Graywolf Press is collaborating with Brooklyn-based literary magazine A Public Space to develop and publish in book-length format select short stories, novel excerpts, and essays originally submitted to the magazine. Brigid Hughes, who founded A Public Space as a quarterly in 2006 after serving briefly as executive editor of The Paris Review, has been named contributing editor to Graywolf Press, responsible for recommending fiction and nonfiction submissions by contributors to A Public Space for consideration by Graywolf’s acquisitions editors. Graywolf editors will make the final decision regarding publication of two books each year that will feature the words “A Public Space” printed on the back cover and in the interior. Hughes will also be responsible for the line editing and structural editing of the Public Space/Graywolf titles, while copy-editing and proofreading will be done in-house by Graywolf staff. Hughes will also write catalog copy and jacket copy for the titles, while Graywolf staff will perform all marketing and promotion duties. The books will be distributed by FSG, as are all Graywolf titles.
“It’ll just be another book on our list,” Erin Kottke, Graywolf’s publicity manager explained, noting that a number of writers submitting their work to A Public Space are not yet signed up with publishers. “[Hughes] is seeing these things before they’re published,” Kottke said, “It gives us an advantage. She’ll be tipping us off to some great authors.”
The first of the two debut Public Space titles will be selected in the coming months. "Ideally," according to Kottke, the first debut title will be published in fall 2013 and the second one sometime afterwards. Graywolf and A Public Space also hope to collaborate on other projects in the future; they have already arranged to share a booth at this fall’s Brooklyn Book Festival.
In a prepared statement, Graywolf publisher Fiona McCrae expressed confidence that the collaboration with A Public Space will be beneficial to both organizations. "Many of our authors, including Ander Monson, Francis Spufford, and our new nonfiction prize winner, Leslie Jamison, have appeared in the pages of A Public Space, so our editorial visions are already aligned,” she said.
A Public Space has a circulation of 3,000 subscribers worldwide, and an estimated readership of 30,000.
