Curbstone Books is an innovative and award-winning line of books in fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and translation promoting equity, justice, and intercultural understanding. It is a home for craft-forward writing that engages with social and political issues through literature.
History
Founded in 1975 by Judith Doyle and Alexander “Sandy” Taylor, the original Curbstone Press operated for thirty years and garnered numerous national and regional accolades, including the New England Booksellers Association for Publishing Excellence, the National Hispanic Academy of Media Arts and Sciences for Achievement in Publishing, the ALTA Award for Dedication to Translation, and the PEN Gregory Kolovakos Award for commitment to Hispanic Literature.
In 2008, Curbstone Press joined Northwestern University Press and became the Curbstone Books imprint. Our Curbstone imprint publishes literary work that supports social uplift and equity across cultures and continents.
Curbstone’s historical author roster includes Luis Rodríguez, Martín Espada, Claribel Alegria, Salah Al Hamdani, Ana Castillo, Wayne Karlin, and E. Ethelbert Miller. New and forthcoming Curbstone authors include Yxta Maya Murray, Jennifer Fliss, Quinn Carver Johnson, Jenny Irish, Maggie Nye, and Bunkong Tuon. Among the many honors their titles have earned are the ALTA Outstanding Translation of the Year Award, the American Book Award, the Critics Choice Award, Foreword’s Book of the Year Award, Independent Publishers Award, the Lambda Literary Award, the PEN/Oakland Award, the PEN/Revson Award, Premio Atzlán, and the Pushcart Prize.
Traveling Freely, the debut essay collection from poet Roberto Carlos Garcia, explores intersecting topics such as race, identity, and socioeconomic inequality from a uniquely Black Dominican American view.
A lyric coming-of-age journey that sweeps from Detroit to Los Angeles, Find Me When You’re Ready interrogates the myths we carry and explores how we can set them aside.
From Louisiana’s fishing village of Cocodrie comes a debut collection on masculinity, hurricanes, and how a child of the Gulf Coast carries, honors, and revises Southern traditions.
The first English-language translation of the 1968 Théâtre de l’Aquarium activist play about two students from different backgrounds as they prepare for an exam, The Inheritor speaks forcefully as ever on education access and inequality.
