Chris Heiser is the publisher and co-founder of LA-based Unnamed Press. Started in 2014, Unnamed has quickly become one of the country's leading independent publishers of contemporary literature. The press releases approximately 25 titles a year, across a variety of categories, including fiction, memoir, poetry and classics, though it has made a particular name for itself as a publisher of new contemporary writing by women, among them celebrated authors like Esmé Weijun Wang (The Border of Paradise), Chelsea G Summers (A Certain Hunger), Jennifer Croft (Homesick) and Bethany Morrow (Mem). In 2023, Unnamed Press partnered with LA-based publisher Rare Bird to launch North Figueroa Bookshop, a community bookstore and event space in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. In late 2024 Unnamed Press launched a classics imprint, Smith & Taylor, created by two of its editors, Allison Smith and Brandon Taylor, that seeks to broaden the discourse around old books. Previously, Chris was deeply involved with starting up nonprofit translation press Phoneme Media (now an imprint of Deep Vellum) and worked at the Los Angeles Review of Books. Before that he worked at The New Press and John Wiley & Sons in New York. He holds an MA in Comparative Literature from NYU, and a BA in English from Occidental College.

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