We spoke with Gabriel Cleveland, executive director and managing editor of CavanKerry Press—finalist for the 2026 Constellation Award—in our latest member spotlight.
What is the history behind CavanKerry Press? When was it founded and what is its mission?
CavanKerry Press was founded by Joan Cusack Handler in late 1999, with our first book releasing in 2000. Named for the Irish hometowns of her mother and father, the press was born out of Joan’s love for the work of her fellow writers, many of whom were going woefully unrecognized. Her dream was for a publisher that would serve as a place for diverse voices to be heard, celebrated, and published. With the goal of sharing human connection and understanding through writing, CavanKerry has prioritized supporting and creating programs that serve people and communities, especially those who have been historically overlooked and under-resourced. We consider publishing and programming as equal partners in what we do, which is represented by our logo of interlocking and equal circles.
In this spirit, our official mission statement reads as follows: “A not-for-profit literary press serving art and community, CavanKerry Press is committed to expanding the reach of poetry and other fine literature to a general readership by publishing works that explore the emotional and psychological landscapes of everyday life, and to bring that art to the underserved where they live, work and receive services.”
CavanKerry Press publishes five to six books a year through five categories. Can you tell us about these categories?
Each of our categories ultimately serve the same purpose—to share the lived experience of our authors who have so generously and expertly illuminated the texture of their lives through their writing so that others may connect to and understand more about what it means to be human. As a result, our five categories serve to help us maintain a balance of publishing authors with different focal points, experiences, and backgrounds and are as follows:
- Emerging Voices: Featuring authors who are earlier in their career and/or who have been under-published, this category seeks to identify writers whose work has not received the level of attention and publication it deserves. It includes many BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ authors as well as older authors later in life who have toiled away at the hard task of writing their experiences despite not having found a home or recognition for their efforts. In keeping with our mission, the majority of our books fall under this category.
- LaurelBooks: Another area that often seems underrepresented in the publishing world is writing by people with critical or chronic illnesses/diseases, in particular writing which offers direct, unflinching insights into their lived experiences with those conditions. This runs the gamut of subjects and diagnoses, from Acute Myeloid Leukemia to Ewing’s Sarcoma to Postpartum Depression, Schizophrenia, Infertility, Multiple Sclerosis, and everything else in between. The goal of this category is to increase understanding and destigmatize conversations around the serious physical and psychological challenges faced far too often in silence by many people.
- The Baron Wormser Notable Voices Collection: Named for the late, great, prolific poet and writer Baron Wormser, who was a “godparent” to the press, one of our earliest advocates, and our long-standing developmental editor for our books from CavanKerry’s inception through his death in late 2025, this category celebrates the established authors with many books under their belt whom we have the great privilege to work with and publish. This also represents our commitment to publish authors at any stage of their career, provided their work is a stellar representative of our publishing objectives.
- The Florenz Eisman Memorial Collection: Named in honor of our first managing editor who shepherded CavanKerry through our first thirteen years, the Florenz Eisman collection honors poets of great merit from our home state of New Jersey. As a national press, we aim to publish from all corners of the United States, but as a New Jersey press, we also hope to celebrate the rich poetic legacy that continues to this day in the Garden State.
- Memoir: This category may be a bit more self-explanatory, but I’ll just add that we’ve long felt that memoir and poetry have a great deal of overlap in terms of the depth of personal insight and revelation that they can offer their readers, and with that in mind, we periodically publish memoir/personal essay collections along with our primary genre of poetry.
CavanKerry Press is the finalist for the 2026 Constellation Award, given to honor an independent literary press that champions the writing of people of color for excellence in publishing. What does this recognition mean to you as a press?
As advancing the goal of inclusive publishing is the philosophical cornerstone of our very existence, this recognition means the world to us. It is a validation that we have continued to remain true to and build upon our long-standing mission of celebrating writers from all backgrounds, especially people of color who have historically been overlooked/under-represented by the publishing world as a whole. We hope that this recognition will open our doors even wider and signal to the full tapestry of writers that they have a home here. We will continue to identify ways to honor and further the spirit of the Constellation Award through our programming and publication in the years ahead.
What distributor is CavanKerry Press working with? How can bookstores and libraries find and order your titles?
We are proudly distributed by the University of Chicago Press, which helps us get our books in stores and libraries nationwide and throughout the world. Our books are listed with all of the major publication databases and wholesalers, as well as on our website, and can be obtained through any of these channels.
Are there any indie bookstores (or libraries) that you think do a particularly good job featuring titles from indie publishers? If so, what do they do?
I’m afraid I don’t have as comprehensive an answer here, simply because I spend most of my time reading books that have yet to be published, and as such, I don’t get to spend that much time in bookstores of any sort. That said, shout-out to BCCLS (“Bridging Communities, Connecting Library Services,” formerly known as the Bergen County Cooperative Library System), the network of seventy-eight libraries in and around our home county of Bergen, New Jersey, for the great work and robust community support they champion throughout the Northeast New Jersey region—as well as to Word Up Community Bookshop in New York City’s Washington Heights and WORD Bookstore in Jersey City, which both maintain an excellent inventory of books from a wide variety of authors on a myriad of subjects.
How can interested writers submit their work to CavanKerry Press?
Mark your calendars and prepare your manuscripts: We’ll be opening for submissions for the first time in two years for the entirety of July (2026)! We encourage prospective submitters to review our publication guidelines, our mission (as articulated above and detailed further on our website), and our previously released titles in order to have a sense of whether their writing is aligned with our publishing goals. We can’t wait to read what you’ve got!
