Since its inception, more than twenty years ago, Bold Type Books has aimed to challenge power through narrative. That mission is at the heart of every book we put into the world: works of urgent and ambitious journalism, deeply researched creative nonfiction, revelatory cultural analysis and social history, and memoir that inhabits the intersection of the personal and the political.
As Bold Type barrels into the future, we remain committed to deconstructing systemic injustice, moving readers to question the status quo, and to a constant exploration and expansion of how literature might accomplish these goals. Extraordinary uses of language challenge power. Narratives that are nonlinear, non-redemptive, and otherwise distinct in form challenge power. The ways in which we edit and produce books, in an industry that is constantly pressing authors into the same shapes, challenge power. Our writers complicate dangerous and reductive myths that have been positioned as foundational to American and other cultures. They also name the unnamed, telling stories that were previously missing from our collective histories or deliberately removed from the archive.
The product of a dynamic partnership between the journalism nonprofit Type Media Center and Hachette Book Group, Bold Type has published bestselling books by a diverse range of essayists, activists, journalists, groundbreaking academics, and other thought leaders, with a particular focus on emerging and historically excluded writers.
Many of our titles have won significant awards—including the National Book Award, the Kirkus Prize, and Lambda Literary Awards— and led the conversation on such subjects as the nature of protest, the meaning of work, the climate crisis, gentrification, white supremacy, American masculinity, maternal health, and prison abolition. Every single book is rigorously fact-checked, a rarity in publishing and a necessity especially in this current cultural moment.
Our new Bold Type Fellowship is awarded annually to a writer at work on a book, to be published by Bold Type, in which innovative, beautiful writing and the boldest kind of cultural questioning reinforce each other—and strive together toward change. The year-long fellowship comes with focused editorial guidance and a $40,000 stipend, which are intended to provide the recipient with the necessary space and support to research, report, write, and place work related to a trailblazing book project.