Dalkey Archive Finds a New Home

The Dalkey Archive Press is saying goodbye to Illinois State University, its home since 1992, and relocating to the University of Rochester. There, the publisher will continue to print world literature in translation, making more widely available the work of authors including Tadeusz Konwicki, Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Shiva Rahbaran. From The Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/1/2006:

In its new home, Dalkey Archive will continue to publish 24 to 30 books a year as well as the Review of Contemporary Fiction and the literary journal CONTEXT

John O'Brien, Dalkey Archive's director, told the Chronicle that the Press has been talking to University administrators about establishing a national center for translation at Rochester. Considering the fine reputation that the Press has earned since its founding in 1984, and the breadth and intelligence of its perpetually-available catalogue, O'Brien's ambition has a credible future. The Dalkey plan, however, would not be to found the first-ever such center. The National Translation Center at the University of Texas Austin was an impressively effective institution during its lifetime. Its journal, Delos, was edited by a who's-who list including Arrowsmith, Auden, Botsford, and Shattuck, led by the estimable D.S. Carne-Ross. (How so many of these were relocated ensemble to Boston University is surely an interesting story.)

Dalkey Archive has managed to be commercially feasible and academically respectable; let us hope its future program can combine engagement with world culture, scholarly rigor, and stylistic nuance, as did its predecessor.