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Allan Kornblum was still smiling Monday after being told last week he won the Minnesota Book Awards Kay Sexton award. Kornblum, founder/senior editor of Minneapolis-based Coffee House Press, earned the honor for nearly 30 years of dedication to the Minnesota literary community and fostering books and reading.

“I am thrilled about this,” Kornblum said. “It’s a nice plus in a rough period since I’ve been undergoing monthly chemo for leukemia.” With four treatments left, Kornblum says he hasn’t had any bad effects, although he gets tired.

Kornblum came to publishing through poetry, which he fell in love with when he attended readings at the famous Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in Manhattan.

In 1970, he signed up for the poetry workshop at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, where he took a printing class “on a whim” that changed his life.

“I was captivated by the charm and beauty of printing,” he told the Pioneer Press in 1986.

Kornblum founded Toothpaste Press in 1972 with $200 borrowed dollars. He operated his hand-printed publication out of his house in Iowa for 13 years, going so heavily into debt he had to sell his personal library.

By 1985, Kornblum realized the Twin Cities was becoming a center for literary publishers, including Graywolf, New Rivers and Milkweed.

Founders of these nonprofit presses were drawn, as was Kornblum, by Minnesota’s literate population, good bookstores and generous corporate and private funding.

After relocating to Minnesota with his wife, Cinda, Kornblum renamed his press Coffee House and signed on as resident publisher at Minnesota Center for Book Arts.

Now Coffee House is one of the premier literary presses in the country, with more than 300 titles in print. The press annually publishes between 15 and 20 books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Eight Coffee House books are past Minnesota Book Award winners.

Kornblum, who also received an American Book Award for contributions to literature and publishing, has never regretted moving to Minnesota.

“This has been a wonderful place to live, raise our two daughters and be part of such a (vibrant) book community,” he says.

“Every year that I’ve gone to the Minnesota Book Awards it raises my spirits because I see so many people who’ve taken an evening to celebrate the book together and applaud others’ efforts.”

Last June, Kornblum handed Coffee House’s day-to-day operations to the new publisher, Chris Fischbach.

Kornblum continues as senior editor, choosing one title a year. This spring’s is “Half in Shade: Family, Photography and Fate,” a memoir by Judith Kitchen.

“I’m proudest of discovering authors early in their careers, like Alexs Pate and Sandra Benitez locally,” Kornblum says. “Karen Tei Yamashita (a Californian) has been with us her whole career. Her novel ‘I Hotel’ was a National Book Award finalist.”

Kornblum always told authors that if they were happy with Coffee House, they had a publisher for life.

“Then they could concentrate on being the best writers they could be, without having to hunt for a publisher for each book,” he says. “It was equally gratifying to be able to fulfill that commitment.”

Kornblum stayed connected to his first love – printing – by producing a broadside annually for distribution at American Booksellers Association’s trade show and for special events.

“Now that we’ve made the Coffee House leadership transition and I’m almost done with chemo, I’m hoping to do a little more printing,” Kornblum says of working on the Chandler & Price press in the Coffee House offices.

“We sent the serial number to the company and they told us the press was built in May of 1928,” he recalls. “Those were built to last, unlike the computers we work on now.”

Kornblum will receive the Sexton award at the 24th annual Minnesota Book Awards Gala April 14 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in St. Paul. For information, go to thefriends.org or call 651-366-6497.

Mary Ann Grossmann can be reached at 651-228-5574.

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