About Mekong Press
Books and Publishing in the Greater Mekong Subregion
There are more than 250 million people living in the geographically, linguistically, and historically affiliated “Greater Mekong Subregion”: Cambodia, Laos, Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Vietnam, and the Yunnan province of China. However, very few books from or about the region are known internationally, and a great majority of what is available is dominated by books on the Indochina wars.
The lack of a “book culture,” poor literacy rates in many Mekong countries, the centrifugal tendencies of a global publishing trade dominated by media conglomerates, and the lack of a common language are some of the obstacles to increasing the number of internationally available books from the region.
Mekong Press Objectives and Goals
The Mekong Press Foundation was initiated in 2006 by Trasvin Jittidecharak of Silkworm Books with financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation. Its objectives and goals are:
- To publish a small number of selected titles featuring cross-border themes in English each year.
- To support translation work.
- To encourage local writers.
- To encourage professional collaboration with other local publishers and nonprofit organizations that focus on book publishing.
Mekong Press provides training programs for publishers, editors, and other professionals in the book industry in the Mekong subregion. The workshops are designed to meet the needs of subregional publishers by encouraging cooperative relationships and creating an opportunity for sharing special knowledge and skills in order to raise the standard of publishing in the areas of editing, production, marketing, and distribution.
For more information on our activities, please contact info@mekongpress.com
Mekong Press is ready to consider manuscripts for publication by writers who are citizens residing in the Greater Mekong Subregion.