UC Press 2025 Annual Report
View the UC Press 2025 Annual Report
Publishing is not just an ideas-driven business—it is a people-driven business.
From Our Executive Director
The 2025 fiscal year marked a pivotal milestone for the University of California Press. With the support of our Board of Directors, the Press embarked on a new growth-oriented strategic plan grounded in the progressive, equity-focused mission and values that we share with our parent institution. As I reflect on this plan, I realize that it’s not just about numbers—it’s about people and the deep connections we maintain with our communities.
The engagement of our community of authors, journal editors, and peer reviewers remains central to our success as a publisher. That success was on full display when we received the R. R. Hawkins Award of the Association of American Publishers for Ieva Jusionyte’s Exit Wounds: How America’s Guns Fuel Violence Across the Border. Exit Wounds was published as a part of our California Series in Public Anthropology. This series, this book, and books like it play a vital role in shaping public debate—an urgent need in these turbulent and unpredictable times. Many of our journals similarly address pressing issues, such as an article in our open access journal Collabra: Psychology by Subramanya Prasad Chandrashekar of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, “Communicated and Perceived Public Consensus About Climate Change.”
The UC Press Foundation is deepening our engagement with long-standing and new supporters alike. This year, Iris Jamahl Dunkle inspired supporters with her talk on Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb, her book that was praised by The New York Times. At another event, Natalia Molina, author of A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community, provided a window into how her grandmother’s restaurant helped knit together ethnic Mexicans and other Latinx Los Angeles residents. The Foundation remains essential in helping us amplify underrepresented voices.
Finally, our staff ’s dedication underpins our ability to publish bold, field-defining scholarship for the public good. It is indeed the continued support of all of our communities that motivates and inspires us on our journey.
View the UC Press 2025 Annual Report
Erich van Rijn
Executive Director
University of California Press