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Kenyon College visiting assistant english professor Joe Campana talks to publisher and director of Graywolf Press Fiona McCrae.
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Scott Walker founded Graywolf Press at Townsend, Washington, in 1974. His literary discrimination – continued brilliantly by his successor, Fiona McCrae – established the defining characteristic of Graywolf, many of whose early books were set and sewn by hand. Walker moved Graywolf to Minnesota in the mid 1980s. At this time Walker achieved a non-profit status for Graywolf, but he did not fully exploit the resources available, and published more titles than the capacity of the company could handle. When Walker resigned in 1994, despite its critical success, Graywolf was operating at a deficit in excess of $200,000. About six months later Fiona McCrae replaced Walker.
Fiona McCrae was born in Kenya – as she says, “descended from a long line of continent-hoppers” – and went “fairly directly” from Bristol University to Faber and Faber. After eight years, she became senior editor and took up a position at the publisher’s Boston office in 1991. After three years she was ready to take up interests that were more satisfying, and the failing Graywolf seemed made to order.
McCrae restored the health of the firm by reduction of the number of annually published titles and by securing a few helpful grants. Today, half of Graywolf’s $1 million operating budget comes from book sales. The other half comes from local institutions. After bringing Graywolf’s relationship with a local distribution agent to an amicable end, she turned to Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. This alliance between the most prestigious of small and large publishers seems especially appropriate.
Skill at fund-raising and developing relationships with well-chosen authors does not exhaust McCrae’s innovative abilities. Important to Graywolf is the reciprocal – and very likely unique – relationship it has formed with St. Benedict’s College of St. Joseph, Minnesota. Not only are readings from Graywolf authors quite frequent on campus, but each year the college awards the Sister Mariella Gable Prize to the best Graywolf novel of the year. The possibility of winning this prize is a strong inducement to authors to give Graywolf their consideration.
Success is more than solvency, however necessary that surely is. Recognition from knowledgeable members of the book world has been plentiful. Michael Powell, owner of the parent location of Powell’s Books since 1971, observed that Graywolf was especially noted for “adventurous, challenging, yet accessible literature.” The membership manager of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, Robert N. Casper, was equally enthusiastic although more succinct. “Graywolf,” he said, “is as good as it gets.”
Naturally Graywolf authors have played a share in the success of their publisher and have received recognitions of importance. There have been four Minnesota Book Awards, and Graywolf writers have been represented seven times among finalists for such prestigious awards as the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the PEN/Hemingway Prize for First Fiction. Such representation is phenomenal for a publisher that issues no more than fourteen titles annually. On the international scene, Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer was considered for the Nobel Prize. Graywolf published the only volume of his poetry in the United States.
Mainstream publishers like Picador, W.W. Norton, and Farrar, Strauss and Giroux have absorbed some Graywolf authors, but McCrae’s continuing effort rests on her excitement over “discovering the writers that the big names have overlooked.” Her success at this and other aspects of management have been exceptional, and have insured the persistence, health and remarkable interest that surrounds this extraordinary venture.
Bio from The Modern Word
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