McSweeney's Publishing

McSweeney's began in San Francisco in 1998 as a single magazine, Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, edited by Dave Eggers. Its first aim was to print good writing that other magazines had turned down. Eggers has said the name comes from letters his family once received from a man called Timothy McSweeney, who claimed to be a relative.

The quarterly grew into a house with several branches. There is a daily humor site, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and a children's art and storytelling magazine, Illustoria. At various points the company also put out The Believer, the food journal Lucky Peach, the sports journal Grantland Quarterly and Wholphin, a DVD magazine of short films that ran from 2005 to 2012. Its book imprints include McSweeney's McMullens for children, the McSweeney's Poetry Series and the Collins Library, which reprints unusual older titles. In 2014 Eggers announced that the company would become a nonprofit, citing falling sales. Today it calls itself an independent nonprofit, with Amanda Uhle as publisher and executive director. Sales cover about 80 percent of its budget and donations the rest. Its archive has been held at the Harry Ransom Center in Texas since 2013.

The book list runs to roughly ten titles a year and crosses genres. The newest one on WebToTell is Kevin Moffett's debut novel Only Son, published on 4 November 2025 and named to the 2025 National Book Awards fiction longlist. It opens in Florida in 1982, where a nine-year-old watches his dead father's belongings being carted away. Years later the boy is a father himself, trying to make sense of the notes his own father left behind. Moffett had earlier written the story collections Permanent Visitors, which won an Iowa Short Fiction Award, and Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events, and he is also the author of the narrative app The Silent History.

Expect books that are chosen for voice and shaped with care. The house describes its work as boldly published and carefully designed, and the Quarterly Concern has won AIGA design awards. Humor is a strong thread through much of what it does, though the list is not limited to comedy. A McSweeney's novel can be funny and sad in the same chapter, as Only Son is.