Updated March 2020
Soft Skull Press is a small publisher of literary fiction and nonfiction currently based in New York. They publish a wide variety of quirky and well written work. They have published a number of well-known authors, including Maggie Nelson.
They are a niche press. Their distributor is Publishers Group West. They are now an imprint of Counterpoint Press.
They are generally open to unsolicited queries of nonfiction only. For literary work they require an agent.
The nonfiction they publish includes history, memoir, literary biography, religion and philosophy, and natural history.
Send a query letter, a detailed proposal, and two sample chapters via the mail. They will not consider queries submitted electronically.
They only respond to proposals they are interested in, due to high volume of submissions. So, there is no need to include a self-addressed and stamped envelope.
To learn more about what they publish you can see their catalog here.
