About

Third World Press (TWP)

Third World Press Foundation, 501(c)(3), is the oldest Black publishing company in the world. Originally founded in Chicago in 1967, TWP has been publishing Black literature under the direction of founder Professor Haki Madhubuti for over a half-century. In addition to publishing, TWPF runs a network of three charter schools. Now in its 54th year, TWPF is one of the last-remaining Black Arts Movement (1965-1975) institutions. TWPF continues to publish and contribute to a rich, sentient tradition of Black literature, Black educational excellence, and Black institutional development. TWP has published hundreds of authors and continues to impact our current age of emerging and established writers, poets, educators, artists, scholars, and activists. A full-service publishing house, TWP is located in a spacious, half-block facility on Chicago’s south side.

TWP Authors

For more than fifty years, TWPF has published a rich tradition of Black writing by authors such as poet and publisher, Dudley Randall; Illinois Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner, Gwendolyn Brooks; poets Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Mari Evans, Margaret Walker, Sterling Plumpp and Haki R. Madhubuti; world-renown psychiatrists Frances Cress Welsing and Carl C. Bell; editor Hoyt W. Fuller; historians John Henrik Clarke, Jacob Carruthers and Chancellor Williams; playwright and producer Woody King, Jr.; writers Useni Eugene Perkins, Ayi Kwei Armah, Kalamu ya Salaam, Pearl Cleage, and Keorapetse Kgositsile; actors, producers, and playwrights Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee; artists Murry DePillars, Calvin Jones, and Jon Lockard; education scholars Nathan Hare, Asa G. Hilliard III, Derrick Bell, Bill Ayers, Barbara A. Sizemore, Marcia Sutherland, Clifford Watson, Geneva Smitherman; social critics and cultural writers Herb Boyd, Michael Simanga, Lita Hooper, Diane Turner, Fred Hord, Ruth Garnett, Julianne Malveaux, Bakari Kitwana, Marc Lamont Hill, Thabiti Lewis, Mumia Abu Jamal, Quraysh Ali Lansana, Kelly Norman Ellis, Tony Medina and others. For over five decades, TWP’s roster of published authors includes world-renowned historians, educators, psychiatrists, playwrights, visual artists, poets, fiction writers, legal scholars, producers, community activists, and others.