Parneshia Jones. Photographed by Dino Robinson.
By Elena Hubert ’25
Parneshia Jones doesn’t consider herself a poet first and foremost. She’s a writer and a “few-and-far-between poet,” alongside being a therapist, advisor, babysitter, editor and the director of the Northwestern University Press.
Jones’ poetry acquisitions at the Press, specifically at its TriQuarterly Books imprint, have been awarded the National Book Award and the Kingsley Tufts poetry award, among other accolades.
With a two-decade tenure at the Press (and three of those years as director), Jones is credited with bolstering TriQuarterly as a nationally renowned poetry publishing house. Jones’ first acquisition at the imprint—Nikky Finney’s poetry collection “Head Off & Split”—won the 2011 National Book Award for Poetry.
Originating as an undergraduate literary magazine credited with pioneering the format, TriQuarterly was “always outstanding,” according to Jones. However, she said the imprint was missing the perspectives of Black female writers. Jones acquired poets such as Finney, Vievee Francis, Patricia Smith and Nandi Comer to remedy this.
“They’re not just Black women poets, but I think they’re some of the leading American poets,” Jones said. “They came, they conquered, they sell.”
Today, more than 600 poets call TriQuarterly home. Since January, the imprint has published five poetry collections, including “Unshuttered” by Patricia Smith and “The Shared World” by Vievee Francis.
“Most university presses don’t publish any poetry at all. They don’t see it as viable. They don’t see it as something that can sell,” Jones said. “Every single one of our poetry books are at least in second or third printing.”
Jones said practices such as a peer review process for all titles, including poetry, draw authors to TriQuarterly and the Press in general. Leaders in a literary field review works during the development stage at the Press. For poetry, that includes luminaries like Terrance Hayes (a National Book Award winner and MacArthur fellowship recipient) and, until her 2019 death, Pulitzer- and Nobel-winning writer Toni Morrison.
Parneshia Jones with poets Nikky Finney, Patricia Smith, Vievee Francis, Toi Derricotte, Angela Jackson and former Press director Jane Bunker. Photographed by Nate Bartlett.
Such poetry greats “love to see what’s coming,” Jones said.
“They know that we’re one of the main publishers that do some of the best poetry pretty much in the world right now,” Jones said. “They want to be a part of that.”
In acquiring poetry, Jones said she looks for writing and perspectives that can speak to the masses.
“The poets that I’ve acquired, I acquired them basically because I wanted people who don’t read poetry to read them,” Jones said. “I think they were writing something that people could actually attach them to.”
With over 40% of its list being trade titles, the Press functions uniquely as a university press that focuses on books for general readership. Because of this, Jones said the Press operates at the level of major publishing houses.
“That’s something to say for a university press to be in competition to sign a trade author, with Norton, Penguin/Random House, Graywolf, Copper Canyon,” Jones said. “Their authors are our authors as well.”
Transparency with writers is a major part of TriQuarterly’s approach, according to Jones. She said she pushes writers eager in sealing their first deal to really understand contractual terms.
“We will go through line by line every part of the contract and explain it to you if you don’t understand something,” Jones said. “I’m not signing until I know that you fully understand what you’re signing because it’s not your work anymore, it’s our work.”
With her 2015 poetry collection “Vessel” winning the Midwest Book Award, Jones is no stranger to the poet’s perspective. And when it comes to poetry publication, Jones has been in the business since 2003, when she started at the Press as a senior at Chicago State University.
“I’ve seen every single level of how you get a book made and done, every single level of working with an author,” she said. “I started off as a marketing assistant and now I am overseeing the entire press.”
Reflecting on the current state of poetry, Jones remarked on recently advising five generations of authors in one day: the oldest writer was 101 years old, and the youngest was 24.
“We have never had these many generations of writers writing at the same time,” Jones said. “In terms of how they view poetry and how they view the world, their communication is very different.”
Jones said poetry remains a very personal thing, no matter what changes in the field. She emphasized the power of staying true to your story and having “your own language in all this noise.”
“The job of the poet right now is to write their best work but it’s a very, very fraught world right now,” Jones said. “So just do your best work, and understand why you’re doing it, and do it whether somebody reads it or not. If it’s good, somebody will find it, somebody will publish it.
Elena Hubert is a Medill School of Journalism sophomore