About Turtle Point Press
I founded Turtle Point Press in 1990 after working for 25 years as the Director of International Sales for a large chemical company. From its very beginning I have been committed to rediscovering forgotten literary fiction and to publishing contemporary fiction and poetry by writers whose work is both unique and irresistibly readable. Turtle Point’s books are known for their superior literary content and for the elegance of their design and typesetting.
Turtle Point Press books have won many prizes. The Deposition of Father McGreevy by Brian O’Doherty, published by Turtle Point Press with Books & Co and Helen Marx Books was short-listed for the Booker Award. In 2008 Richard Howard’s Without Saying was nominated for a National Book Award and Devin Johnston’s Sources was shortlisted for a National Book Critic’s Circle Award. Many of our books including Bertram Copes Year by Henry Blake Fuller and A Journey With Elsa Cloud (with Books & Co) by Leila Hadley were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Hotel Sarajevo by Jack Kersh was the winner of the prestigious New Voices Award. Writers whose first books were originally published by Turtle Point Press have gone on to win several awards. Benjamin Taylor, editor of the much acclaimed Saul Bellow: Letters, was the winner of the Harold Ribelow Award for his Turtle Point Press first novel, Tales Out of School. Simon Van Booy, whose first short story collection, The Secret Lives of People in Love was published by Turtle Point Press and later released in a new edition by Harper Collins was a recent winner of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. In 2011 two Turtle Point Press titles were selected for several year-end Top Ten Books of the Year: Broken Irish, by Edward J. Delaney and Dear Prudence: New and Selected Poems by David Trinidad. What It Is Like: New and Selected Poems by Charles North was named one of the year’s best poetry books by National Public Radio.
Poets who have published with Turtle Point Press include Charles North, Christopher Cahill, Richard Howard, Mark Strand, David Trinidad, Wayne Koestenbaum, Anna Moschovakis, Mario Susko, Tony Sanders, Damon Krukowski, Jonathan Williams, Paul Kane, Devin Johnston, Charles Henri Ford, and Howard Altmann. Turtle Point has published the letters of New York School Poet, James Schuyler.
Turtle Point Press has published novels or short story collections by Joshua Baldwin, Edward J. Delaney, Joe Ashby Porter, Michael Friedman, George Stade, Tobias Seamon, Eugene Marten, Reid Mitchell, Stuart David, James McCourt, O’Doherty, Jack Kersh, Hal Bennett, Lord Berners, Jocelyn Brooke, J.K. Huysmans, Susan Barnes, Hannah Green, Henry Blake Fuller, Princess Bibesco, Seumas O’Kelly and Ghislain de Diesbach among many others. In Fall 2012 Turtle Point Press will publish A Voyage to the Island of the Articoles by André Maurois.
Turtle Point Press is one of America’s best publishers of belle-lettristic books and these include works by Jules Laforgue, Julien Gracq, Bruce Kellner, Juliet Soskice, Tim Brookes, Janet Ross, Percy Lubbock and Maurice Maeterlinck. An essay entitled Not for Your Average Reader written by Robert Leiter for The Jewish Exponent describes in some detail the founding of Turtle Point Press.
The late New York bookseller Irwin Rosen once wrote, “It is better for a book to sit in the back row and be discovered than to sit in the front row and be found out.” I am consoled, if not guided, in my choices by his words.
Sincerely,
Jonathan D Rabinowitz
ps Congratulations to Joe Ashby Porter, whose novel, The Near Future, published by Turtle Point Press in 2006, was published in 2011 in a French edition by Gallimard’s Editions Joelle Losfeld.