ABOUT US
Acre Books exists thanks to the generosity of the Robert and Adele Schiff Family Foundation. Based in the English department at the University of Cincinnati and supported by its staff and students, Acre leverages the strengths of independent and university publishing to produce outstanding literature.
Founded in 2016 by Nicola Mason, whose intent was to build upon the excellence of The Cincinnati Review, Acre publishes surprising, imaginative, and absorbing books of poetry, fiction, literary nonfiction, and hybrid forms that are expertly crafted and reflect a multiplicity of perspectives and styles. A large part of our mission is to bring to the reading public exciting work by debut and diverse authors.
Through its university affiliation, Acre provides opportunities for undergraduates and graduate students in UC’s English PhD program to learn about the book publishing industry. Under the mentorship of our two main editors, Nicola Mason and Lisa Ampleman, student staffers gain hands-on experience in manuscript selection and acquisition, editing and production, and book distribution, marketing, and sales.
Collaborating closely with authors, Acre annually publishes six to seven titles that are supported by the marketing and sales teams at the University of Chicago Press and distributed across the globe by the Chicago Distribution Center. We are fortunate to claim as a publishing partner the renowned Seagull Books, based in Kolkata and specializing in world literature, serious nonfiction, culture and performance studies, and works on art and cinema. We nominate our titles for major post-publication awards and assist our authors with readings and events, sustaining relationships with our writer family long after their books launch.
Our titles are often reviewed in Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Foreword, Kirkus, and Library Journal, and have garnered attention in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Review of Books, San Francisco Chronicle, Times Literary Supplement, Shelf Awareness, LitHub, The Millions, Book Riot, National Book Review, New Criterion, and numerous other publications and podcasts.
Acre’s accolades include finalist honors from the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Lambda Literary Awards, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Shirley Jackson Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, the Maine Book Award, the Balcones Prize, the Julie Suk Award, the Philip A. McMath Award, and the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, longlist honors from the PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection, and silver and gold medals from the Foreword INDIES and Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPYs).
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Staff
Nicola Mason
Publisher
Nicola Mason worked for many years at The Southern Review and Louisiana State University Press before moving to Cincinnati and founding The Cincinnati Review in 2003. A fiction writer and NEA Fellow whose work has appeared in many journals as well as in Pushcart Prize and New Stories from the South anthologies, the Pushcart anthology Love Stories for Turbulent Times, and in Million Writers Award: Best New Online Voices, she is also a visual artist.
Barbara Bourgoyne
Designer
Barbara Neely Bourgoyne, longtime designer and typesetter for Louisiana State University Press and The Southern Review, counts The Cincinnati Review, The John Updike Review, Cimarron Review, and Crazyhorse among her many freelance projects. Her work has been recognized in Print’s Regional Design Annual and the AAUP Book, Jacket, and Journal Show. She lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Lisa Ampleman
Poetry Series Editor
Lisa Ampleman is the author of three full-length poetry collections, Mom in Space (LSU Press, 2024), Romances (LSU Press, 2020), and Full Cry (NFSPS Press, 2013), as well as a chapbook, I’ve Been Collecting This to Tell You (Kent State University Press, 2012). Her poems have appeared on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, and in literary journals, including 32 Poems, Cave Wall, Image, Kenyon Review Online, Massachusetts Review, Natural Bridge, New Ohio Review, New South, Notre Dame Review, Poetry, Shenandoah, Southern Review, and The Rumpus. She is the managing editor of The Cincinnati Review.
Sarah Haak
Assistant Editor
Sarah Haak is an essayist from Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is a literary nonfiction Ph.D. at the University of Cincinnati, and she holds a master’s degree in creative nonfiction writing from Ohio University. Her work has appeared in Fourth Genre, Sonora Review, Essay Daily, The Pinch, Atticus Review, and DIAGRAM and is upcoming elsewhere. Before taking up writing, she was a chef, a small business owner, and a natural therapeutic specialist with a focus on herbal medicine. She currently serves as an assistant editor for Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction.
Michael Alessi
Assistant Editor
A native of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, Michael Alessi (he/him) is the author of the short fiction chapbooks Call a Body Home (Mason Jar Press, 2021) and The Horribles (Greying Ghost, 2019). His work has appeared in Mid-American Review, Passages North, The Pinch, The Cincinnati Review, New Delta Review, and Ninth Letter, among other journals. He holds an MFA from Old Dominion University and is a doctoral student in Creative Writing at the University of Cincinnati.
Shara Lessley
Consulting Editor
Shara Lessley is the author of The Explosive Expert’s Wife, winner of the Sheila Margaret Motton prize, Two-Headed Nightingale, and co-editor of The Poem’s Country: Place & Poetic Practice, a book of essays. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, her awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Mary Wood Fellowship from Washington College, the Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, an Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship from Colgate University, and a “Discovery”/The Nation prize. Shara’s poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Threepenny, New England Review, 32 Poems, IMAGE, and the Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize anthologies. Her creative nonfiction has twice been listed as “Notable” in Best American Essays and appeared in Kenyon Review, Gettysburg Review, Cincinnati Review, The Rumpus, and Southern Review, among others. Shara is Creative Nonfiction Editor and Editor-at-Large for West Branch.
Lisa Low
Assistant Poetry Editor
Lisa Low is the author of the chapbook Crown for the Girl Inside (YesYes Books, 2023), winner of a Vinyl 45 Chapbook Contest. Her poems have appeared in Copper Nickel, Ecotone, The Massachusetts Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, and elsewhere, and her prose was awarded the 2020 Gulf Coast Nonfiction Prize. She is the recipient of a 2023 Pushcart Prize and has an MFA from Indiana University and a PhD from the University of Cincinnati. Originally from Maryland, she lives in Chicago.
David Schwartz
Editorial Assistant
David Lerner Schwartz teaches writing and literature at the University of Cincinnati where he is a doctoral student. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Ecotone, New Ohio Review, Los Angeles Review, Witness, Literary Hub, New York magazine, The Rumpus, SmokeLong Quarterly, and more. His writing has been supported by grants and fellowships from UC’s Office of Research, Department of English, and Niehoff Center for Film & Media Studies; Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference; St. Albans School, where he served as the 38th writer in residence; and the Bennington Writing Seminars, from which he holds an MFA. He works as the fiction editor of Four Way Review. www.davidlernerschwartz.com
Benjamin Dudley
Videographer
Ben Dudley shoots and edits most of the book trailers and promotional videos for Acre Books and The Cincinnati Review. He is also a playwright and actor. In 2012, he received an MA in fiction writing from the University of Cincinnati.
Simon Smith
Marketing Intern
Coming from a long lineage of creators, Simon has honored tradition by seizing all opportunities to produce quality content while building a diverse range of skills. In May 2024, he will receive a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Cincinnati with rotations in product design, UI/UX design, and professional writing, and a certificate in copyediting and publishing.