New Vessel Press is an independent publishing house based in New York City and specializing in fiction and narrative nonfiction in translation.

Since we began publishing in 2013, New Vessel Press books have won the National Book Award and the National Translation Prize, as well as accolades in publications from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to The New Yorker and O, The Oprah Magazine.

In bringing books from other countries to English-speaking readers, we offer captivating, thought-provoking works with beautifully-designed covers and high production values. We scour the globe looking for the best stories, knowing that only a fraction of the books published in the United States each year are translations. That leaves a lot of great literature still to be discovered.

At New Vessel Press, we believe that knowledge of a multitude of cultures and literatures enriches our lives by offering passageways to understand and embrace the world. We also regard literary translation as both craft and art, enabling us to traverse borders and open minds. We are committed to books that offer erudition and enjoyment, that stimulate and scintillate, that transform and transport.

And of course, what matters most is not where the authors hail from, or what language they write in. The most important thing is the quality of the work itself. And hence our name. We publish great books, just in a new vessel. We look forward to bringing the world’s great literature to ever more readers.


Founders

Ross Ufberg is a writer, translator, and PhD Candidate at Columbia University. His own love for literature and his frustration at the dearth of translations into English inspired him to get involved in fixing the problem. He has translated several books, including The Good Life Elsewhere by Vladimir Lorchenkov, along with poetry and short stories. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and The Forward.

Michael Z. Wise has worked as a foreign correspondent in Vienna, Prague, and London, reporting for Reuters and The Washington Post. He is the author of Capital Dilemma: Germany’s Search for a New Architecture of Democracy. His writing has appeared in many publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, The New RepublicTravel + Leisure, and ARTnews.

 

Designers

Rita Skingle is a New York City-based designer and illustrator. She has designed books for many publishers and institutions, including exhibition catalogs for The Morgan Library, National Academy of Design, and The Thomas Cole National Historic Site.

Liana Finck studied fine art at Cooper Union College and received a Fulbright Fellowship in 2009. Her graphic novel based on the Bintel Brief, a beloved Yiddish advice column published in The Forward newspaper in 1906, has been published by Ecco Press. Her cartoons frequently appear in The New Yorker.

Beth Steidle is a writer, illustrator, and book designer living in Brooklyn. Her work has been featured in Fairy Tale Review, DIAGRAM, Drunken Boat, and other publications. Her first book, The Static Herd, was published by Calamari Press in 2014. She has received a Pushcart Prize nomination and a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts.