Northwestern University Press

It is a member of the Association of University Presses.

• Parent — Northwestern University • Founded — 1893 • Country — United States • Headquarters — Evanston, Illinois • Distribution — Chicago Distribution Center (US) Scholarly Book Services (Canada) Eurospan Group (Europe) • Publications — Books • Url — http: nupress.northwestern.edu

Founded in 1893, Northwestern University Press was initially dedicated to the publication of legal periodicals and scholarly legal texts. In 1957, the Press was established as a separate university publishing company and began expanding its offerings with new series in various fields.

In the 1950s, the Modern Language Association (MLA) established the Center for Editions of American Authors (CEAA), which proposed to organize textual editing and publication projects for major American authors. Melville scholar Harrison M. Hayford engaged Northwestern University Press to publish definitive editions of Melville's body of work, which would be established through analysis and review of Melville works at the Newberry Library. The library contained 6,100 items, including at least one copy of every printing of each of Melville's books published in his lifetime, since Melville made textual changes. Completed in 2017, the series includes fifteen volumes.

Northwestern University Press is associated with United States. Recorded from 1893.

SPEP is a series of scholarly monographs and translations founded by James M. Edie and published by Northwestern University Press since the early 1960s, including works by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, and Edmund Husserl. The current series editor is Anthony Steinbock. The series was founded as a collaboration with the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, and has been described as "one of the high watermarks in the society’s development."

Founded by Slavicist Gary Saul Morson, Studies in Russian Literature and Theory (SRLT) "provide perspectives on Russian literature from all periods and genres, as well as its place in the broader culture. Authors whose works the series explores include Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Tolstoy, Zamyatin, Pasternak, and Nabokov. More than a hundred monographs have been published in the series since 1989. Awards in the series include Jenny Kaminer's Women with a Thirst for Destruction: The Bad Mother in Russian Culture winner of the Heldt "Best book in Slavic/Eastern European/Eurasian women's studies" prize.

Northwestern University Press publishes a wide range of titles. In 1963, the Press published Viola Spolin's landmark volume, Improvisation for the Theater: A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques, which has sold more than 100,000 copies since its publication, and Northwestern's theater list includes works by Tony and Academy Award winners such as Mary Zimmerman, Tracy Letts, Bruce Norris, and Horton Foote, as well as playwrights David Ives, Craig Wright, and Ike Holter. In 2025, the Press began republishing the work of controversial writer Wendy C. Ortiz.

In 1990, Northwestern University Press established a fiction and poetry imprint under the imprint name TriQuarterly, the name of an influential literary journal founded at the university in 1958 and operated by the press from 1964 to 2009. Writers such as Nikky Finney, Karla F.C. Holloway, Manuel Muñoz, Christine Schutt, A. E. Stallings, Patricia Smith, Bruce Weigl, and Angela Jackson have published titles in the imprint, including works that have won the National Book Award, Whiting Awards, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.

In 2010, Northwestern University Press acquired the publisher of international literature and Latin American voices, Curbstone Press. The imprint includes works by Luis Rodríguez, Martín Espada, Gioconda Belli, Claribel Alegria, Salah Al Hamdani, Ana Castillo, Wayne Karlin, E. Ethelbert Miller, Sergio Ramírez, and Le Clézio.