Nightboat Books (Publisher)

Nightboat Books is a small, nonprofit press that was founded in 2004. They have since published 280 works in a variety of categories, but they tend toward works that traditional publishers would find risky or unconventional.

Nightboat Books (Fall 2024 and Winter 2025 Catalog)

History and Mission Statement

Nightboat Books was formed in 2004 by Kazim Ali and Jennifer Chapis. Kazim Ali served as the press first publisher at the time, and Nightboat's first book published was The Lives of Spirits/Glasstown: Where Something Got Broken by Fanny Howe in 2006. In 2007 American poet Stephen Motika took over as the senior publisher, and in 2025 the company has a credited staff of fifteen editors and publishers. Nightboat Books has been based in Brooklyn, NY, since 2018, but they have previously had locations in Beacon, Cold Spring, New York, and Callicoon.

Nightboat Books strives to take risks and create audiences for unconventional materials. They host a publicly and unapologetically queer staff with a range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds, all of whom share a desire to publish works "rich with poignancy and intelligence."

The press has done well financially in more recent years, and they've increased the number of books published since.

Material

Nightboat Books has published 280 works since 2006. They publish memoirs, anthologies, poetry, essays, and some creative fiction novels. Some notable works are Kay Gabriel's Perverts, a poetry collection set in the backdrop of the anti-trans panic, and Troubling the Line, a genderqueer anthology written by TC Tolbert and Trace Peterson. They offer ebooks and paperback books for sale; the average paperback is between $16.95 to $19.95, and the average ebook is $12.95 to $14.95.

Nightboat book covers often appear hand-drawn or designed. Photography

Staff

• Kazim Ali is the founder and editor of Nightboat Books. He served as publisher from 2004-2007, and he is the author of sixteen books of poetry, fiction, essays, and cross-genre works. He also works as a translator from French, Farsi, and Spanish.
• Stephen Motika is the Director and Publisher of Nighboat books. He was part of the staff of Poets House of New York City from 2004-2017, is the author of a variety of chapbooks and poetry collections.
• Lindsey Bolt is the editorial director of Nightboat. Before working there, she was Managing Editor of The Post-Apollo Press. She is the author of Weirding (2022), There Are No Cops in America & The Streets Are Paved w/ Cheese (2020), Some Ennui (2019), <<(( ))>> (2016), and Overboard (2012).
• Emily Bark Brown is the Managing Editor of Nightboat. They co-edit Hot Pink, an online poetry magazine, and they've been published in Bennington Review, The Poetry Project Newsletter, Noir Sauna, mercury firs, and blush.
• Jaye Elizabeth Elijah is one of Nightboat's Editor-at-Large. Before holding this position they served as the Publicity and Communications Coordinator. Their works have been published in Polly Magazine and Rookie Maganize, and they were recognized in the Cincinnati Arts Overature Awards.
• Gia Gonzales is an Editor-at-Large at Nightboat Books. She is a poet from New York City, and she has been published in Bæst: a journal of queer forms and affects, Femmescapes, Bomb Cyclone, and has published various works with the Poetry Project.
• Destiny Hemphill is an Editor-at-Large. She is a 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow who lives on Saponi land in North Carolina. She is a co-editor for Poetry as Spellcasting and has received a number of fellowships from other writing organizations.
• Trisha Low is an Editor-at-Large of Nightboat books and the author of two works: The Compleat Purge (2013) and Socialist Realism (2019).
• Santiago Valencia is one of Nightboat's Editors-at-Large, having previously served as a fellow. They are a poet who often writes about Mexican culture and it's intersection with queerness, and their poetry was recognized by the Academy of American Poets.
• Naima Yael Tokunow is an Editor-at-Large for Nightboat. She is the author of three chapbooks, one of which (Shadow Black) won the Frontier Digital Chapbook prize in 2020. She focuses on Black femme identity, kinship, and futurity in her work.
• Terrance Hudson is an Editorial Fellow at Nightboat. Their work focuses heavily on queerness, Blackness, chronic illness, and the "social power of memory work and the archive." Their writing has been published in collections such as the Bloodletter magazine.

Jennifer Chapis, who co-founded the press, moved on to create her own light healing business and is no longer associated with the organization, though she does mention it on her website's biography.

Name

The name Nightboat is meant to signify passage through the unknown. It might be a reference to the boat of Charon, the ferryman of the undead in Greek mythology. The organization's official website says that "The name Nightboat signifies travel, passage, and possibility—of mind and body, and of language."

Recent Events

in 2013 Nightboat Books published Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics by TC Tolbert and Trace Peterson, which was a finalist for the 2014 Lambda Literary Award in LGBT anthologies. More recently, in 2025 one of Nightboat's authors and a contributor of The Brooklyn Rail, an arts and culture news site, Cole Swenson, participated in an event called Publishing in Transit: World Poetry. Swenson was joined by Matvei Yankelevich, James Loop, Katie Long, and Alice Yang, all poets and publishers who contributed their opinions and insights on the topic.

Sources

Andrea Suozzo, Alec Glassford. “Nightboat Books Inc - Nonprofit Explorer.” ProPublica, ProPublica, 9 May 2013, projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/201137701.

“The Brooklyn Rail.” Publishing-in-Transit: World Poetry, 26 Feb. 2025, brooklynrail.org/event/2025/02/26/publishing-in-transit-world-poetry/.

“Nightboat Books.” Nightboat.Org, nightboat.org/. Accessed 16 Oct. 2025.

“Nightboat Books.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 6 Mar. 2025, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightboat_Books.

“Staff & Board – Nightboat Books.” Nightboat Books, nightboat.org/about/staff/. Accessed 16 Oct. 2025.