After 22 years, Carcanet Press has left its headquarters on Cross Street, central Manchester, and taken up residence at The University of Manchester Main Library on Oxford Road.

Carcanet has enjoyed a relationship of many decades with the University, beginning in 1971 when Michael Schmidt took up an academic post and was given an office in the Library basement. Then, on the advice of Philip Larkin, the press’s archive was acquired by The John Rylands Library. Since then there have been work experience placements for University of Manchester students, including a current year-long internship programme, and collaborative summer short courses on writing. For two decades the press has co-hosted events with the University’s Centre for New Writing, and an annual Rylands Reading.

Professor Christopher Pressler, University Librarian and Director of The John Rylands Library said: ‘I am delighted that Carcanet staff are now working alongside Library colleagues in Main Library. The Library has a deep and long standing relationship with Carcanet and we have undertaken many projects together which have benefited students, researchers and of course both of our organisations. The move will bring further opportunities to develop this unique partnership.’

Michael Schmidt, founder and MD of Carcanet Press, said: ‘This is like coming home to roost. It’s the natural habitat for Carcanet and has been since 1972. It’s a lovely nesting place, and I’m glad we are elevated out of the basement for this return, warm and dry though the basement was. Chris Pressler may already be, or is on his way to becoming, a saint.’

John McAuliffe, Associate Publisher at Carcanet Press and Director of Creative Manchester said: ‘Creative Manchester has developed a strong relationship with Carcanet in recent years, which includes teaching on our BA and MA Creative Writing Programme, partnership activity with other organisations including the UNESCO City of Literature, and a year-long placement at the press's excellent Communications and Marketing Department. We are delighted that the Library will be the press's new home, strengthening our existing links and offering further opportunities to work with both the press and its era-defining archives.’

The Cross Street office was catty-corner from Mr Gaskell's Unitarian Chapel and St Anne's Church graveyard where Thomas de Quincey's forebears are buried, and the church in whose font de Quincey was himself christened. The publisher now works a few blocks from Elizabeth Gaskell’s House, close to the blue plaque commemorating another Manchester writer, Anthony Burgess. Carcanet has published four volumes of Burgess’s writing, including poems, journalism and writings on music. We are also in the vicinity of the Royal Northern College of Music, where Alexander Goehr, Composing a Life by the late Sandy Goehr and Jack Van Zandt was launched last year with two world premieres of string quartets by the authors.

About Carcanet Press: 
Carcanet Press is a literary publisher with a comprehensive list of modern and classic poetry and related titles in English and translation. An Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation, the press was founded in 1969 and has been based in Manchester, UK, since 1971. We publish around 35 titles per year, as well as 6 issues of our bi-monthy literary journal PN Review. In 2019, our 50th anniversary year, we won Northern Small Press of the Year in the British Book Awards. A live backlist of over 1000 titles includes literature from 37 languages and 50 nations. Nobel laureates Orhan Pamuk, Octavio Paz, José Saramago, Joseph Brodsky, Czeslaw Milosz and Louise Gluck (Turkey, Mexico, Portugal, Russia, Poland and the United States respectively) are among our outstanding authors. 

About The University of Manchester Library: 
Originating in 1824, The University of Manchester Library is the third largest academic library system in the United Kingdom, at the heart of the country’s largest single-site University. Comprising over 10 million physical items, The University of Manchester Library is the largest non-legal deposit library, the only National Research Library in the North and holds the most extensive digital collections of any academic library in the UK.