Welcome to Mandel Vilar Press
"MVP will be devoted to publishing the numerous great writers overlooked by corporate publishers and with no doubt will live up to Franz Kafka’s mandate that 'A book must be the axe of the frozen sea within us.'"
ROBERT A. MANDEL
Co-Founder
"MVP will help open up our cultural borders and will play a vital role in maintaining a healthy and vibrant democracy and cultural literacy. Less than 1% of US readers read in translation. In contrast, in some European countries such as France and Germany the figure is closer to 30%. There is much to ponder about the health of a nation when its peoples don’t read across cultures. This ignorance breeds bigotry and prejudice. It is clear that publishing translations is one urgent mandate for the making of an empathic, global citizen. This is why the launch of MVPress is so momentous."
IRENE VILAR
Co-Founder
INCLUSIVE DIVERSITY
MVP serves as a conduit of multicultural exchange and a crucial channel for majoritizing minority literature and peoples.
CULTURAL LITERACY
MVP is one of only a handful of publishers dedicated to connecting the literature of the Americas.
DEMOCRACY
MVP brings underrepresented literatures and a much needed diversity to a larger English speaking readership!
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Dear Colleagues, Friends, Authors, Jewish Writers, Scholars, Bookstores, and Librarians
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2024 is my forty-sixth year as a book editor and publisher. Throughout my career I have helped publish over 400 books of Jewish writers of fiction and nonfiction—both scholarly and trade books. From 1979 to 2024, I was successively the Senior Editor at SUNY Press, Assistant Director at Indiana University Press, Director of Wayne State University Press, Director of Syracuse University Press, Director of University of Wisconsin Press, Director of University of Alaska Press and Director of Texas Tech University Press. Throughout my career, I have published many Jewish writers and launched numerous special fiction and nonfiction Jewish book series in the areas of literature, history, politics, religion, philosophy, Holocaust, Israel, Folklore, anthropology, among other relevant subject. Areas. In 2013, I retired from university press publishing and moved to Simsbury, Connecticut. Encouraged by many former Jewish authors, in 2014 I launched a nonprofit literary trade publishing house, Mandel Vilar Press, (www.mvpublishers.org) and became the publishing arm of the nonprofit charity, Americas for Conservation + the Arts, (www.americasforconservation.org).
With Mandel Vilar Press (MVP) I have continued my efforts publishing important Jewish fiction and nonfiction. In 2016 MVP co-published several books with another fine literary press, Dryad Press. including Blume Lempel’s Oedipus in Brooklyn and Other Stories (awarded The Fenia and Yaakov Leviant Prize sponsored by the MLA for the best published Yiddish translation) and, starting in 2019, MVP launched a new Jewish trade book imprint, MomentBooks, an exciting joint publishing venture with Moment Magazine— with two books on the Holocaust by and about Elie Wiesel and Theodore Bikel. In 2022, Fig Tree Books LLC - publishing the best literature of the American Jewish experience - joined MVP to become a new imprint under the same name with Fredric Price, the former publisher now serving as the Editor-in-Chief of MVP’s latest new book imprint. In September 2024, MVP will publish the first book in this new imprint: It Takes Two to Torah: An Orthodox Rabbi and Reform Journalist Discuss and Debate Their Way Through the Five Books of Moses, by Abigail Pogrebin and Rabbi Dov Linzer.
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MVP launched its new website and shopping cart at www.mvpublishers.org, so please visit and learn about our mission and vision for the future, about book events, our authors biographies, interviews, readers guides, reviews and awards, special sales, the new shopping cart, and our fundraising efforts to support our nonprofit press. Purchase books on our shopping cart and receive free shipping anywhere in the USA. Below I am pleased to present a special 2024 catalogue of our Holocaust fiction and nonfiction!
Sincerely,
Robert Mandel, PhD
Publisher, Mandel Vilar Press