Granary Books is an independent small press and rare books and archives dealer based in New York City. Owned and directed by Steve Clay, Granary has published hundreds of books that "produce, promote, document, and theorize new works exploring the intersection of word, image, and page." As a rare books and archives dealer, Granary Books also assists in the placement and preservation of authors' and artists' archives. In addition to these activities, Granary Books administers projects such as "From a Secret Location," a digital repository of materials related to the small press and mimeograph revolutions from the 1960s to 1980s. Its trade books are distributed by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers and Small Press Distribution.
The poet and translator Jerome Rothenberg writes of Granary Books: "In the true history of American poetry...Granary Books, as a press & resource, is exemplary of how poets & related artists in the post-World War Two era were able to establish shadow institutions that operated, nearly successfully, outside the frame of any & all self-proclaimed poetic mainstreams." Kyle Schlesinger writes, "It is difficult to imagine that any syllabus (or practitioner’s bookshelf for that matter) about the artists’ book could be complete without at least one title from Granary"
Granary Books' works have been the subject of over 10 exhibitions, including most recently Participating Witness: The Poetics of Granary Books at Poets House, New York City, in 2020.
History
Granary Books began in 1985 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as Origin Books—the name under which Clay published his first project, Noah Webster to Wee Lorine Niedecker by Jonathan Williams. A series of other small poem-cards and broadsides followed during the 1980s, as well as books by Jane Wodening, Jonathan Williams, R. B. Kitaj, and Paul Metcalf. By 1988, Granary Books moved to Manhattan on 636 Broadway, where Steve Clay and David Abel ran a gallery and bookstore on the tenth floor.
Clay says that publishing "became more self-conscious as a project" and "serious in its ambition" in 1991 with the publication of Nods, with text by John Cage and drawings by Barbara Farhner. In this spirit, Many of Granary Books' limited-edition publications continue to be collaborations or pairings between poets/writers and visual artists. Many also contain unique elements, such as handpainting; Susan Bee describes this creative process for her book, Talespin (Granary Books, 1995). These limited-edition publications are held in special collections and archives internationally, and explore the relationship between "image and the word and tactile comprehension," in collaboration with artists, poets, bookbinders, printers, and designers.
Publishing
The author, book artist, visual theorist, and cultural critic Johanna Drucker described Granary Books' publishing aesthetic as "late twentieth-century fine press meets literary experiment and innovative arts." Steve Clay says that he began publishing as a result of his interest in "the ways in which writing was distributed on the margins, the kind of sociology of book distribution among small presses, and the poets who were producing work that was primarily published in small presses," along with his interest in booksellers such as Phoenix Book Shop, the Eighth Street Book Shop, Asphodel, Serendipity, Sand Dollar, Gotham and City Lights.
Starting in the mid-nineties Granary Books began publishing books that contextualize scholarship in the history of small press publishing, poetry, and artists' books. The first Granary Books trade edition was Johanna Drucker's The Century of Artists' Books, followed by Jerome Rothenberg and David M. Guss's The Book, Spiritual Instrument. Other trade books include Jerome Rothenberg and Steve Clay's A Book of the Book: Some Works & Projections About the Book & Writing, Betty Bright's No Longer Innocent: Book Art in America 1960–1980, and Stefan Klima's Artists Books: A Critical Survey of the Literature. Steve Clay and Rodney Phillips's A Secret Location on the Lower East Side resulted from an exhibition at The New York Public Library by the same name, and is considered "not only significant in its refusal to lose the evidence of the period it covers (1960-80), but for showing that entering the evidence into the public record is a means of shaping the discourse about the critical context of the period."
Granary Books also published out-of-print works for wider distribution, such as Joe Brainard's I Remember, originally published by Angel Hair Books, as well as trade poetry books by poets including Alice Notley, Ed Sanders, Larry Fagin, and numerous others.