Steerforth Press in Hanover, N.H., is lifting its two-year moratorium on publishing new fiction and has hired Roland Pease to acquire poetry and literary fiction. Pease founded the now-defunct Zoland Books, where he edited National Book Award—winning fiction writer Ha Jin and National Book Award poetry finalist Kevin Young. He will work from a satellite office in Cambridge, Mass.
"Roland was a publisher, and he knows the realities of the business. When he finds stuff that knocks your socks off, we're going to publish it," Steerforth publisher Chip Fleischer told PW. Pease has already signed S. Shankar's No End to the Journey, which is set in present-day India, and Hunger in America author David Cates's farce X Out of Wonderland, for the fall. Steerforth will also explore other fiction genres and will publish its first intelligence thriller, Triple Identity by Haggai Carmon, in July and a historical novel on the apostle Paul, James Cannon's Marathon, in November.
