"It’s such an exciting job,” commented Carmen Giménez, who took over as executive director and publisher of Graywolf Press last August, replacing Fiona McCrae, who retired after 28 years heading the literary nonprofit press. Prior to joining Graywolf, Giménez was publisher of Noemi Press and a professor in the English department at Virginia Tech University, and she acknowledged that “going from academia into the publishing industry” has represented “a steep learning curve.” She added that the challenges “are provocative,” and that the staff is “supportive and visionary.”
One issue that has drawn everyone’s attention at the press is preparing for Graywolf’s 50th anniversary next year: the publisher was founded in Washington State in 1974 and has been based in Minneapolis since 1985. In addition to planning a yearlong schedule of events for 2024, Giménez said that she, her staff, and the board have been reflecting upon Graywolf’s past and present, as well as its future. “We’re trying to figure out what is next for Graywolf,” she explained. “What strengths do we need to build on and what questions do we need to be asking for the future? What are the subjects that feel urgent to us, and how do we find those books? We’re all looking at every aspect of the business and are very excited to embark upon that journey.”
Giménez said she appreciates how the entire Graywolf organization “works to publish fantastic books and to make sure people know about these books,” adding that her aim is to bring “a fresh voice, a fresh eye. We already have a set of successful editors who know what they’re doing. The most important part of my job is to make sure that people feel they have agency, and feel fulfilled by their jobs. That opens people up to working with me and helping me achieve some of my goals. I’m as good as the staff are.”
Emphasizing that academia is a “very collaborative environment,” Giménez said that she works “very hard to make sure the channels of communication between people and across departments are really clear and dynamic” in the company’s hybrid office environment. While most of its 18 employees live in the Twin Cities, a few key editors work remotely, including editorial director Ethan Nosowsky and executive editor Yuka Igarashi.
While Giménez said “a big part of this first year has been me meeting stakeholders, from our authors to foundations,” she is also strategizing on drawing in new audiences by reaching out to authors from under-represented communities. Graywolf, Giménez said, has always excelled at working with authors “who have an enormous amount of promise,” and she remains committed to nurturing writers “whose work might not be polished and ready to go.” Giménez said she’s approaching her job “as a writer and publisher who founded and ran a small press for many years, has published many books as an author, and was immersed in literature as a professor.”
Giménez’s first Graywolf acquisitions have entered the publishing pipeline and will be released beginning in 2024. A published poet herself, Giménez is especially excited about publishing poetry in translation; first among her recent acquisitions was Farud Matuk’s first full-length translation from Spanish into English of Peruvian poet Tilsa Otta’s poetry collection Hormone of Darkness: A Playlist, which will be published in October 2024. Future releases include Algarabía, a dual-language, book-length epic poem set in Puerto Rico by Roque Salas Rivera, scheduled for publication in spring 2025. Graywolf is also publishing a work in translation Giménez acquired late this summer, a novel by Peruvian Karina Pacheco Medrano titled Year of the Wind, in fall 2025.
Giménez, who speaks Spanish and has a background in translation, said she is especially committed to expanding upon Graywolf’s list of works in translation by cultivating emerging translators, similar to how the press nurtures authors, “and bringing some more BIPOC folks into that conversation.”
Executive editor and director of poetry Jeff Shotts, who has worked at Graywolf for 25 years, said that the past year has inspired him. Graywolf is striving, he said, to create an organization that better reflects the diversity of its lists. “To have Carmen as director is a huge stride forward,” he explained. “Already in just a year, her vision, direction, and excitement as we go into Graywolf’s 50th anniversary year are really palpable.” It’s also “wicked fun,” he admitted, to work alongside Giménez. “Carmen comes in with a whole different set of experiences as a queer Latinx woman who brings that sensibility to her editing, to her editorial decision-making. She is creating a new culture for our staff, and that feels very important for what Graywolf has been aiming to be.”
