About Us
Reading is not consumerism.
Atelier26 Books
Our Mission & Vision
Our Mission & Vision
Atelier26 is an independent publisher in Portland, Oregon that exists to demonstrate the powers and possibilities of literature through beautifully designed and expressive books that get people listening, talking, and exchanging ideas. We believe that reading is far more than just another form of consumerism, that books are not static objects but living, thriving conveyances of human expression, thought, and emotion. We believe in literature as contemplation, conversation, and provocation. We believe books can foster community and cultural vitality. Finally, we believe in the reality of a literary public — writer, publisher, bookseller, librarian, teacher, reader — and we celebrate the dynamism and mystery of this public.
Recognition
We've quickly become recognized for the excellence and idiosyncrasy of our titles, receiving honors from the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize (longlist), the PEN/Hemingway Award (finalist), the Balcones Fiction Prize (winner), and the Flann O'Brien Award (finalist) in addition to being lauded by many notable authors and cited on numerous Best of the Year lists. This year Graywolf Press Publisher Fiona McCrae selected Atelier26 Books for a 2019 Oregon Literary Fellowship. We are grateful to Literary Arts for funding this fellowship, and to the Oregon Community Foundation for past grant support.
2020 Vision
As we look ahead into our second decade, we're renewing our commitment to expanding what we can offer readers. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to support our publishing mission. We welcome single or monthly contributions. See our "Donate" page for more information. Atelier26 is a fiscally sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization.
Distribution
Atelier26 titles are distributed throughout North America by Independent Publishers Group, Ingram, and Baker & Taylor, and offered for sale through our online storefront and wherever books are sold. We particularly value our partnerships with America's finest independent bookstores.
Editor & Publisher: M. Allen Cunningham
Publicist: Diane Prokop
Designer: Nathan Shields
Advisory Board: Paul Martone, Diane Prokop, Laura Stanfill
Foreign Rights Representation: Elizabeth Wales, Wales Literary Agency, Inc.
(See also "Who We Are")
Fiscal Sponsor: Fractured Atlas
Our Latest Releases
Forthcoming Titles
Our Catalog
In June 2015 Atelier26 released a newly designed edition of Harriet Scott Chessman's acclaimed 2004 novel Someone Not Really Her Mother after some time out of print. This mesmerizing book was a Good Morning America Book Club Selection and a San Francisco Chronicle top ten pick.
March 2015 bought the release of Partisans: A Lost Work by Geoffrey Peerson Leed, edited by M. Allen Cunningham from manuscripts discovered following Leed's mysterious disappearance.
In October 2014 we published Elizabeth Rosner's extraordinarily brave and searching autobiographical poetry collection Gravity. Pulitzer Prize finalist Luis Alberto Urrea hails the book as "a profound work of true beauty and mystery," and Booklist calls it "daringly, disarmingly raw and honest...a haunting, soulful portrait." Rosner is the author of the novels The Speed of Light, Blue Nude, and Electric City.
Fall/Winter 2013 brought the release of The Beauty of Ordinary Things, the powerful fourth novel by acclaimed writer Harriet Scott Chessman, author of the bestselling #1 Indie Next Pick Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper and the acclaimed Someone Not Really Her Mother.
Our premier title, Date of Disappearance: Assorted Stories by M. Allen Cunningham, is offered in a lushly illustrated limited edition of 300, each copy signed and numbered by the author. In May 2013, we launched the Atelier26 Samizdat Series, with Cunningham's The Honorable Obscurity Handbook:Solidarity & Sound Advice for Writers and Artists, which was followed a year later by The Flickering Page: the Reading Experience in Digital Times.
Our Values
At the core of the Atelier26 publishing philosophy are five founding values the house seeks to boldly embody:
Motto
“A magnificent enthusiasm, which feels as if it never could do enough to reach the fullness of its ideal; an unselfishness of sacrifice, which would rather cast fruitless labour before the altar than stand idle in the market.”—John Ruskin
Workshops
In 2016 we launched the Atelier26 Creative Writing Workshops in our hometown of Portland, Oregon, providing opportunities for writers to explore and refine their work within a guided workshop format and in the context of a serious and committed community. Watch for upcoming calls for applications.
Cast a Vote for Literary Vision
Any individual can support Atelier26 Books by purchasing our titles or making a tax-deductible donation. While nothing beats that kind of straight-up vote of confidence, we also hope you will share news of our existence on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media, and gab about us to literary friends the old fashioned way over coffee, etc.
A Note on Funding & Long-Term Sustainability
Atelier26 is funded out of pocket, with the publisher’s share of the net profit proceeds from book sales (after our authors receive their royalties), by grants from the likes of The Oregon Community Foundation, and by tax-deductible donations from readers like you (we offer Giving Levels). Our editorial priorities and general operations emulate, on a significantly smaller scale, those of the finest non-profit literary publishers (Coffee House, Graywolf, Sarabande, Dalkey Archive, to name only four). Like these more established houses, what motivates us is a passionate belief in the powers and possibilities of literature (see “Our Mission” above). We refuse to think of reading as just another form of consumerism. We believe literature is a value in itself and that there is a core population of dedicated readers who believe the same, and buy real physical books on the basis of that belief. For these reasons, our catalog is shaped not by P&L statements, Delphic sales department forecasts, or Bookscan analyses, but by pure aesthetic enthusiasm. In short, ours is not the commercial model of the New York conglomerates.
Consequently, we're an extremely small operation, functioning with very little revenue. We're confident that the beauty and power of the titles we've published since our inception four years ago is ample evidence of what we can do, and we are very good at getting the word out about our books and their authors, but for all our literary enthusiasm and energy, we work with a tiny budget. Our fond hope is that we may obtain private or partnership funding or imprint status to enable the expansion of our catalog and perhaps implement a modest stipend of kinds to lend greater structure to the administrative and editorial hours that go into keeping the press in action.
Are you a generous individual, an arts entity seeking a partnership, a literary entity seeking an imprint, or affiliated with a funding source that might support our literary mission? Please get in touch.
Recognition
We've quickly become recognized for the excellence and idiosyncrasy of our titles, receiving honors from the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize (longlist), the PEN/Hemingway Award (finalist), the Balcones Fiction Prize (winner), and the Flann O'Brien Award (finalist) in addition to being lauded by many notable authors and cited on numerous Best of the Year lists. This year Graywolf Press Publisher Fiona McCrae selected Atelier26 Books for a 2019 Oregon Literary Fellowship. We are grateful to Literary Arts for funding this fellowship, and to the Oregon Community Foundation for past grant support.
2020 Vision
As we look ahead into our second decade, we're renewing our commitment to expanding what we can offer readers. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to support our publishing mission. We welcome single or monthly contributions. See our "Donate" page for more information. Atelier26 is a fiscally sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization.
Distribution
Atelier26 titles are distributed throughout North America by Independent Publishers Group, Ingram, and Baker & Taylor, and offered for sale through our online storefront and wherever books are sold. We particularly value our partnerships with America's finest independent bookstores.
Editor & Publisher: M. Allen Cunningham
Publicist: Diane Prokop
Designer: Nathan Shields
Advisory Board: Paul Martone, Diane Prokop, Laura Stanfill
Foreign Rights Representation: Elizabeth Wales, Wales Literary Agency, Inc.
(See also "Who We Are")
Fiscal Sponsor: Fractured Atlas
Our Latest Releases
- Perpetua's Kin by M. Allen Cunningham (September 2018)
- A Thousand Distant Radios - Longlisted for the 2018 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, Woody Skinner's short story collection is already sparking comparisons to the work of earlier masters.
- Bird Book - A sublime new collection of poems in praise of all things avian by distinguished poet Sidney Wade, hailed by Randall Mann as "the supreme heir to Wallace Stevens and one of the most original poets in the language." Features gorgeous bird illustrations by John James Audubon, and available as an e-book featuring bird audio.
- Funny-Ass Thoreau - We launched our Regeneration Series with this specially assembled collection of the Concord philosopher's funniest writing, edited by Atelier26 publisher M. Allen Cunningham. Funny-Ass Thoreau has been highlighted on Lit Hub, Arts & Letters Daily, the Paris Review Daily, and The Seattle Review of Books, and added to the inventory of the Shop at Walden Pond.
- People Like You - Portland writer Margaret Malone's debut short story collection was a 2016 PEN/Hemingway Award Finalist, winner of the 2015 Balcones Fiction Prize, and was named a Best Book of 2015 by The Oregonian, The Portland Mercury, Powell's Books, and The Quivering Pen.
Forthcoming Titles
- Stevenson in the States: Notes of an Amateur Immigrant by Robert Louis Stevenson (Regeneration Series, Vol.2)
Our Catalog
In June 2015 Atelier26 released a newly designed edition of Harriet Scott Chessman's acclaimed 2004 novel Someone Not Really Her Mother after some time out of print. This mesmerizing book was a Good Morning America Book Club Selection and a San Francisco Chronicle top ten pick.
March 2015 bought the release of Partisans: A Lost Work by Geoffrey Peerson Leed, edited by M. Allen Cunningham from manuscripts discovered following Leed's mysterious disappearance.
In October 2014 we published Elizabeth Rosner's extraordinarily brave and searching autobiographical poetry collection Gravity. Pulitzer Prize finalist Luis Alberto Urrea hails the book as "a profound work of true beauty and mystery," and Booklist calls it "daringly, disarmingly raw and honest...a haunting, soulful portrait." Rosner is the author of the novels The Speed of Light, Blue Nude, and Electric City.
Fall/Winter 2013 brought the release of The Beauty of Ordinary Things, the powerful fourth novel by acclaimed writer Harriet Scott Chessman, author of the bestselling #1 Indie Next Pick Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper and the acclaimed Someone Not Really Her Mother.
Our premier title, Date of Disappearance: Assorted Stories by M. Allen Cunningham, is offered in a lushly illustrated limited edition of 300, each copy signed and numbered by the author. In May 2013, we launched the Atelier26 Samizdat Series, with Cunningham's The Honorable Obscurity Handbook:Solidarity & Sound Advice for Writers and Artists, which was followed a year later by The Flickering Page: the Reading Experience in Digital Times.
Our Values
At the core of the Atelier26 publishing philosophy are five founding values the house seeks to boldly embody:
- Idiosyncratic works of quiet merit have an integral place in literary culture.
- Literary history is largely built upon such works.
- Print books remain relevant and irreplaceable.
- Dynamic independent booksellers across the nation are essential to a healthy publishing climate.
- Authors deserve liberating rights agreements and royalty structures.
Motto
“A magnificent enthusiasm, which feels as if it never could do enough to reach the fullness of its ideal; an unselfishness of sacrifice, which would rather cast fruitless labour before the altar than stand idle in the market.”—John Ruskin
Workshops
In 2016 we launched the Atelier26 Creative Writing Workshops in our hometown of Portland, Oregon, providing opportunities for writers to explore and refine their work within a guided workshop format and in the context of a serious and committed community. Watch for upcoming calls for applications.
Cast a Vote for Literary Vision
Any individual can support Atelier26 Books by purchasing our titles or making a tax-deductible donation. While nothing beats that kind of straight-up vote of confidence, we also hope you will share news of our existence on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media, and gab about us to literary friends the old fashioned way over coffee, etc.
A Note on Funding & Long-Term Sustainability
Atelier26 is funded out of pocket, with the publisher’s share of the net profit proceeds from book sales (after our authors receive their royalties), by grants from the likes of The Oregon Community Foundation, and by tax-deductible donations from readers like you (we offer Giving Levels). Our editorial priorities and general operations emulate, on a significantly smaller scale, those of the finest non-profit literary publishers (Coffee House, Graywolf, Sarabande, Dalkey Archive, to name only four). Like these more established houses, what motivates us is a passionate belief in the powers and possibilities of literature (see “Our Mission” above). We refuse to think of reading as just another form of consumerism. We believe literature is a value in itself and that there is a core population of dedicated readers who believe the same, and buy real physical books on the basis of that belief. For these reasons, our catalog is shaped not by P&L statements, Delphic sales department forecasts, or Bookscan analyses, but by pure aesthetic enthusiasm. In short, ours is not the commercial model of the New York conglomerates.
Consequently, we're an extremely small operation, functioning with very little revenue. We're confident that the beauty and power of the titles we've published since our inception four years ago is ample evidence of what we can do, and we are very good at getting the word out about our books and their authors, but for all our literary enthusiasm and energy, we work with a tiny budget. Our fond hope is that we may obtain private or partnership funding or imprint status to enable the expansion of our catalog and perhaps implement a modest stipend of kinds to lend greater structure to the administrative and editorial hours that go into keeping the press in action.
Are you a generous individual, an arts entity seeking a partnership, a literary entity seeking an imprint, or affiliated with a funding source that might support our literary mission? Please get in touch.
