professor.

Daniel Lusk is an American poet, writer, editor, and teacher. He has authored six collections of poetry, most recently The Shower Scene from Hamlet. He lives in Burlington, Vermont, with his wife, the poet Angela Patten.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arisa White</span> American poet

Arisa White is an American poet based in Oakland, California. She is a Cave Canem fellow and author of the poetry chapbooks Disposition for Shininess, Post Pardon, and Black Pearl, and the books Hurrah's Nest, A Penny Saved, and You're the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened.

References

  1. ↑ DelVecchio, Rick (8 October 2010). "Oakland: Tale of The Dragon tells how Bruce Lee mastered his art". The San Francisco Chronicle.
  2. ↑ "Contact Us". North Atlantic Books. Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  3. ↑ Chen, Barbara (2 October 2010). "'Farting Dog' Hits Best-Seller List". ABC News . Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  4. ↑ "Writings". The Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust. Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  5. ↑ "Channeling: Investigations on Receiving Information from Paranormal Sources". JonKlimo.com. Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  6. ↑ Pohl, R.D. (15 July 2011). "Fantasy author Patrick Doud at Clarence Barnes & Noble Saturday". The Buffalo News . Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  7. ↑ Sacks, Mike Jay; foreword by Oliver (2014). A visionary madness : the case of James Tilly Matthews and the influencing machine. North Atlantic Books. ISBN   978-1583947173.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  8. ↑ Brown, Cecil Jr. (2008). The life & loves of Mr. Jiveass Nigger: a novel. Berkeley, Calif.: Frog Books. ISBN   978-1583942109.
  9. ↑ Saul Bloom, ed. (1994). Hidden casualties : environmental, health and political consequences of the Persian Gulf War . San Francisco, CA: North Atlantic Books. ISBN   978-1556431630.
  10. ↑ Holiday, Linda (2013). Journey to the heart of aikido : the teachings of Motomichi Anno sensei. ISBN   978-1583946596.
  11. 1 2 Reed, David Matlin (2004). Prisons : inside the new America : from Vernooykill Creek to Abu Ghraib. foreword by Ishmael (2. ed.). Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books. ISBN   978-1556435492.
  12. ↑ Onstad, Katrina (14 July 2011). "Miranda July, The Make-Believer". The New York Times.
  13. ↑ Dinkelspiel, Frances (17 August 2011). "Me and You and Miranda July and Berkeley". Berkeleyside. Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  14. ↑ "Bibliography". JonathanLethem.com . Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  15. ↑ Bill Henderson, ed. (2004). The Pushcart prize 2004 XXVIII : best of the small presses (28th ed.). Wainscott, N.Y.: Pushcart Press. ISBN   978-1888889376.
  16. ↑ "PEN Oakland Awards". Archived from the original on 2 July 2014. Retrieved 19 December 2013.
  17. ↑ John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation http://www.gf.org/fellows/5443-phoebe-gloeckner
  18. ↑ "Go Your Own Way". Publishers Weekly. 7 March 2011. Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  19. ↑ "2011 Storytelling World Resource Awards". Storytelling World. Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  20. ↑ "23rd Annual Lambda Literary Award Winners". Lambda Literary. 27 May 2011. Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  21. ↑ "Award Winners of 2011". Golden Crown Literary Society . Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  22. 1 2 3 Werris, Wendy (Sep 28, 2012). "North Atlantic Books Transforms with the Times". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 16 October 2012.
  23. ↑ PEN Oakland Archived 2014-07-02 at the Wayback Machine
  24. ↑ Yin, Maryann (3 September 2010). "North Atlantic Books Forms Evolver Books Imprint". Mediabistro.com. Archived from the original on 2011-10-15. Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  25. ↑ Andriani, Lynn (2 September 2010). "North Atlantic Books Launches Evolver Editions". Publishers Weekly . Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  26. ↑ Fox, Margalit (April 2, 2011). "José Argüelles, New Ager Focused on Time, Dies at 72". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 October 2012.
  27. ↑ Trachten, Rachel (Fall 2012). "Uncommon Exchange: Doug Reil serves up a radical idea in food sharing". Edible Magazine (East Bay). Retrieved 16 October 2012.
  28. ↑ "Company Profile". North Atlantic Books. Archived from the original on 2013-09-15. Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  29. ↑ "Blue Snake Books". Archived from the original on 24 July 2010. Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  30. ↑ "Blue Snake Books". North Atlantic Books. Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  31. ↑ "Io Magazine". LindyHough.com. Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  32. ↑ "Io Magazine #10: Baseball Issue w/ Brooklyn August (poem) by Stephen King" . Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  33. ↑ Karp, Evan (29 March 2011). "Lindy Hough: Wild Horses Lassoing Wild Dreams". Litseen.com. Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  34. ↑ Dinkelspiel, Frances (11 July 2011). "Berkeley poet draws on life and locale for inspiration". Berkeleyside. Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  35. ↑ Karp, Evan (12 April 2011). "Veteran Publisher and Writer Lindy Hough Pursues Artistic Vision After More than 40 Years". SF Weekly . Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  36. ↑ "Shelley Winners". Poetry Society of America . Retrieved 2013-08-24.
  37. ↑ McClure, Joanna (2013). Catching light : collected poems of Joanna McClure. Christopher Wagstaff (introduction). Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books. ISBN   9781583946138.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.