WVU Press Staff
We are a small but dedicated professional staff. The West Virginia University Press provides a complete range of publishing services—copyediting, design, production supervision, advertising, publicity, sales, and marketing. We do not publish The Daily Athenaeum and are not involved with production of any WVU magazines, catalogs, or course packets.
Decisions about what to publish are made on the basis of several factors: quality, originality, and importance of the scholarship; fit with our list; evaluations by experts in the field; potential contribution to the author’s discipline and academic discourse generally; and, in the case of regional books, service to the people of the state of West Virginia.
WVU Press is editorially independent. A faculty advisory board reviews and votes on all proposed book projects, evaluating the quality and importance of both scholarly content and solicited peer reviews. Board approval is required before any book may be published.
General Inquiries
nkhomer@mail.wvu.edu
Than Saffel
Interim Director / Art and Production Manager
Email: than.saffel@mail.wvu.edu
Email: press_director@mail.wvu.edu
Marguerite Avery
Editorial Director
Email: marguerite.avery@mail.wvu.edu
Email: submissions@wvupress.com
Kristen Bettcher
Managing Editor
Email: kristen.bettcher@mail.wvu.edu
Email: managing_editor@mail.wvu.edu
Natalie Homer
Operations Manager
Email: nkhomer@mail.wvu.edu
AAUP Membership
West Virginia University Press was accepted as a member of the Association of American University Presses in 2002.
The AAUP is an organization made up of select non-profit scholarly publishers that is dedicated to the support of creative and effective scholarly communication. Through professional development opportunities, cooperative programs, and information resources the AAUP helps its members fulfill their common commitments to scholarship, the academy, and society. Now, perhaps more than ever before, university presses contribute to the variety and diversity of cultural expression at a time of global mergers and consolidation in the media industry.
Visit the AAUP website.
WVU Press Mission Statement
A university press is an extension of its parent institution, charged with serving the public good by publishing works of scholarly, intellectual, and creative merit. West Virginia University Press’s primary goal is to find, develop, select, and publish scholarship and creative works of highest quality and enduring value. Through the publication of all such works, WVU Press helps to fulfill West Virginia University’s land-grant mission.
A Brief History
West Virginia University Press was founded in the mid-1960s by Dean of Libraries Dr. Robert Munn. In these early years, WVU Press was successful publishing a small group of important bibliographies and histories of the coal industry.
In 1999, the Press was relocated to within the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, and Dr. Patrick Conner accepted the challenge of directing the Press. Dr. Conner, along with others, was determined to both reinvigorate the Press and establish it among the foremost university presses in the country. In 2008, Carrie Mullen was hired as the director, where she led the Press according to its mission.
In 2014, Derek Krissoff, previously editor in chief at the University of Nebraska Press, began his tenure as director, which ended in 2023.
Fields of Publication
Appalachian Studies
Art
Creative Nonfiction
Energy and Environment
Fiction
Geography
Higher Education
History
Medieval Studies
Music
Natural History
Race
Sociology
Sports
West Virginia
Series
Borderless
Central Appalachian Natural History
Energy and Society
Gender, Feminism, and Geography
Histories of Capitalism and the Environment
In Place
Radical Natures
Regenerations
Rural Studies
Salvaging the Anthropocene
Sounding Appalachia
Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
West Virginia and Appalachia
West Virginia Classics