FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MELVILLE HOUSE CO-PUBLISHERS DENNIS LOY JOHNSON AND VALERIE MERIANS ARE NAMED 2007 MIRIAM BASS AWARD WINNERS

Washington, D.C., February 12, 2007 – The Association of American Publishers (AAP) announced today that Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians, Co-Publishers of Melville House Publishing (based in Hoboken, New Jersey),  are the recipients of this year’s Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing.  The award will be presented in New York on March 7, during AAP’s Annual Meeting for Small and Independent Publishers.

Created in memory of Miriam Bass to honor her many contributions to the book publishing community, the award carries a $5,000 cash prize given by AAP co-sponsors Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, and National Book Network (NBN).

A judging committee representing a cross-section of the publishing industry selected Mr. Johnson and Ms. Merians, in recognition of their tireless devotion to their calling and their visionary strategic innovations that have made Melville House, within five years of its founding, one of the industry’s  most successful independent publishers. Recent successes include the best-selling Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog released in November 2006; Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush, authored by the Center for Constitutional Rights and released last February; What We Do Now, released a mere month after the 2004 Presidential Elections; Torture Taxi, the first book on the CIA’s secret rendition program; and the highly publicized Who Killed Daniel Pearl?, the first book to report on the secret trading of nuclear weapons technology by the government of Pakistan.

Melville House has also become known for publishing widely respected literary fiction from leading American writers such as Stephen Dixon, critically acclaimed newcomers such as Tao Lin, and international writers such as French bestseller Justine Lévy and Iranian writer Mahmoud Dowlatabadi. Other well-known writers published by the company include Lewis Lapham, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Mark Danner, Renata Adler, French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, Randall Kenan, and Edith Wharton. Melville House was founded in 2002 by Johnson and Merians and made its first big splash with the publication of Poetry after 9/11, which received wide praise and led to the pair being featured in interviews on NPR and CNN, in a New York Times profile, and elsewhere.

On learning they were this year’s award winners, Dennis Loy Johnson said that “Valerie and I honestly believe that books are more important than ever, and we’re deeply flattered to be chosen to represent, even if only momentarily, the kind of brave and singular publishing that Miriam Bass championed.”

Jed Lyons, President and CEO of Rowman & Littlefield/National Book Network, Inc. (NBN) adds, “Miriam Bass’ philosophy was all about creativity. I have no doubt she would be thrilled Dennis and Valerie have been acknowledged, and in her name, for their excellence in literary art, in a business that continues to expand its creative bounds by the ongoing exploration of creativity both in content, as well as process.”

Paying tribute to this year’s winners, Richard Nash of Soft Skull Press, who won the award last year, called Melville House “the Big Hit Story.”  Nash said that  “Dennis and Valerie have had more success with Charlie Rose than any indie I can think of, and they’ve only been around for five years!”  In an industry where bloggers often turn into authors, Melville House’s Johnson, who ran what has been called by the New York Times and others the first book blog, mobylives.com,  made the unique transformation from blogger to publisher.   Melville House and its titles have also been featured in The New York Times Book Review, Vanity Fair, Harper’s, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, 60 Minutes, The Atlantic Monthly, Bill Moyers, and The Boston Globe, to name a few.

This year’s judging committee was composed of representatives from Ingram Book Company, Publishers Weekly, Barnes & Noble, and Borders Book Group Inc.

The Association of American Publishers is the national trade association of the U.S. book publishing industry. AAP’s more than 300 members include most of the major commercial publishers in the United States, as well as smaller and non-profit publishers, university presses and scholarly societies—small and large.