| Status: | Active |
| Founded: | 1974 |
| Founder: | Richard Grossinger, Lindy Hough |
| Country: | United States |
| Headquarters: | Berkeley, California |
| Distribution: | Penguin Random House Publisher Services |
| Keypeople: | Tim McKee |
| Publications: | Books, film |
| Topics: | Beat Generation, raw foodism, yoga, martial arts, capioera, spirituality, religion, holistic health, sustainability, nutrition, occult, esotericism, mediumship, parapsychology, New Age, fitness, baseball |
| Imprints: | Evolver Editions, Blue Snake Books |
North Atlantic Books is a non-profit, independent publisher based in Berkeley, California, United States.[1] Distributed by Penguin Random House Publisher Services,[2] North Atlantic Books is a mission-driven social justice-oriented publisher. Founded by authors Richard Grossinger and Lindy Hough in Vermont, North Atlantic Books was named partly for the North Atlantic region where it began in 1974, as well as Alan Van Newkirk's Geographic Foundation of the North Atlantic, an early (1970) ecological center founded in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, by radicals from Detroit. The publisher also cites Edward Dorn's 1960s poem, "North Atlantic Turbine: A Theory of Truth", which very early described the dangers of global commoditization by the Western World, as an inspiration in the company's name.
Genres published by North Atlantic Books include somatics, social justice, bodywork, health and healing, Buddhism, grief, and internal martial arts (through its imprint Blue Snake Books). In 1980, North Atlantic Books was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational organization.
North Atlantic Books is the publisher of the first installment of the New York Times bestselling children's book Walter the Farting Dog by William Kotzwinkle and Glenn Murray, with a 10th anniversary edition of the book published in August 2011.[3] The publisher is also credited with publishing the complete thirteen-volume series of short stories from Nebula Award-winning science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon.[4] Other notable works from North Atlantic include Jon Klimos's Channeling: Investigations on Receiving Information from Paranormal Sources (1998), described by Newsweek as "the sacred text on channeling,"[5] and Patrick Doud's The Winnitok Tales, a series the Midwest Book Review praised for "memorable characters, poetic language, and driving narrative to these timeless tales that recall the classic epic adventure stories."[6] Additionally, North Atlantic has published all four volumes of poetry by Pushcart Prize-winner BJ Ward.
A major motion picture adaptation of When the Game Stands Tall (2003), starring Jim Caviezel, Laura Dern, Michael Chiklis and Alexander Ludwig was scheduled to be released in fall 2014.
Many notable personalities such as Oliver Sacks,[7] Henry Louis Gates Jr.,[8] and Nancy Pelosi[9] have contributed forewords to North Atlantic titles, and the publisher counts Thich Nhat Hanh,[10] Noam Chomsky,[11] and Howard Zinn among those who have endorsed titles.
According to filmmaker, author, and performer Miranda July, Grossinger and Hough's daughter, she and her brother were part of the company's early operations, which included "packing Jiffy bags with books for shipment."[12] July claims her upbringing, North Atlantic Books' presence specifically, instilled in her a love of writing "that is at the basis of all the things that I do."[13]
Bestselling author and writer Jonathan Lethem has also been tied to North Atlantic Books as the publisher's first paid employee, and later provided an introduction for Theodore Sturgeon's book The Man Who Lost the Sea.[14]
Launched in 2011, Evolver Editions is an imprint of North Atlantic Books presenting voices of the transformation movement of "psychic evolution," a spiritual counterculture that explores the concept of consciousness. The imprint is a collaboration between North Atlantic Books and Evolver LLC, which publishes the online magazine Reality Sandwich and online social network Evolver.net.[24] Topics covered by Evolver Editions' authors include shamanism, environmental design, theories in cosmology, and strategies for political organizing.[25] Key authors include Daniel Pinchbeck, José Argüelles (organizer of the 1987 Harmonic Convergence),[26] Tom Atlee, and Charles Eisenstein.[27]
Blue Snake Books was founded in 2005 as a dedicated martial arts imprint of North Atlantic Books,[28] though the company has been publishing martial arts titles for more than 25 years.[29] Disciplines of martial arts featured include capoeira, karate, muay thai, tai chi, bagua, judo, and jujutsu.[30] Blue Snake Books authors include tai chi master Bruce Frantzis.
While Grossinger attended Amherst College and Hough at Smith College in Massachusetts, they founded North Atlantic Books' progenitor Io Magazine,[31] an alternative college literary magazine in 1964, featuring work from Robert Kelly, Charles Stein, and Nels Richardson, among others. Over the next decade, Io became a counter-cultural journal mixing literature, science, and history, as it came out of Michigan, Maine, and Vermont with issues such as "Alchemy", "Doctrine of Signatures", "Ethnoastronomy", "Oecology", "Dreams", "Earth Geography", and "The Olson-Melville Sourcebooks". Io is credited with publishing early works by Stephen King (his poem, "Brooklyn August," was featured in Io Issue #10[32]), Jayne Anne Phillips, poets Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, Ed Sanders, Diane di Prima, as well as the work of writers including David Wilk, Rob Brezsny, and Phoebe Gloeckner.
In 2009, North Atlantic books created the Io Poetry Series,[33] featuring collections from under-recognized voices in American poetry. Featured poets include Gerrit Lansing, Kenneth Irby, Lindy Hough, and Lenore Kandel.[34] [35] In 2010, Kenneth Irby's Io Poetry Series book The Intent On received the Poetry Society of America's 2010 Shelley Memorial Award.[36] In 2012, North Atlantic Books published Collected Poems of Lenore Kandel, which included several never-before-published poems by the Beat Generation writer and an introduction by poet Diane di Prima. In 2013, it released Catching Light, a collection featuring many never-before published poems by Joanna McClure and a foreword by Michael McClure.[37]