Elephant Rock Books

History

Elephant Rock Books was an independent publishing company based in Connecticut from 2010-2023.^[1] The press was founded by Jotham Burrello in Chicago in 2010.^[2] Burrello decided to start the press while talking with his former teacher, Patricia Ann McNair, about her work; her book The Temple of the Air became Elephant Rock's first publication and went on to win positive reviews and several awards.^[3]

The publisher was backed by a multimedia company, Elephant Rock Productions, which handled accounting and banking.^[4]

Books

Elephant Rock published The Biology of Luck by Jacob M. Appel which won the Independent Publisher Book Award for U.S. North-East, Best Regional Fiction in 2014.^[5]

Elephant Rock published Briefly Knocked Unconscious By A Low-Flying Duck, an essay anthology of the 2nd Story Collective^[6] that has won multiple literary prizes.^[7]

In 2014 the press moved into the young adult fiction market with Jessie Ann Foley's novel The Carnival at Bray,^[8] which was named a Printz Honor Book.^[2]

Elephant Rock published The Art of Holding On and Letting Go, a debut novel by Kristin Bartley Lenz that is a Junior Library Guild Selection^[9] and Great Lakes Great Books Award^[10] honor book from the Michigan Reading Association.

Other books published by the press: A Vacation on the Islands of Ex-Boyfriends by Stacy Bierlein, The Boy Who Really, Really Wanted to Have Sex: The Memoir of a Fat Kid by John McNally, and Borrowed by Lucia DiStefano.