I am a publisher, editor, and writer, advancing progressive political perspectives on a variety of platforms. I am interested in new media and new distribution systems for news and learning. While I mainly cover popular culture and progressive politics, I maintain a strong interest in science and contemporary fiction (including science fiction). I believe there is increasing crossover in the fields of science and culture, and that politics has a role, implicit or not, in just about everything we do.
I am a publisher, editor, and writer, advancing progressive political perspectives on a variety of platforms. I am interested in new media and new distribution systems for news and learning. While I mainly cover popular culture and progressive politics, I maintain a strong interest in science and contemporary fiction (including science fiction). I believe there is increasing crossover in the fields of science and culture, and that politics has a role, implicit or not, in just about everything we do.
Recent Work:
Publishing and Culture: The Alchemy of Ideas
for The Oxford Handbook of Publishing
(2019, Oxford University Press. Michael Bhaskar and Angus Phillips, eds.)
Recent Work:
Publishing and Culture:
The Alchemy of Ideas
for The Oxford Handbook of Publishing
2019, Oxford University Press.
Michael Bhaskar and Angus Phillips, eds.
After a brief stint as a reporter for the Associated Press in New Orleans, I got my start in publishing at Barney Rosset’s upstart independent outfit Grove Press. That came about because of an abiding interest in Samuel Beckett: in 1983, I wrote my Princeton undergraduate thesis on Beckett (“Flight from Chaos”). Not knowing better at the time, I had sent Beckett a series of questions via his American publisher. Beckett graciously responded (to some, not all, of the questions). I received the English Department’s thesis prize, graduated cum laude—and stayed in touch with Rosset. Later, Rosset invited me to join Grove, which was then teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. I had a great time, and although I had planned to be a journalist, shifted my sights.
In 1987, I started the publishing company Four Walls Eight Windows with a partner. In 1991, I edited the book In the Realms of the Unreal: “Insane” Writings, with an original introduction by Kurt Vonnegut. In 1999, I was named a “chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres” by the French government (at the same ceremony at which Barney Rosset was named a “commandeur”).
In 2009, Colin Robinson and I founded OR Books, hailed as “a radical, exciting response to Amazonian hegemony” by the magazine Dazed; the company thrives to this day, publishing 20-30 books/year with a focus on selling direct to consumers over the web. It is committed to a progressive outlook, broadly defined, and has published authors such as Eileen Myles, Patrick Cockburn, Yoko Ono, and Douglas Rushkoff, among many others.
In 2010, while working at OR, I started the Publishing Institute at The New School, which I conceived of as a compact, less expensive alternative to the publishing courses offered by NYU and Columbia. I continue to teach and run the annual program there.
In 2017, the board of The Evergreen Review asked me if I’d take over as publisher. Evergreen is a legendary cultural and political magazine that Barney had started in 1957, primarily as a vehicle for Grove Press authors. In 1998, it went online, and with Barney’s death in 2014 it largely disappeared from view. Working together with the writer and critic Dale Peck as editor-in-chief (and occasionally acquiring and editing pieces myself), I feel I’m presiding over an impressive revival of a vital progressive cultural voice.
In 2019, I was the subject of a monograph published by Voyager Books Japan.
Over the years, I’ve occasionally found time to write articles here and there, primarily about independent publishing in places such as Publishers Weekly and the Journal of Electronic Publishing. In 2019, I wrote a 7,000-word essay entitled “Publishing and Culture: The Alchemy of Ideas” for The Oxford Handbook of Publishing (Michael Bhaskar and Angus Phillips, eds.). I am stepping down from OR Books in the spring of 2020 to devote myself full-time to writing, teaching, and Evergreen—but primarily to writing.
I have negotiated hundreds of contracts with agents, authors, and translators. I am familiar with all aspects of book publishing, including subsidiary rights, distribution, royalties, design and typesetting, printing, marketing and of course editing and acquisition.
After a brief stint as a reporter for the Associated Press in New Orleans, I got my start in publishing at Barney Rosset’s upstart independent outfit Grove Press. That came about because of an abiding interest in Samuel Beckett: in 1983, I wrote my Princeton undergraduate thesis on Beckett (“Flight from Chaos”). Not knowing better at the time, I had sent Beckett a series of questions via his American publisher. Beckett graciously responded (to some, not all, of the questions). I received the English Department’s thesis prize, graduated cum laude—and stayed in touch with Rosset. Later, Rosset invited me to join Grove, which was then teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. I had a great time, and although I had planned to be a journalist, shifted my sights.
In 1987, I started the publishing company Four Walls Eight Windows with a partner. In 1991, I edited the book In the Realms of the Unreal: “Insane” Writings, with an original introduction by Kurt Vonnegut. In 1999, I was named a “chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres” by the French government (at the same ceremony at which Barney Rosset was named a “commandeur”).
In 2009, Colin Robinson and I founded OR Books, hailed as “a radical, exciting response to Amazonian hegemony” by the magazine Dazed; the company thrives to this day, publishing 20-30 books/year with a focus on selling direct to consumers over the web. It is committed to a progressive outlook, broadly defined, and has published authors such as Eileen Myles, Patrick Cockburn, Yoko Ono, and Douglas Rushkoff, among many others.
In 2010, while working at OR, I started the Publishing Institute at The New School, which I conceived of as a compact, less expensive alternative to the publishing courses offered by NYU and Columbia. I continue to teach and run the annual program there.
In 2017, the board of The Evergreen Review asked me if I’d take over as publisher. Evergreen is a legendary cultural and political magazine that Barney had started in 1957, primarily as a vehicle for Grove Press authors. In 1998, it went online, and with Barney’s death in 2014 it largely disappeared from view. Working together with the writer and critic Dale Peck as editor-in-chief (and occasionally acquiring and editing pieces myself), I feel I’m presiding over an impressive revival of a vital progressive cultural voice.
In 2019, I was the subject of a monograph published by Voyager Books Japan.
Over the years, I’ve occasionally found time to write articles here and there, primarily about independent publishing in places such as Publishers Weekly and the Journal of Electronic Publishing. In 2019, I wrote a 7,000-word essay entitled “Publishing and Culture: The Alchemy of Ideas” for The Oxford Handbook of Publishing (Michael Bhaskar and Angus Phillips, eds.). I am stepping down from OR Books in the spring of 2020 to devote myself full-time to writing, teaching, and Evergreen—but primarily to writing.
I have negotiated hundreds of contracts with agents, authors, and translators. I am familiar with all aspects of book publishing, including subsidiary rights, distribution, royalties, design and typesetting, printing, marketing and of course editing and acquisition.
Some of the books I’ve most enjoyed having edited
or otherwise having a hand in publishing include:
Some of the books I’ve most enjoyed having edited
or otherwise having a hand in publishing include:
Chance: A Guide to Gambling, Love, the Stock Market and Just About Everything Else
by Amir D. Aczel
Fermat’s Last Theorem
by Amir D. Aczel
Cypherpunks
by Julian Assange et al.
Slaughtermatic
by Steve Aylett
A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern Iraq
by Fernando Báez
The Calculus Wars: Newton, Leibniz, and the Greatest Mathematical Clash of All Time
by Jason S. Bardi
Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism
Danielle Barnhart, Iris Mahan, eds.
The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head: Franz Kafka, a Biographical Essay
by Louis Begley
Drone Warfare
by Medea Benjamin
A Narco History: How the U.S. and Mexico Jointly Created the “Mexican Drug War”
by Carmen Boullosa and Mike Wallace
Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution
by Andrew Boyd with Dave Oswald Mitchell
Southernmost and Other Stories
by Michael Brodsky
Sizzling Chops and Devilish Spins: Ping-Pong and the Art of Staying Alive
by Jerome Charyn
The History of Havana
by Dick Cluster and Rafael Hernández
American Poetry Since 1970: Up Late
edited by Andrei Codrescu
Dead Meat
by Sue Coe
Cruel
by Sue Coe
The Manchurian Candidate (reissue)
by Richard Condon, introduction by Louis Menand
The Enchanted Prince
by Robert Coover
Ribofunk
by Paul Di Filippo
The Steampunk Trilogy
by Paul Di Filippo
A Place So Foreign and Eight More
by Cory Doctorow
Cautivos: A Novel
by Ariel Dorfman
Flood!
by Eric Drooker
Mercy
by Andrea Dworkin
Assuming Boycott: Resistance, Agency, and Cultural Production
Kareem Estefan, Carin Kuoni, and Laura Raicovich, eds.
Corner Men: The Great Boxing Trainers
by Ronald K. Fried
Illuminated Poems
by Allen Ginsberg, illustrations by Eric Drooker
I, Goldstein: My Screwed Life
by Al Goldstein and Josh Friedman
Prospero’s Books
by Peter Greenaway
Chameleo: A Strange but True Story of Invisible Spies, Heroin Addiction, and Homeland Security
by Robert Guffey
The Best of Abbie Hoffman
by Abbie Hoffman
Steal This Book (reissue)
by Abbie Hoffman
Beat Generation
by Jack Kerouac, foreword by A. M. Homes
The Black Bedroom at Longwood: Napoleon’s Exile on Saint Helena
by Jean-Paul Kauffmann
Ivyland
by Miles Klee
The Wreck of the Batavia
by Simon Leys
Collected Fictions
by Gordon Lish
Dialogues on Consciousness
by Riccardo Manzotti and Tim Parks
Pride: Photographs After Stonewall
by Fred W. McDarrah, preface by Hilton Als
The Global Warming Reader
Bill McKibben, ed.
Angry Young Spaceman
by Jim Munroe
Inferno: a poet’s novel
by Eileen Myles
Welcome to Hell World: Dispatches from the American Dystopia
by Luke O’Neil
The New American Splendor Anthology
by Harvey Pekar
Bob and Harv’s Comics
by Harvey Pekar and R. Crumb
An Educated Man: Reading Moses and Jesus
by David Rosenberg
Rosset: My Life in Publishing
by Barney Rosset
The Evergreen Review Reader
edited by Barney Rosset
The Lifebox, the Seashell and the Soul
by Rudy Rucker
John the Posthumous
by Jason Schwartz
The Cockroach Papers
by Richard Schweid
Valentine
by Lucius Shepard
The Torture Report
by Larry Siems
What’s Yours Is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy
by Tom Slee
Autopilot: The Art and Science of Doing Nothing
by Andrew Smart
Istanbul Istanbul
by Burhan Sönmez
Visionary in Residence
by Bruce Sterling
Flan
by Stephen Tunney
Pink Flamingoes and Other Filth: Three Screenplays
by John Waters
Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel
by Edmund White
Assuming the Position: A Memoir of Hustling
by Rick Whitaker
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (reissue)
by Sloan Wilson, introduction by Jonathan Franzen
Blood Splatters Quickly
by Edward D. Wood, Jr.
Fetish
John Yau, ed.