About Parlor Press

Parlor Press LLC is an independent publisher and distributor of scholarly and trade books in high quality print and digital formats. It was founded in 2002 to address the need for an alternative scholarly, academic press attentive to emergent ideas and forms while maintaining the highest possible standards of quality, credibility, and integrity. The Press's primary goal is to publish outstanding writing in a variety of subjects. Because the Press is unencumbered by the bureaucratic machinery of older publishing entities, the stress can be more on excellence and innovation than on marketability or pedigree. (This is not to suggest that these categories are mutually exclusive in every case.)

The Press is managed by scholars and specialists in their respective fields, presently covering fifteen book series, from initial peer review through production, distribution, and marketing. There are presently over 400 Parlor Press authors and another 75 developing new book projects. Parlor Press books have won numerous national awards as the best books in their respective fields. We have plans for growth into new areas, such as multimedia writing and other hybrid forms of print, visual, aural, and haptic media that can take advantage of new digital printing, publishing, and dissemination technologies.

Subject Areas

Parlor Press benefits from sharp reviewers across the disciplines who have been chosen because of their expertise, experience, and willingness to consider innovative work in these representative areas (in alphabetical order):

  • art history
  • communication
  • complexity theory
  • composition
  • cross-cultural rhetorics
  • cultural studies
  • digital culture
  • feminist criticism and theory
  • film theory
  • Internet studies
  • literacy
  • literary theory
  • literary studies
  • multimedia
  • pedagogy
  • philosophy
  • poetry (Free Verse Editions)
  • postmodernism
  • rhetoric
  • rhetoric of science and technology
  • technical writing
  • technology
  • visual rhetoric
  • writing

Parlor Press Series

We consider new work well suited to one of our series themes:

Aesthetic Critical Inquiry
Edited by Andrea Feeser

Free Verse Editions
Edited by Jon Thompson

Lauer Series in Rhetoric and Composition
Edited by Patricia Sullivan,Catherine Hobbs, Thomas Rickert, and Jennifer Bay

Lenses on Composition Studies
Edited by Sheryl Fontaine and Steve Westbrook

Glassbead Books
Edited by John Holbo

New Media Theory
Edited by Byron Hawk

Perspectives on Writing
Parlor Press and the WAC Clearinghouse, edited by Susan McLeod

Reference Guides to Rhetoric and Composition
WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press, edited by Charles Bazerman

The Renaissance
Edited by Charles Ross

Rhetoric of Science and Technology << New
Edited by Alan Gross

Second Language Writing
Edited by Paul Kei Matsuda

Visual Rhetoric and Prospects in Visual Rhetoric
Edited by Marguerite Helmers

Writing Program Administration << New
Edited by Susan H. McLeod and Margot Soven

Writing Travel
Edited by Jeanne Moskal

Reprint Opportunities

One goal of Parlor Press is to republish in new editions or formats previously published work that has proven (unquestionably) to be a valuable resource for readers, writers, teachers, and scholars. Authors whose works have gone out of print and who retain the copyright to the work should contact the editor (editor@parlorpress.com). Such works may be candidates for republication, subject to further review and/or revision. In some cases, a reasonable subvention may be required.

Academic Publishing

If you would like to read more about the publishing scene to which Parlor Press responds, you might find these items worth reading:

The Publisher

The founder and publisher of Parlor Press is David Blakesley, who is also the Campbell Chair in Technical Communication and Professor of English at Clemson University. His work as an editor and publisher includes The Writing Instructor, Rhetorical Philosophy and Theory (Southern Illinois University Press; series editor and founder), WPA: Writing Program Administration (production editor), and Pacific Review (managing editor). He has authored or edited five books: The Elements of Dramatism (2002; Longman), The Terministic Screen: Rhetorical Perspectives on Film (2003; Southern Illinois University Press; editor), Late Poems, 1968-1993 (2007; by Kenneth Burke; edited with Julie Whitaker), and Writing: A Manual for the Digital Age (2008, 2009; with Jeff Hoogeveen). His other research includes articles and hypertexts on writing, visual rhetoric, film, technology, and Kenneth Burke.