Grid Books is a publisher of poetry and other editions foregrounding creative work that springs from the margins.
We seek a variety of perspectives expressed across genres, including poetry, fiction, and fine art editions, and projects generated through intergenerational exchange, such as those encompassing oral history. We accept proposals from writers and editors whose work carries forward our mission and who will support us in maintaining a high standard of editing, design, and production quality across print and digital formats.
In keeping with our mission, we maintain Off the Grid Press, an imprint of Grid Books, and administer the Off the Grid Prize for older poets, which meets an important need for both writers and readers of contemporary poetry.
History
Grid Books began as Off the Grid Press, founded in the fall of 2003 by Tam Lin Neville and Bert Stern to provide a forum for older poets who are sometimes overlooked by the current marketplace. Off the Grid’s mission was established with its first offering, Loyalty: New and Selected Poems, the second book by poet and social justice activist Henry Braun. In 2008, Loyalty went on to win the Maine Literary Award for Poetry, and the press has since brought forth more than fifteen books to the acclaim of critics and poets alike. The press has also distinguished itself for the quality of its publications, which are produced with smyth-sewn binding and are designed by Michael Alpert of Bangor, Maine.
Over the years, the press has evolved in its mission to publish writers whose work is often sidelined by mainstream publishing. In 2011, Stern and Neville established the Off the Grid Prize to honor writers whose sensibilities were formed in earlier generations but whose vision is fresh, and a winner is awarded annually each December. In 2015, hoping to broaden the press’s mission and reach, Stern and Neville granted editorial control to poets Elizabeth Murphy and Rob Arnold, who re-launched the project as Grid Books. Today, Grid Books continues its mission to publish quality work that reflects a diversity of voices, values, and lived experience.
Grid Books gratefully acknowledges the support of the Carl Lesnor Family Foundation, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and all the individual donors who generously contribute throughout the year.
Editor-in-Chief
Elizabeth Murphy is a poet and editor and cofounder of the online interdisciplinary journal The Straddler. Her edition of literary correspondence of American poet Donald Justice and novelist Richard Stern, A Critical Friendship, was published in 2013 by University of Nebraska Press. A collection of her poems, in the form of an exchange with the late poet Taylor Stoehr, was published in 2018 by Pressed Wafer. Her poems and essays have appeared in Salamander, Hopkins Review, and The Straddler.
Arts Editor
Matt Murphy
Social Media Manager
Daniel Carey
The Founders
Bert Stern taught for forty years at Wabash College, where he is now Milligan Professor of English, Emeritus. From 1965–67 he taught at the University of Thessaloniki and from 1984–85 at Peking University. He is the author of Steerage (Ibbetson Street Press, 2009) and a chapbook, Silk/The Ragpicker's Grandson (Red Dust, 1998). His poems have been published in New Letters, The American Poetry Review, Indiana Review, Poetry, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Hunger Mountain, among others. His essays and reviews have appeared in Sewanee Review, Modern Language Review, The New Republic, and Southern Review. His critical study, Wallace Stevens: Art of Uncertainty, was published by the University of Michigan Press in 1965 and his biography of Robert Winter, Winter in China: An American Life, was published by XLibris in 2014. Both his poetry and prose has been widely anthologized.
Tam Lin Neville spent four formative years living in China and Japan, studying the language and teaching, and returned to this country with a strong interest in Eastern poetry, particularly the Tang Dynasty poets of China. Her poems have been published in The American Poetry Review, Crazyhorse, Harvard Review, Ironwood, Mademoiselle, The Massachusetts Review, and Sulfur. Her essays and reviews have appeared in Agni, The American Poetry Review, Green Mountains Review, Hungry Mind Review, and The Threepenny Review. Her interview with Tomas Transtromer was published in Painted Bride Quarterly. Her books include a chapbook, Dreaming in Chinese (1995), which won Calypso Press’s first chapbook competition; Journey Cake (1998), published by BkMk Press, University of Missouri-Kansas City; and Triage (2010), published by Cervena Barva Press. For fifteen years, Stern and Neville administered and taught in Changing Lives Through Literature, an alternative sentencing program designed for women and men on probation.
