Every book deserves close editorial attention at every level. Expect the titles published by Engine Books to have been stringently polished to reveal the best possible execution of the author's vision.

A book is much more than a container for ideas. As a finished product, it should be an artifact representative of the power in its pages.

Engine Books is a woman-run, woman-friendly press. Each year, at least half of our titles will be authored by women.

Big-house publishing is driven by profit. As great presses are bought up by international conglomerates, the profit burden for each title skyrockets. Corporate publishers select and promote books based on potential revenues. The result is a body of relatively “safe” literature by established writers. Big presses still publish many wonderful books, often by first-time writers; they also pass on dozens of books that deserve to be published.

Engine Books demands very little profit from its titles. Though each book will be aggressively promoted to offer writers the widest possible exposure, work is selected by the quality of its storytelling and edited with an eye toward enhancing that storytelling.

Independent and University bookstores can find discount, return, and ordering information here.


Victoria Barrett is a writer, editor, and professor. Her own fiction has appeared in Colorado Review, Massachusetts Review, You Must Be This Tall to Ride, and Confrontation.

Her career as an editor began at Puerto del Sol, where editor Kevin McIlvoy called her “the most significant managing editor” in the journal’s history. Her work there trained her to read fiction submissions on their own terms, rather than see them through the lens of her own aesthetic preferences.

This work continues at Freight Stories, where she and co-editor Andrew Scott have published the work of finalists for the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize, bestsellers, and long-seasoned authors alongside emerging authors, some of whom saw in Freight Stories their first publication. The wide variety of styles and forms published in FS speak to Barrett’s enthusiasm for all kinds of fiction.