Four Walls Eight Windows

Four Walls Eight Windows is a New York City-based independent book publisher of both fiction and non-fiction. Known as Four Walls or 4W8W, the company was established in fall of 1987 by two young editors, John G. H. Oakes and Daniel Simon, who previously had an imprint under the same name at Writers and Readers Publishing.

Four Walls is noted for its dual commitment to progressive politics and adventurous, edgy literary fiction ? its publication of science fiction and fantasy works in particular, including Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Jay Russell’s Brown Harvest. The publisher has distributed many contemporary authors such as Steve Aylett, Michael Brodsky, Octavia Butler, Jerome Charyn, Andrei Codrescu, Richard Condon, Sue Coe, R. Crumb, Paul Di Filippo, Cory Doctorow, Annie Ernaux, Andrea Dworkin, Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, Margo Howard-Howard, Gordon Lish, Harvey Pekar, Rudy Rucker, Lucius Shepard, Sasha Sokolov and Edward D. Wood, Jr. Four Walls has also published a line of modern classics, featuring the works of Nelson Algren, Sherwood Anderson, George Plimpton, and more.

In 1995, Oakes and Simon parted ways. Oakes remained publisher of Four Walls while Simon left and founded Seven Stories Press. As Avalon Publishing Group later acquired Four Walls in 2004, the small publishing company’s entire list was incorporated into Thunder’s Mouth Press, an imprint of Avalon, of which Oakes became publisher. When acquired by the Perseus Books Group in 2007, the Thunder’s Mouth imprint became defunct.

First Edition Identification

First editions published by Four Walls Eight Windows either state “First Edition” and “First Printing” or “First Printing (month, year)” on the copyright page.