Established in July 1999, Vagabond Press has published over 80 titles from an international range of established and emerging writers in English, French and Japanese with an overall emphasis on poetry.

Through the Rare Object Series we have published more than 50 short collections of Australian poetry, giving a glimpse of the vitality of Australian poetry since 1999 to the present, bringing together well-known poets such as Peter Porter and Judith Beveridge with younger writers such as Kate Fagan and Elena Knox, who published their first collections with the press.

In the Stray Dog Editions, Vagabond Press has produced longer collections of poetry and prose, including work from major writers such as Shuntaro Tanikawa and Ishigaki Rin, alongside works by writers who are currently coming to prominence at an international level, such as Koike Masayo and Martin Harrison. The Stray Dog editions offer writing in English, Japanese and French, in translation and in bi-lingual editions, along with festschrifts for Maurice Blanchot and Tomaž Šalamun, which included work from writers such as Jean-Luc Nancy, Pierre Joris, Jacques Derrida, Charles Simic, and James Tate.

In 2008, we launched two posthumous collections by Australian poet and critic Noel Rowe, A Cool and Shaded Heart: Collected Poems and Ethical Investigations: Essays on Australian Literature and Poetics, which won the prestigious 2009 Walter McRae Russell Award. Since then we have continued to publish chapbooks in our Rare Object Series and full-length collections such as new Japanese poetry from Shuntaro Tanikawa and Yasuhiro Yotsumoto, Ken Bolton’s A Whistled Bit of Bop (short-listed for the Age Book of the Year) and Peter Boyle’s remarkable collection of poetry and prose Apocrypha, which was short-listed for the Queensland Premier’s Award for poetry.

In 2011, we have new titles forthcoming from a range of Australian poetry and prose writers, as well as new poetry-in-translation in our Stray Dog editions.