Five years after launching, Astra House has established itself as a literary force, winning major prizes and building a reputation for debut fiction and narrative nonfiction. Publisher and Astra Publishing House COO Ben Schrank reflects on the company's evolution, current strategy, and future plans.

How would you describe Astra Publishing House today?

In five years, we have had a lot of growth spurts: we published a magazine, which we then stopped; acquired several companies, including DAW Books and Toon Books; and built a strong children’s book list. The market is still getting to know us, but when we’ve had success, it’s because we’ve followed our instincts, published well, and gotten great review attention.

What’s an example or two that stands out?

Our MF Doom bio, The Chronicles of DOOM by S.H. Fernando Jr. It had a very clear target market, we got strong media, and it sold 40,000 copies. Prizes help too, and we’ve had several, including Tyriek White’s We Are a Haunting winning the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize in 2023 and Michael Deagler’s Early Sobrieties winning the PEN/Hemingway.

Those novels are both debuts, something with which you’ve had success.

Most publishers want a sure thing, and some have enormous money to get it. We’re focused on finding books that are different and special and then breaking them out. Often those are debuts.

You are known for publishing translations. Are they still a priority for the press?

We still believe in translation. This fall we’re publishing a book called I Deliver Parcels in Bejing by Hu Anyan, which was a phenomenon in China, where it sold millions of copies. It was acquired by Patrizia van Daalen, who works with us and lives in Berlin. She was an editor in China for many years.

In short, we will always publish translation. If we publish 20 to 25 original books per year, probably 10 or 15 percent—four or five or six of those—are going to be books in translation.

What do readers have to look forward to in the coming few seasons?

We’re publishing E.Y. Zhao's Underspin in September. It’s a table tennis-centered coming-of-age novel about a charismatic prodigy’s short, but impactful life. It was edited by Maya Raiford Cohen and was already praised by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah as "an eruption of a debut."

In March 2026, we have Morgan Day's The Oldest Bitch Alive, edited by Tara Sharma. It’s the story of an aging French bulldog and the parasites hastening her death; in April, there Monica Datta's Nebraska (April 14, 2026), a book I’m editing, which is a tragicomic family saga exploring the Chatterjee family's devastating rupture, that will remind readers of Donna Tartt and Jonathan Franzen. Avigayl Sharp's Offseason is coming next May. It is being edited by our editorial director, Emily Bell, and is a darkly comic tale of a morally compromised PhD dropout teaching at a remote New England boarding school.

What's the relationship with retail like for the company now? Do they know the Astra name?

Yes, absolutely, with our track record, the market has taken notice. That said, we’re also learning to be more responsive, since some retailers have been more demanding when it comes to literary fiction or authors they don’t know. I think in order to make it work, we're starting to do more original paperbacks. We had been wary of that, but all publishers do it. So, if we hear from Barnes & Noble, “this would really work well as original paperback,” maybe we're listening a little bit more than we were four years ago.

Has your Chinese ownership impacted business?

Our parent company is Thinkingdom in Beijing. While it has drawn some attention here, it's shockingly parallel with any European or U.S.–owned business. They want us to publish quality work and have us profitable. That's where we are today.

Correction: A previous version of this article mistakenly stated that Offseason by Avigayl Sharp is set at an English boarding school; it is set at a boarding school in New England.