Panamerica, a new trade paperback publishing imprint “for the American voice in the genres of literary fiction and reportage,” officially launched on July 4 with the release of Lee Clay Johnson’s new novel Bloodline. Nested under the broadsheet periodical County Highway, Panamerica is overseen by editor David Samuels alongside fiction editor Gary Fisketjon, who helped to make Cormac McCarthy, among others, a household name during his high-profile tenure at Knopf prior to his dismissal in 2019. Panamerica will publish six titles per year and distribute through Ingram and Consortium, pending onboarding, said County Highway managing editor Ryan Baesemann.
Baesemann contrasted the vision for Panamerica with County Highway’s other book imprint, Hard Cider Press. The added imprint will allow County Highway, which was founded in 2023 by Samuels and Walter Kirn, to publish two distinct strands of American writing, with Hard Cider focusing on “American screed—rants and raves and salvos and diatribes” and Panamerica on works that embody the spirit of “Whitman or Faulkner or Melville—classic American lit,” Baesemann said. The imprint describes Bloodline as “a timeless...generational saga of mendacious transformations” set in rural Tennessee.
While the stories Panamerica publishes pay heed to tradition, the press is taking an innovative approach to format, forgoing hardcover and paperback models in favor of a “hybrid” softcover book, Baesemann said. The design features French flaps, a canvas-like cover stock, and high-quality paper inside. Panamerica has partnered with Kase Printing, an independent printer based in New Hampshire.
