Political Animal Press is a nonfiction publisher that was founded in January 2015. Political Animal Press is distributed by University of Toronto Press. They are based out of Chicago and Toronto, according to their website.
The publisher of Political Animal Press is Lewis Slawsky, who is based out of Chicago according to his LinkedIn profile. Also according to his LinkedIn profile, he is the editor of Crowsnest Books. Crowsnest Books has been on my radar for four years years now, but I’ve never reviewed them, because they seem to have an inconsistent track record for publishing books. For example this book, The Supply Chain, has been listed as coming soon that whole period. It might have been published in 2023, actually because you can buy it (or read it for free on Amazon) here, and 2023 is the listed publication date on that page on Amazon.
On the University of Toronto Press’s website both Crowsnest and Political Animal Press are listed under Wall & Emerson‘s account, implying they are imprints. It took me a while, but I was able to track down the connection between the two presses. According to this article published in 2020 this is the connection: “Political Animal Press for nonfiction, and an imprint called Crowsnest Books for fiction. Political Animal Press is a spin-off of Wall’s parents’ press, Wall & Emerson Inc., which he now runs.” None of this is mentioned on their About page, and there is no masthead/staff page to confirm that Wall is still involved in either of these presses.
All that said, I do think Political Animal Press has been publishing constantly based on their catalog listings, which you can see here. Please spend time with their catalogue if you are considering submitting, as they publish a pretty narrow range of nonfiction. They do not publish very many books a year, and most of what they publish could be categorized as Philosophy or Political Theory.
They say this about what they are seeking to publish: “Our publishing program concentrates on the humanites, primarily in the areas of political philosophy, politics and political science, philosophy, social criticism, religious studies, and the history of ideas. Our general outlook can be expressed by the Roman adage: humani nihil a me alienum (nothing human is alien to me).”
They used to publish books in other genres but appear to have moved away from that.
They are open to book proposals as well as manuscript submissions. Please only submit if they feel like a good fit for your work. To learn more, go here.
Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2026 Guide to Manuscript Publishers. She regularly teaches three acclaimed courses on writing and publishing at The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish. You can follow her on Facebook here.
