Graywolf Press is announcing today that Ethan Nosowsky, who was editor-at-large at the Minneapolis literary nonprofit press for four years until he was hired away by McSweeney’s in late 2011, will return to Graywolf on April 15 as editorial director, a newly-created position. Nosowsky, who has been McSweeney’s editorial director for about 18 months, will remain in San Francisco; he will report to publisher Fiona McCrae, who divides her time between Graywolf’s headquarters in Minneapolis and satellite offices in New York City. He will also continue to act as a consultant for the Creative Capital Foundation, as he has done since 2005.
“I couldn’t be happier about Ethan Nosowsky’s return to Graywolf,” McCrae said in a prepared statement. ”He has a great eye for literary talent, and is an accomplished line editor. In addition, Nosowsky’s expanded role at Graywolf means we will be able to take full advantage of his all-around publishing smarts.”
When reached on the phone by PW Tuesday morning, Nosowsky emphasized that he’d enjoyed working with McSweeney’s, and had learned much there, but that McCrae had “made an offer that [he] couldn’t refuse, to be godfatherly about it.” Nosowsky tendered his resignation to McSweeney’s executives late last week.
While an editor-at-large at Graywolf, Nosowky, who between 1993-2003 served as an editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, acquired a number of award-winning and critically acclaimed books, including Otherwise Known as the Human Condition by Geoff Dyer, which won the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism; The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism by Deborah Baker, a finalist for a 2011 National Book Award in nonfiction; and City of Bohane by Kevin Barry, which was featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review last year.
Nosowsky’s return to Graywolf is not the only good news coming out of the company this week. Senior editor Jeffrey Shotts -- renowned for acquiring and editing authors who go on to win major national and international prizes -- has been promoted to executive editor; sales and business manager Leslie Koppenhaver has been promoted to finance and business director; and assistant editor Steve Woodward has been promoted to associate editor. Plus, last month, Graywolf successfully raised $25,000 through Indiegogo to launch a completely revamped website, graywolfpress.org. And D.A. Powell recently received a 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for his poetry collection Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys.
