Dalkey Archive Press

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. The company has offices in Funks Grove, Illinois, in Dublin, and in London. The publisher is named for the novel The Dalkey Archive, by the Irish author Flann O'Brien.

Founded in Chicago in 1984, Dalkey Archive began as an adjunct press to the literary magazine Review of Contemporary Fiction, itself founded by John O'Brien, John Byrne, and Lowell Dunlap and dedicated to highlighting writers who were overlooked by the mainstream critical establishment. Initially, the Press reprinted works by authors that were featured in the Review but eventually branched out to other works, including original works that had not before been published. In December 2006, Dalkey Archive relocated to the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana to be part of the university's commitment to global projects that will complement the Press's commitment to translations.

Modelled on such publishers as Grove Press and New Directions, Dalkey Archive's emphasis is decidedly upon literary fiction, usually of a modernist or postmodernist bent. In the publisher's own words, Dalkey Archive "place[s] a heavy emphasis upon fiction that belongs to the experimental tradition of Sterne, Joyce, Rabelais, Flann O'Brien, Beckett, Gertrude Stein and Djuna Barnes." One of the publisher's primary goals is to keep all of its books in print, regardless of their commercial success, in the interest of maintaining the availability of works that it deems culturally and educationally valuable.

In 2011, Dalkey founder John O’Brien was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle, and in 2015, O’Brien was appointed Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts & des Lettres in recognition of his significant contribution to French arts and literature by the Minister of Culture and Communication of France; its authors and translators have been recipients of many major awards, including the Nobel Prize, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize, the Vondel Prize, and the Premio Valle-Inclán award.

Founder and publisher John O'Brien died on November 21st, 2020.