The Associated Press looks at the recent hot streak over at one of our favorite small presses, Graywolf Press.
For a publishing company that considered it a big success to sell 2,500 copies of an anthology of contemporary European poetry, it was a new experience to get urgent calls from the Barnes & Noble corporate purchasing department.
That's what happened at Graywolf Press when Barack Obama picked poet Elizabeth Alexander, a Graywolf author since 2001, to recite a poem at his inauguration — putting her in such hallowed company as Robert Frost and Maya Angelou. The St. Paul-based publisher is printing 100,000 copies of Alexander's inaugural poem, by far the biggest print run in its 35-year history but not for an inaugural work. Maya Angelou's "On the Pulse of the Morning," recited in 1993 at President Bill Clinton's inaugural, was a million seller.
Graywolf if a great press. Halls of Fame by John D'Agata is one of my favorite books of the last ten years.
Posted by: Spalding | January 21, 2009 at 10:19 AM