How the Tiny Graywolf Press Became a Big Player in Book Publishing

Before she won multiple awards and wrote one of the Times Book Review's top-ten books of 2014, the young poet Eula Biss tried to sell a book of essays to major publishing houses. "They were looking to push her into a more polemical voice," says her literary agent Matt McGowan. Biss wouldn't change her diffident, lyrical approach, and nothing came of it. Then she won a publication prize from Graywolf Press, a nonprofit outfit in St. Paul, Minnesota. After the resulting book, Notes From No Man's Land, won a National Book Critics Circle Award, publishers were the ones doing the courting. "I could have easily sold On Immunity for more money," says McGowan of Biss's follow-up. Instead, "I made Graywolf do a little song and dance to make sure they were going to make this big." They did, and Biss's study of vaccination merited wide acclaim, strong sales, and another call from a commercial house - this time offering six figures for the paperback. McGowan declined: "Why change a winning team?"