Melville House Publishing
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| Founded | 2001 |
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| Founder | Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | Brooklyn, New York |
| Distribution | Random House Publisher Services |
| Publication types | Books |
| Imprints | Stop Smiling |
| Official website | www |
Melville House Publishing is an independent publisher of literary fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. The company was founded in 2001 by the husband and wife team of Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians in Hoboken, New Jersey, a location Johnson jokingly called "the Left Bank" of New York City. In 2007, they were named by the Association of American Publishers as the winner of the 2007 Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing, popularly known as the "indie publisher of the year" award.
Neither Johnson nor Merians had a background in publishing. Johnson was a short story writer who had won numerous awards including a Pushcart Prize, but had never published a book; he was probably best known for founding one of the earliest book blogs, MobyLives.com. Merians was a sculptor who showed her work at several New York galleries, including the Margaret Thatcher Gallery in Chelsea, and the Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn, and although she studied poetry at the Iowa Writers Workshop, her work, too, had never been collected in a book. In an early interview, Merians told The New York Times that the company was formed as an impromptu reaction to the political climate of the moment that she thought would amount to no more than "an out-of-the-back-of-the-car kind of thing."
In 2008 Melville House moved to DUMBO, Brooklyn, to a location that combines a glass-wall bookstore with their offices, which are behind revolving bookshelves. The opening was on January 19, 2008.
Melville House has attracted well-known authors from larger establishment presses. In late 2007, Johnson announced the company had signed Nobel Prize-winner Imre Kertész from his long-time publisher, Knopf, with a three book deal. Soon after, he announced Paul Berman had left Norton to publish with Melville House.
The company is known for books of leftist political reportage, titles in translation, and avant-garde fiction. Noted books include the 2003 bestseller Who Killed Daniel Pearl?, by Bernard-Henri Lévy, the first book to disclose the illegal trading of nuclear technology by U.S. ally Pakistan; and Torture Taxi, by Trevor Paglen and A.C. Thompson, the first book on the CIA's rendition program.
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