Middletown, Connecticut
Middletown is a city located in Middlesex County, Connecticut, United States, Located along the Connecticut River, in the central part of the state, it is south of Hartford. In 1650, it was incorporated by English settlers as a town under it ...
. The press is currently directed by Suzanna Tamminen, a published poet and essayist.
History and overview
Founded (in its present form) in 1957, the press publishes books of poetry and books on music, dance and performance, American Studies, and film. In 1965, Wesleyan sold its American Education Publications, a division of the press that published ''My Weekly Reader'', but the university retained the scholarly division. All editing occurs at the editorial office building of the press on the Wesleyan campus. Publishing (printing) now occurs through a consortium of New England college academic presses.
The press is notable among prestigious American academic presses for its poetry series, which publishes both established poets and new ones. The press has released more than 250 titles in its poetry series and has garnered, in that series alone, awards including five Pulitzer Prizes, a Bollingen Prize, three
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors.
The N ...
s, two
National Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".American Book Award. According to ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
,'' university presses with bigger endowments, with financial backing from the state, or with large graduate programs do not enjoy the same status in the field of poetry that the Wesleyan University Press enjoys, nor have they won a comparable array of prizes in poetry. The press also has garnered Pulitzer Prizes, American Book Awards, and other awards in its other series.
Norman O. Brown
Norman Oliver Brown (September 25, 1913 – October 2, 2002) was an American scholar, writer, and social philosopher. Beginning as a classical scholar, his later work branched into wide-ranging, erudite, and intellectually sophisticated cons ...
and John Cage were two of the prominent early authors whose work was published by the press. The press's poetry series was nurtured in its infancy by noted poet Richard Wilbur, then an English professor at the university. In the mid-1950s, William Manchester, who would become a long time writer-in-residence and professor at the university, served as an editor at the press. Donald Hall, a future Poet Laureate of the United States, served as a member of the editorial board for poetry at the press from 1958 to 1964. In the 1960s, T.S. Eliot served both as a roving editor for the poetry series and special editorial consultant of the press. In the former capacity, Eliot's responsibilities included finding rising English and European poets for the press.
Wesleyan is the smallest college or university in the nation to have its own press, and the Wesleyan University Press has the second-oldest poetry series in the nation. Approximately 25 books are published each year.
Authors and poets published by the press include John Luther Adams,
Rae Armantrout
Rae Armantrout (born April 13, 1947) is an American poet generally associated with the Language poets. She has published ten books of poetry and has also been featured in a number of major anthologies. Armantrout currently teaches at the Univers ...
U.S. Poet Laureate
The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—commonly referred to as the United States Poet Laureate—serves as the official poet of the United States. During their term, the poet laureate seeks to raise the national cons ...
Louis Simpson
Louis Aston Marantz Simpson (March 27, 1923 – September 14, 2012) was an American poet born in Jamaica. He won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his work ''At the End of the Open Road''.
Life and career
Simpson was born in Jamaica, the so ...
(including his Pulitzer Prize-winning collection ''At The End Of The Open Road''), Richard Slotkin, James Tate (including his Pulitzer Prize-winning collection ''James Tate: Selected Poems''), Jean Valentine, Gerald Vizenor, Charles Wright, James Wright (including his Pulitzer Prize-winning collection ''Collected Poems''). Recently, Wesleyan published a new edition of poetry from Jack Spicer, which went on to win a 2009 American Book Award, contributing to the resurgence of a poet who died in public obscurity (of acute alcoholism) in 1965.
Wesleyan University Press titles are distributed by the
University Press of New England
The University Press of New England (UPNE), located in Lebanon, New Hampshire and founded in 1970, was a university press consortium including Brandeis University, Dartmouth College (its host member), Tufts University, the University of New H ...