Our Story
Coffee House Press began as a small letterpress operation in 1972 and has grown into an internationally renowned nonprofit publisher of literary fiction, essay, poetry, and other work that doesn’t fit neatly into genre categories.
Following the small press movement of the 60s and 70s, the 80s saw an emergence of professionalization among small publishers. Coffee House Press's late-founder Allan Kornblum saw an opportunity to create the sort of publishing house that he wished existed in the world.
Since Coffee House Press's founding, our authors have received and been finalists for numerous nominations and prizes, including the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Kingsley Tufts Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize.
With your support, we’re able to make experimental, creative choices rather than react solely to sales algorithms and trends.
Adventurous readers, arts enthusiasts, community builders, and risk takers—join us.
Our founder
ALLAN KORNBLUM
Allan studied poetry at the St. Mark’s Poetry Project and the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and published poems in a wide variety of little magazines in the 1970s and early 1980s. During that period he served as the editor, designer, printer, and publisher for Toothpaste Press. From 1984–2011 he served as editor and publisher at Coffee House Press. In recognition of his work at these two presses, Kornblum received an American Book Award for Special Achievement as an Editor and Publisher in 1997. Allan passed away on November 23, 2014.
