About LSU Press

Founded in 1935, the Louisiana State University Press is a nonprofit book publisher dedicated to the publication of scholarly, general interest, and regional books. As an integral part of LSU, the Press shares the university’s goal of the dissemination of knowledge and culture. LSU Press is one of the oldest and largest university presses in the South and among the outstanding publishers of scholarly books in country. It holds membership in the Association of American University Presses, the largest organization of scholarly publishers in the world.

Over the decades, LSU Press has grown steadily and currently publishes approximately eighty new books each year as well as a backlist of some 1,000 titles. Noted internationally for its books, the Press’s primary areas of focus include southern history, biography, and literature; the Civil War and World War II; poetry; political philosophy and political communications; music studies, particularly jazz; geography and environmental studies; and illustrated books about the Gulf South region. The Press is perhaps most widely recognized as the original publisher of John Kennedy Toole’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Confederacy of Dunces. In the mid-nineties it launched the acclaimed paperback fiction reprint series Voices of the South and in 2005, after a hiatus of about a decade, resumed publishing original fiction under the new series Yellow Shoe Fiction, edited by Michael Griffith.

LSU Press is the only university press to have won a Pulitzer Prize in both fiction and poetry. Through the years, its books have earned many prestigious honors, including a total of four Pulitzer Prizes, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Booker Prize, the American Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Bancroft Prize, the Lincoln Prize, the Lamont Poetry Selection by the Academy of American Poets, and numerous others. Prizes are regularly bestowed on LSU Press authors for the excellence of their general body of work, from such notable institutions as the Folger Shakespeare Library, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Poetry Foundation, and the Cleveland Foundation. site. All books that the Press publishes must undergo a rigorous approval process that includes assessment by outside experts in the book’s field and a favorable recommendation by the University Press Committee, which is composed of LSU faculty.

There are two publishing seasons at LSU Press, fall and spring. Each season’s books are announced in a printed catalog and on the LSU Press Web site. A complete list of in-print titles is available for browsing on the Web site.

The LSU Press offices are located at 3990 W. Lakeshore Drive, on sorority row on the LSU campus. Books are not available for direct purchase at the offices, but prepaid mail orders are accepted via phone, fax, e-mail, or U.S. mail. Visitors are welcome to drop by the Press reception area and pick up a catalog between the hours of 8 am and 4:30 pm, Monday through Friday.

At the Lakeshore offices, a staff of approximately thirty-five go about the business of book publishing under the leadership of MaryKatherine Callaway, the sixth director in the Press’s history. Editorial, design, marketing, sales, business, and administrative functions are carried out year round. The typesetting, printing, and binding of books are done offsite by outside contractors. Finished books are stored at Longleaf Services, Inc., in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

As an academic unit of the University, LSU Press does receive some state funding. However, the Press is 90 percent self-supporting with revenue derived from book sales, subsidiary rights, licenses, grants, and contributions from private individuals.

To become a supporter of LSU Press, individuals may contact MaryKatherine Callaway at LSU Press, 3990 West Lakeshore Drive, Baton Rouge, LA 70808.