Carmen Giménez has been named Graywolf Press’s new executive director and publisher, succeeding Fiona McCrae, who has just retired after leading the press for 28 years. Giménez will assume her new responsibilities on August 8; associate publisher Katie Dublinski is serving as interim publisher as of Monday and into the first week of August.

Giménez, 51, a queer Latinx poet and editor, holds an MFA from the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop. She is a professor in the English department at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, where she teaches creative writing in the MFA program.

She was also, until recently, publisher of Noemi Press, which announced on July 5 that Giménez was stepping down 20 years after she and Evan Lavender-Smith founded the press in 2002 with the release of a single chapbook. Noemi's mission is to promote both emerging voices and established writers with an emphasis on writers from under-represented communities, including women, BIPOC writers, and LGBTQ writers. Noemi Press, a nonprofit organization, now publishes eight books each year in the fiction, nonfiction, drama, and criticism categories. Its authors have been winners of, and finalists for, such awards as the National Book Award, the Whiting Award, the PEN America Literary Awards, and the Lambda Literary Awards.

Graywolf published Giménez's most recent collection of poetry, Be Recorder, in 2019. Be Recorder was a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry, the PEN/Open Book Award, the Audré Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Giménez also is the author of five other collections of poetry, including Milk and Filth, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. Her lyric memoir, Bring Down the Little Birds, won an American Book Award.

Besides these and other awards for her writing, honors accorded to Giménez during her career include the Academy of American Poets Fellowship in 2020, along with fellowships from the Guggenheim, Hermitage, and Howard foundations.

In a release, Graywolf board member Kathleen Boe, who chaired the search committee, stated: “We are honored that Carmen Giménez will be Graywolf’s next executive director and publisher. Carmen came forward through our broad, international search for a leader whose experience and passion for publishing would expand Graywolf’s strong reputation in new and exciting directions. As we got to know her, it seemed to us that Carmen has been preparing for this role her whole life. We found her vision for the future of Graywolf compelling and are excited to begin working with her."

“I’m thrilled to be joining the team at Graywolf,” Giménez said in a statement. “The press has been a vital force in literature and as a mission-driven organization led by the transformative Fiona McCrae. I hope that we will build on that legacy while continuing to evolve, taking risks, engaging directly with the current moment, and serving our local, national, and international community of readers and writers.”