Roof Books, an imprint of the non-profit Segue Foundation, publishes experimental, innovative, and avant garde poetry and criticism since 1976. View our catalog in reverse chronological order on the Small Press Distribution website here.
Roof Books was founded by James Sherry as an extension of Roof magazine (10 issues, 1976-79). Roof Books currently publishes six titles annually, representing the leading contemporary voices in experimental poetry and poetics. The groups that Roof Books has focused on include the New York School, Language poetry, Flarf, Conceptual writing, New Narrative, and environmental and ecopoetry, as well as related tendencies.
Regarding the early days of the press, Sherry told the American Book Review, “To characterize the work, I have to describe the methods used to build work. Group meetings of language poets included give and take, collaboration, conversation, shared booklists, group talks and collective editing along with the usual possessive strategies. There was initially no workshop, no institution, and even, ironically in retrospect, resistance to institutional poetry.” Since then, many Roof authors have become literary celebrities, influential teachers, and anthologized award winners.
Our inaugural titles were Controlling Interests by Charles Bernstein and Little Books/Indians by Hannah Weiner. Notable titles from our early years include A Day at the Beach by Bob Grenier; Local History by Erica Hunt; You—the City by Fiona Templeton; Representative Works by Jackson Mac Low; Objects in the Terrifying Tense by Leslie Scalapino; North of Intention by Steve McCaffery; and Red Shift by Peter Inman.
Other bestselling and culturally significant titles from our catalog include The New Sentence by Ron Silliman; Politics and Poetic Form edited by Charles Bernstein; Lyric Sexology by Trish Salah; Top 40 by Brandon Brown; The Combustion Cycle by Will Alexander; Snowball’s Chance by John Reed; Urban Poetry from China edited by Huang Fan, Daniel Tay, and James Sherry; Folly by Nada Gordon; Against Professional Secrets by Cesar Vallejo; Styrofoam by Evelyn Reilly; Making Dying Illegal by Arakawa and Madeline Gins; Yes Thing, No Thing by Edwin Torres; Cheerleader's Guide to the World by Stacy Doris; and Public Domain by Mónica de la Torre.
Roof Books has published over 200 titles and will continue to bring to print diverse and innovative work that has characterized our catalog across nearly fifty years.
Roof Books are edited by James Sherry, with occasional guests and Lonely Christopher joining the editorial staff in 2022. We operate from our office on the Bowery in downtown New York City. Our titles are distributed by Small Press Distribution. Many titles are also available to purchase as an ebook. We encourage our readers to order our titles directly from the distributor or through your local bookseller. Roof Books does not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Learn more about our parent organization the Segue Foundation here.
Staff
Founder, Editor-in-Chief: James Sherry
Publisher, Designer: Deborah Thomas
Editor: Lonely Christopher
Associate Editor: Caleb Beckwith
Assistant Editor: Cecilia Stelzer
Designers: Kate Robinson, Holly Melgard
Website Administrator: Marc Nasdor
Roof Books
300 Bowery #2
New York, NY 10012