Who We Are

North Atlantic Books (NAB) is an independent nonprofit publisher committed to a bold exploration of the relationships between mind, body, spirit, culture, and nature. Founded in Vermont in 1974 and operating in Berkeley since 1977, NAB has been at the forefront of publishing a diverse range of original books in bodywork and somatics, ecology and sustainability, health and healing, Indigenous cultures and anthropology, psychology and personal growth, social justice and engaged activism, and spirituality and liminality. NAB’s Blue Snake Books imprint is one of the largest sources of internal and historical martial-arts books in the world.

Over the years NAB has supported a wide-range of like-minded organizations through its Seeds of Transformation program.

Acquisitions, editorial, production, and marketing staff manage all books from the Berkeley office while Penguin Random House handles sales and distribution.

Mission Statement

North Atlantic Books is an educational nonprofit based in the unceded Ohlone land Huichin (Berkeley, CA), that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives; nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing; and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

Land acknowledgment

North Atlantic Books is located in Huichin, the present and ancestral homeland and unceded territory of the Ohlone people. We make this acknowledgment in recognition that our words must be matched by action and approach. As occupants on this land, we pay an annual Shuumi Land Tax to the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust for their continued work in the rematriation of the land upon which we live and work. As Mohawk seed keeper Rowan White puts it, “The Indigenous concept of Rematriation refers to reclaiming of ancestral remains, spirituality, culture, knowledge, and resources, instead of the more Patriarchally associated Repatriation. It simply means back to Mother Earth, a return to our origins, to life and co-creation, rather than Patriarchal destruction and colonization.”

Labor acknowledgment

North Atlantic Books is located within land that was seized and then developed using the unpaid labor of enslaved people, and we recognize the continued contributions of their survivors. We also acknowledge all immigrant labor, voluntary and involuntary, that has been integral to what stands upon this land today. In our work internally and with partners, we strive to pay beyond a living wage with a workforce as diverse as our region’s population.