[citation needed] Wesleyan University Press joined The Association of American Publishers trade organization in the Hachette v. Internet Archive lawsuit which resulted in the removal of access to over 500,000 books from global readers.
[2][3][9][11][12][13] According to The New York Times, university presses with bigger endowments, with financial backing from the state, or with large graduate programs do not enjoy the same status in the field of poetry that the Wesleyan University Press enjoys, nor have they won a comparable array of prizes in poetry.
[6] The press's poetry series was nurtured in its infancy by noted poet Richard Wilbur, then an English professor at the university.
[16] Donald Hall, a future Poet Laureate of the United States, served as a member of the editorial board for poetry at the press from 1958 to 1964.
Recently, Wesleyan published a new edition of poetry from Jack Spicer, which went on to win a 2009 American Book Award, contributing to the resurgence of a poet who died in public obscurity (of acute alcoholism) in 1965.