Melville House Publishing

Melville House Publishing
Melville House Publishing
Founded2001; 23 years ago (2001)
FounderDennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians
Country of originUnited States
Headquarters locationBrooklyn, New York
DistributionPenguin Random House Publisher Services (US)
Turnaround Publisher Services (UK)[1]
Publication typesBooks
ImprintsStop Smiling
Official websitewww.mhpbooks.com

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.

History

Melville House Publishing and Bookstore in Brooklyn

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]

References

  1. ^ "Our publishers". Turnaround Publisher Services. Retrieved January 12, 2018.
  2. ^ a b Lewis Beale (July 28, 2002). "NEW JERSEY & CO.; When Publish or Perish Is More Than Just Words". The New York Times. Retrieved September 5, 2020.
  3. ^ a b c John Fassler (April 24, 2012). "The Return of the Novella, the Original #Longread". The Atlantic. Retrieved September 4, 2020.
  4. ^ a b c d e Tyler Woods (April 4, 2017). "This Indie Publisher Is Throwing the Books at Trump". TheBridge. Retrieved September 3, 2020.
  5. ^ a b Shavin, Naomi (August 4, 2015). "Why an Indie Press in Brooklyn Is Publishing the Pope". The New Republic. ISSN 0028-6583. Retrieved September 5, 2020. Publishing the Torture Report cemented their reputation as a self-described 'activist publishing company.'
  6. ^ a b Alexandra Schwartz (December 19, 2014). "Turning the Torture Report Into a Book". The New Yorker. Retrieved September 5, 2020. works of political reportage with a leftist streak
  7. ^ a b c John Maher (September 2, 2016). "The Making of 'The Making of Donald Trump'". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved September 4, 2020.
  8. ^ "MELVILLE HOUSE CO-PUBLISHERS DENNIS LOY JOHNSON AND VALERIE MERIANS ARE NAMED 2007 MIRIAM BASS AWARD WINNERS" Archived October 12, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, Association of American Publishers press release dated February 6, 2007. Accessed October 24, 2007.
  9. ^ "RATTLING THE CAGE AT THE AAP ANNUAL CONFERENCE FOR THE LARGE AND LESS THAN LARGE", ForeWord (magazine), March 14, 2007. Accessed October 24, 2007. "One of the most moving moments of the week came when Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians, co-publishers of Hoboken, NJ based Melville House received the Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing at the opening of the conference."
  10. ^ "50 Books / 50 Covers competition". AIGA. Archived from the original on October 11, 2007. Retrieved November 9, 2020.
  11. ^ "Melville House moved to Dumbo, Brooklyn". January 22, 2008. Archived from the original on February 1, 2008.
  12. ^ Philip Jones (March 25, 2013). "Some people never learn: Johnson & Merians start a new company ... Melville House UK » MobyLives". Melville House Books. Retrieved January 17, 2018.
  13. ^ Melville House Publishing (September 26, 2016). "Neversink Library Page". Melville House Publishing. Retrieved September 26, 2016.
  14. ^ Maureen Corrigan (January 11, 2016). "Revisiting The 'Last Interview' Of Ernest Hemingway, Philip K. Dick And Nora Ephron". NPR. Retrieved September 4, 2020.
  15. ^ Melville House Publishing (26 September 2016). "Last Interview Series Page". Melville House Publishing. Retrieved September 26, 2016.
  16. ^ Kurt Vonnegut (27 December 2011). Kurt Vonnegut: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations. Melville House. p. 145. ISBN 978-1-61219-091-4. Retrieved 9 August 2016.
  17. ^ David Lepeska (19 May 2012). "Jazz Age magazine The Chicagoan returns as media experiment". The National. Retrieved 24 November 2016.
  18. ^ "Stop Smiling Books". Retrieved 9 August 2016.