Cinco Puntos Press


Cinco Puntos Press, established in 1985, is an independent book publishing company located in El Paso, Texas. The company is a general trade publisher which has received attention for its bilingual children's books and fiction and non-fiction focusing on the Mexico–United States border region. The owners and founders are novelist Lee Merrill Byrd and poet Bobby Byrd. Their son Johnny Byrd is now CEO. Cinco Puntos is distributed to the trade by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution. Their list is known for its multi-cultural and political focus for both children and adults.

Notable Authors

Cinco Puntos Press authors include Joe Hayes, Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Sergio Troncoso, Tim Tingle, George Ella Lyon, Dagoberto Gilb, David Romo, Robert Boswell, Gary Cartwright, Xavier Garza, James Carlos Blake, Subcomandante Marcos, Byrd Baylor, J.L. Powers, Youme Landowne, Paco Ignacio Taibo II, and many others.

NEA Controversy

Cinco Puntos received national notoriety when, in March 1999, it published the book The Story of Colors / La Historia de los colores written by Subcomandante Marcos, the leader of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in Mexico. Bill Ivey, chairperson of the National Endowment for the Arts—which had previously awarded $7,500 to Cinco Puntos Press for the publication of the story—pulled the funding on March 9, 1999 after being interviewed by Julia Preston of the Mexico City bureau of The New York Times. The NEA's move drew national attention to the book and Cinco Puntos when an article about the controversy was published on the front page of the New York Times. The Lannan Foundation provided Cinco Puntos Press with twice the amount of the lost funding and Cinco Puntos Press sold out their first printing of the book in days. Publisher Bobby Byrd made a personal statement on the Cinco Puntos Press website, stating:
It was a strange media frenzy, a true boon to Cinco Puntos. But real ideas and issues got lost in that frenzy, the most important of which is the indigenous struggle for autonomy and land in Chiapas.

Significant awards

The company has won several awards:
In addition, author Benjamin Alire Sáenz won a PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and a Lambda Literary Award in 2013 for his book Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club, published by Cinco Puntos in 2012.