DALLAS, TX — Over the next five years, Dalkey Archive Press will reissue ten works of fiction and nonfiction by American writer Harry Mathews. Beginning with Cigarettes and The Journalist, both set to publish in June 2025, the press will release new editions of two to three works from Mathews’ oeuvre annually, with introductions contextualizing the books and their lasting legacies for a new generation.
Born in New York City in 1930, Mathews was the author of over two dozen works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He co-founded the influential journal Locus Solus with John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler in 1961, and was the first American writer chosen for membership in the Oulipo, the French literary consortium dedicated to the innovation of literary form through constraint. A prominent translator of French literature, Mathews’ translation credits include works by Georges Perec, Marie Chaix, Jeanne Cordelier, and Georges Bataille. He passed away in Key West, Florida in 2017.
The novels, essays, story collections, and memoirs gathered in this reissued series span more than four decades of Mathews’ career, from The Conversions, his debut novel originally published by Random House in 1962, to My Life in CIA, an autofictional memoir which was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2005. The reissued editions will feature new cover designs including never-before-seen archival photographs of the author and introductions by such literary luminaries as Jonathan Lethem, Lucy Sante, and Ed Park, among others.
“Harry Mathews is one of Dalkey Archive Press’s foundational authors—and one of the authors through whom I personally learned about the press,” says Chad Post, Dalkey Archive’s editorial director. “It’s wonderful to be able to introduce his oeuvre to a new generation of readers who will get to experience his joyful wackiness and formal inventiveness for the first time.”
The first three books in this series are available for pre-order now from the Dalkey Archive website and wherever books are sold. Cigarettes and The Journalist will be published simultaneously on June 17, 2025. The Conversions will be published on November 4, 2025. The remaining seven titles include Singular Pleasures, The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium, My Life in CIA, 20 Lines in a Day, Tlooth, The Case of the Persevering Maltese, and The Human Country. Announcements of future publication dates will be shared in the Deep Vellum newsletter.
Deep Vellum is a nonprofit publishing house and literary arts organization with the mission to bring the world into conversation through literature. Founded in 2013, Deep Vellum has expanded to encompass six distinct publishing imprints, including Dalkey Archive Press, and is now the largest publisher of translated literature in the United States.
Dalkey Archive Press is a publisher of fiction, poetry, and literary criticism, specializing in the publication or republication of lesser-known, often avant-garde works. Founded in 1984 by John O’Brien, the press has amassed a true archive of some of the greatest literary talents to ever grace the page, including such remarkable authors as Gertrude Stein, John Barth, Jon Fosse, Marguerite Young, Vladimir Sorokin, Djuna Barnes, and Flann O’Brien.
For questions, publicity inquiries, or galley requests, please contact Publicity Director Nadine Santoro: nadine@deepvellum.org.
