Melville House Books
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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. The company is named after the author Herman Melville. It has a reputation as an "activist press" and publisher of left-leaning books.


History

The company was founded by husband-and-wife team of Dennis Johnson and Valerie Merians. 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. They intended Melville to be a low volume boutique that specializes in poetry and "highly literary" novels issuing less than six a year. The company has a reputation as a "activist press" and became known for works of "political reportage with a leftist streak". Johnson once said they formed the company with the notion of "getting Bush out of office" in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. 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 The Association of American Publishers (AAP) is the national trade association of the American book publishing industry. AAP lobbies for book, journal, and education publishers in the United States. AAP members include most of the major commercial ...
."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."
''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. 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. In 2013, Melville House started a sister company in the United Kingdom, Melville House UK. 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 Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; 29 January 1860 Old Style date 17 January. – 15 July 1904 Old Style date 2 July.) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career ...
, Virginia Woolf. The Neversink Library, "a collection of lost, forgotten, and 'foolishly ignored' books from around the world". 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 Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928March 2, 1982), often referred to by his initials PKD, was an American science fiction writer. He wrote 44 novels and about 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his l ...
and Nora Ephron. In 2014, it published the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture in just 19 days; 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. In 2016, Melville House published ''
The Making of Donald Trump ''The Making of Donald Trump'' is a 2016 biography of the American businessman, property developer and politician Donald Trump by the American investigative journalist David Cay Johnston. Johnston first met Trump as a reporter for ''The Philadel ...
'' by David Cay Johnston. Melville used a process they call "crashing the book" to work around the clock and bring the book out in 27 days.


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* {{Authority control Publishing companies established in 2001 Book publishing companies based in New York City Companies based in Brooklyn