Parlor Press LLC is an independent publisher and distributor of scholarly and trade books in high quality print and digital formats. It was founded in 2002 to address the need for an alternative scholarly, academic press attentive to emergent ideas and forms while maintaining the highest possible standards of quality, credibility, and integrity. The Press's primary goal is to publish outstanding writing and scholarship in a variety of subjects for a broad range of readers. We value excellence, innovation, accessibility, creativity, and wit. We support the rhetorics of marginalized voices and groups consistently and equitably.

Read a detailed report about Parlor Press's history, books, series, authors, distribution, and impact: "Who We Are, Where We’ve Been, Where We’re Going" (PDF)

The Press is managed by scholars and specialists in their respective fields, presently covering twenty book series, from initial peer review through production, distribution, and marketing. There are presently over 700 Parlor Press authors and another 75 developing new book projects. Parlor Press books have won numerous national awards as the best books in their respective fields. We have plans underway for growth into film production and distribution, journal and magazine publishing, graphic storytelling, art curation, and other areas of production enabled by emergent digital printing, publishing, and dissemination technologies.

Ann Kathrin Bopp

Subject Areas

Parlor Press benefits from sharp reviewers across the disciplines who have been chosen because of their expertise, experience, and willingness to consider innovative work in these representative areas (in alphabetical order):

• antiracist rhetorics
• art history
• artificial intelligence
• communication
• complexity theory
• composition
• cross-cultural rhetorics
• cultural studies
• digital culture
• feminist criticism and theory
• film theory
• global rhetorics
• histories of rhetoric
• humanism
• Internet studies
• literacy
• literary theory
• literary studies
• multimedia
• pedagogy
• philosophy
• poetry (Free Verse Editions)
• postmodernism
• public writing
• rhetoric
• technical writing
• technology
• visual rhetoric
• public writing and rhetorics

Current Series

We consider new work well suited to one of our current series:

Best of the Journals in Rhetoric and Composition
Edited by Steve Parks, Jessica Pauszek, Kristi Girdharry, and Charles Lesh

Comics and Graphic Narratives
Edited by Sergio Figueiredo, Jason Helms, and Anastasia Salter

Critical Conversations in Higher Education Leadership
Edited by Victor E. Taylor

Electracy and Transmedia Studies
Edited by Jan Rune Holmevik and Cynthia Haynes

Emerging Conversations in the Global Humanities
Edited by Victor E. Taylor

Free Verse Editions
Edited by Jon Thompson

Illuminations: A Series on American Poetics
Edited by Jon Thompson

Inkshed: Writing Studies in Canada
Edited by Roger Graves and Heather Graves

Lauer Series in Rhetoric and Composition
Edited by Thomas Rickert and Jennifer Bay

New Media Theory
Edited by Byron Hawk

Reference Guides to Rhetoric and Composition
WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press, edited by Charles Bazerman, Anis Bawarshi, and Mary Jo Reiff

Renaissance and Medieval Studies
Edited by Charles Ross

Second Language Writing
Edited by Paul Kei Matsuda

Studies in Rhetorics and Feminisms
Edited by Jessica Enoch and Sharon Yam

Visual Rhetoric
Edited by David Blakesley

Working and Writing for Change
Edited by Steve Parks and Jessica Pauszek

Writing Program Administration
Edited by Chris Carter and Laura Micciche

Writing Spaces 
Edited by Dana Driscoll, Matthew Vetter, and Mary Stewart

The X-Series
Edited by Jordan Frith

Nelson Santos Jr

Journal Publishing and Services

Parlor Press fosters scholarly research with production, subscription, distribution, and archival support for a growing number of professional organizations and journals, a majority of which are open access. They include the following:

• Community Literacy Journal
• Composition Studies
• JAEPL: The Journal for the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning
• KB Journal: The Journal of the Kenneth Burke Society
• Pre/Text
• WPA: Writing Program Administration
• WAC Journal
• The Writing Instructor

For inquiries about Parlor Press journal services and benefits, email editor@parlorpress.com.

Conference Volumes and Proceedings

Parlor press currently publishes the conference volumes of the Rhetoric Society of America, available here:

• A Charge for Change: A Selection of Essays from the 20th Biennial Conference of the Rhetoric Society of America (2023) edited by Elizabethada A. Wright and David Beard
• Reinventing Rhetoric Scholarship: Fifty Years of the Rhetoric Society of America (2020) edited by Roxanne Mountford, Dave Tell, and David Blakesley
• Rhetorics Change / Rhetoric's Change (2017) edited by Jenny Rice, Chelsea Graham, and Eric Detweiler
• Rhetoric Across Borders (2015) edited by Anne Teresa Demo

Reprint Opportunities

One goal of Parlor Press is to republish in new editions or formats previously published work that has proven (unquestionably) to be a valuable resource for readers, writers, teachers, and scholars. Authors whose works have gone out of print and who retain the copyright to the work should contact the editor Such works may be candidates for republication, subject to further review and/or revision. In some cases, a reasonable subvention may be required.

Open Access Publishing

Parlor Press has been a leader in publishing open access titles since 2005. Some are published collaboratively with the WAC Clearinghouse. Others are Parlor Press exclusive titles. To find them, view our Open Access Books.

Discontinued Series

Aesthetic Critical Inquiry
Edited by Andrea Feeser

Glassbead Books
Edited by John Holbo

Lenses on Composition Studies
Edited by Sheryl Fontaine and Steve Westbrook

Perspectives on Writing
Parlor Press and the WAC Clearinghouse, edited by Susan McLeod and Rich Rice

Prospects in Visual Rhetoric
Edited by Marguerite Helmers

Writing Travel
Edited by Jeanne Moskal

How the Pandemic Affected Publishing

How The Publishing World Is Staying Afloat During The Pandemic Academic Publishing. (HuffPost, 5/21/2020)

Academic Publishing

If you would like to read more about the publishing scene to which Parlor Press responded originally, you might find these articles worth reading:

• Digital Publishing Is Scrambling the Industry's Rules NY Times (6/5/06)
• "Presses Seek Fiscal Relief in Subsidies for Authors." Chronicle of Higher Ed. (8/13/04)
• Modern Language Association President Stephen Greenblatt's widely read letter, "Call for Action on Problems in Scholarly Book Publishing" (2002) and MLA's The Future of Scholarly Publishing (2002)
• "University Presses Suffer Bleak Financial Year" (Chronicle of Higher Education; 2002; subscription required).
• Sad Chapter for University Presses (Christian Science Monitor; 1 April 2004)

The Publisher

The founder and publisher of Parlor Press is David Blakesley, who is also the Campbell Chair in Technical Communication and Professor of Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design at Clemson University. He is a Fellow of the Rhetoric Society of America. His work as an editor and publisher includes The Writing Instructor, the Rhetorical Philosophy and Theory series (Southern Illinois University Press; series editor and founder), WPA: Writing Program Administration (production editor), KB Journal: the Journal of the Kenneth Burke Society, and Pacific Review (managing editor). He has authored or edited ten books, including The Elements of Dramatism (2002; Longman), The Terministic Screen: Rhetorical Perspectives on Film (2003; Southern Illinois University Press; editor), Late Poems, 1968-1993 (2007; by Kenneth Burke; edited with Julie Whitaker), and Writing: A Manual for the Digital Age (2008, 2009; 2012; with Jeff Hoogeveen). His other research includes articles and hypertexts on writing, visual rhetoric, film, technology, and Kenneth Burke.