About Granary Books
For thirty-five years, Granary Books has brought together writers, artists, and bookmakers to investigate verbal/visual relations in the time-honored spirit of independent publishing. Granary’s mission—to produce, promote, document, and theorize new works exploring the intersection of word, image, and page—has earned the Press a reputation as one of the most unique and significant small publishers operating today.
Archives and Rare Books
Our project has been strengthened by our continued involvement in the organization, preservation, and sale of archives, manuscripts, and rare books by important contemporary writers and artists. While publishing remains central to Granary's purpose, we are also deeply involved with a widespread and local community of writers, poets, and artists.
Resources and Community
For years Granary occupied a gallery space in SoHo, hosting countless public events, lectures, and readings while curating exhibits related to books, book art, poetry, and writing. Now, from headquarters on Mercer Street, recent projects include Threads Talks Series, a book with audio recordings available on Penn Sound; From a Secret Location, a digital repository of little magazines, small presses, and other materials from the mimeo area; and continued involvement in exhibitions and publishing.
Publishing
We believe that Granary’s publishing, preservation, and community outreach has significant long-term implications for the fields of writing and book art. Since the mid-nineties, Granary has sought to produce, promote, and contextualize scholarship investigating an emerging history of small press publishing, poetry, and artists’ books. Many of the books we have produced in this vein, including Johanna Drucker’s essential The Century of Artists’ Books, Jerome Rothenberg and Steve Clay’s A Book of the Book: Some Works & Projections About the Book & Writing, and Steve Clay and Rodney Phillips’s A Secret Location on the Lower East Side are now being used as textbooks at the college level, further opening and legitimizing the field for a new generation of scholars and practitioners.
Granary Books remains committed to publishing innovative written and visual work, observing progressive scholarship, and supporting adventurous bookmaking while exploring the relationships between seeing and reading, reading and seeking.
Standing Orders
The best and simplest way to acquire our books is though the standing order / subscription plan. Subscribers to the press automatically receive new publications (both trade and limited) in batches, once or twice each year. The standing order plan is friendly and affordable to many university library budgets and runs annually from July 1 to June 30.
To set up a standing order or for more information, please contact Steve Clay at sclay@granarybooks.com.
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Granary Books is Steve Clay (owner + director); Julie Harrison (editorial associate); Mary Catherine Kinniburgh (partner), and Conley Lowrance (cataloger).