duration press was founded in 1997 by Jerrold Shiroma, in Sausalito, CA, with the intention of publishing a chapbook series dedicated primarily to poetry in English translation. The first chapbooks were published in 1999, the year in which the first version of the durationpress.com website went live.

Since then, we have also explored the possibilities of providing free books of poetry & poetics in the form of downloadable PDF (Portable Document Format) files. The first of these were made available with the initial public version of the website eight years ago, & this part of our project will continue to be a cornerstone of the mission of the press

An integral part of the press's mission is offering affordable web-hosting / web-design services to individual authors & the small press community. Through this, we hope to be able to provide a resource other organizations can use in order to spread the word about their various activities & publications. As of this writing, duration press provides these services to over 100 organizations & writers.