Write for The Thinking Press

The Thinking Press exists for one purpose: to publish books that help a reader find, and keep, the will toward the good once the easy answers are gone. We publish original psycho-philosophical works, and we bring older and forgotten texts into English, not as curiosities, but because every one of them asks, in its own tongue, what it costs to choose the good, and what it takes.

That work begins where values fail. There are seasons in every life, and in every age, when a value we have long held is no longer holding us up, but pulling us under. Sometimes, when a person holds a value that would cause him to die, it is time to let the value die instead. What dies in that hour is not meaning itself, but a bargain that could no longer bear the weight of the truth; and on the ground it leaves behind, a truer value can be built, one that can still be called good now, in a week, in a year, and forever. That passage, from a value that kills to a value that gives life, is the one our books are written to accompany.

To be cut out for The Thinking Press, a writer must possess three things. The first is the gift of writing: prose that is clear where it must be clear and beautiful where it can be, that carries an argument without losing its reader, and that honors the weight of what it says. The second is the gift of critical thinking: the discipline to test an idea before trusting it, to follow an argument where it leads rather than where one would like it to go, and to hold one’s own conclusions to the same scrutiny as anyone else’s.

The third matters most of all: an absolute love for truth. Not truth as a slogan, nor as a weapon to be turned on others, but truth as the ground we stand on, loved even when it is uncomfortable, even when it costs us a belief we would rather keep. A writer who will not give up a cherished conclusion for a truer one will not be at home here. A writer who will, belongs with us.

If that describes you, we would be glad to hear from you. Please write in with a short introduction, the work you have in mind, and a portfolio to share: published pieces, manuscripts, essays, or translations, whatever best shows how you write and how you think. Translators should name the languages they work from and include a sample beside its original.

Series A, the press’s flagship series of original psycho-philosophical works, is written for now by B. C. P. Statema, though it may open to other voices as the press grows. Series B and Series C draw on translators for their T subseries, bringing classic and esoteric texts into English, many for the first time.