Future Projects.
Below is a sampling of the projects we intend to pursue, and expand, now that we’ll be operating as a nonprofit.
The McSweeney’s Poetry Series
The ninth book in our poetry series, Daniel Khalastchi’s Tradition, will be out next April; we have several volumes lined up to follow it, and we’re eager to add more. We see this series growing in the years to come, with full-time editors, a support staff, a dedicated website, and additional, larger-scale projects, such as anthologies and collections in translation, alongside the core series.
Books in Translation
Over the years, McSweeney’s has translated and published great fiction and nonfiction by Michel Houellebecq, Javier Marías, Alessandro Baricco, and Marcos Giralt Torrente, and many others. Next year, we’ll be bringing out a new story collection by Chilean author Alejandro Zambra, and a novel by Croatian novelist Olja Savicevic. We intend to redouble our efforts in this area; with additional funding, our editors will be able to go in search of great works from all over.
Major Collaborations in McSweeney’s Quarterly
In recent years, we’ve made our quarterly a home for ambitious experimental anthologizing—we’ve given over full issues to last spring’s all-Latin-American-crime lineup, British novelist Adam Thirlwell’s serial translation project, and a celebration of the editorial work of Ray Bradbury and Alfred Hitchcock. Farther down the road, other special issues await the support they need—a compilation of writing on American waterways with contributions from journalists, novelists, poets, and essayists, edited by a major American novelist; new art-centric anthologies, in collaboration with photographers and graphic novelists; and more.
Marlon James’s Anthology of Caribbean Fiction
For the past two years, acclaimed Jamaican novelist Marlon James has been collecting work from Cuba, Haiti, the Virgin Islands, Suriname, and his home country, in an effort to create a definitive anthology of recent Caribbean fiction. The project has been operating on a shoestring budget; we want to give the collection the space and the resources it needs.
Stories upon Stories
Originally published in Italian and edited by Alessandro Baricco, this wonderful collection of classic stories re-interpreted by contemporary writers is due out from us late next year. It’s massive, fully illustrated, and includes work by Baricco, Umberto Eco, Yiyun Li, Ali Smith, and Abraham Yehoshua. The book has been almost ready to go for some time, but budgetary constraints have hindered its release—we’re excited to bring it out into the world at long last.
The first-ever collection of writing by the women of South Sudan
Nyuol Tong, who edited our first collection of South Sudanese fiction—There Is a Country—will return with this second volume, concentrating on women writers. A note from Nyuol:
This collection of South Sudanese fiction and nonfiction aims to provide a crucial glimpse into the feminine experience in a country whose public rhetoric and media is dominated by hegemonic masculinity. The stories in this collection will endeavor to reveal a vital aspect of the female spirit unique to South Sudan—a country that is both new and, from a cultural heritage sense, very old. Each story will explore who contemporary South Sudanese women are, and how their humor, habits, and goals distinguish them and connect them to women everywhere.
The Rebirth of the Collins Library
Almost a decade ago, noted author and memoirist Paul Collins created a wonderful series that resurrected long-out-of-print titles, from the classic of unintentional humor English As She Is Spoke to David Garnett’s Lady Into Fox. Over the past few years, the series has been dormant, but we’d love to resurrect it and keep bringing Collins’s discoveries into print.
Long-form journalism in the Believer
The Believer begins its new bimonthly schedule next year, with each issue 112 pages or more, and will now feature cover stories of a length and depth never before possible. The Believer has always published excellent and well-reported journalism, but with the ability to seek grant funding, and partner with nonprofit journalism organizations, we’ll now be able to increase our commitment to the form, and to give long-form literary journalism a forum it needs and deserves.
Voice of Witness
Voice of Witness has, for almost ten years now, been publishing groundbreaking books of oral histories—books that illuminate human rights crises around the world in uniquely powerful ways. Voice of Witness has been its own 501( c )(3) for years now, but its books have always been published by McSweeney’s. Now, with both organizations being nonprofit agencies, far more possibilities exist to collaborate on more ambitious projects—including wider distribution and greater outreach.
This is just a sampling of the projects in the works. Watch this space for news about new undertakings.