Riverhead Books
Riverhead Books is a New York literary imprint founded in 1994 by Susan Petersen Kennedy, first publisher of The Kite Runner and Oscar Wao, now part of Penguin Random House.
- Editions tracked
- 87
- First editions
- 54
- Books
- 87
- Years
- 1995 to 2024
Riverhead Books is a publisher based in New York City, founded in 1994. We track 87 editions it published between 1995 and 2024, 54 of them first editions across 87 books. Each book lists its first edition and the points that identify it.
About Riverhead Books
Riverhead Books is a New York literary fiction and nonfiction imprint founded in 1994 by Susan Petersen Kennedy, now part of Penguin Publishing Group at Penguin Random House.
Kennedy started Riverhead as a division of Putnam, with a list built around individual voices and a strong share of debut and early-career writers. When Putnam and Penguin came together, Riverhead became part of Penguin Group (USA), and it passed into Penguin Random House with the rest of Penguin. Geoffrey Kloske has led it as publisher.
Its earliest books included James McBride's memoir The Color of Water, Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker and Junot Díaz's story collection Drown. Riverhead first published Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner (29 May 2003) and Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (6 September 2007), which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Later prize winners on its list include Hernan Diaz, whose Trust won a Pulitzer, and Olga Tokarczuk, the 2019 Nobel laureate in literature.
Other Riverhead authors include Marlon James, Anne Lamott, Nick Hornby, George Saunders, Elizabeth Gilbert, Mohsin Hamid, Lauren Groff, Carlo Rovelli and Randall Munroe.
We have not yet written the guide to Riverhead Books's first-edition conventions. Until we do, check each book's own page: we list its points where we know them. Know how Riverhead Books marked its firsts? Tell us.
Authors
Series
Published by Riverhead Books
Frequently asked questions
How many Riverhead Books books does MyVolumes track?
We track 87 editions published by Riverhead Books, 54 of them first editions, across 87 books.
Where these facts come from
- Riverhead Books, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
- Riverhead at 20, Publishers Weekly, 2014 (publishersweekly.com)
- Riverhead Overview, Penguin (penguin.com)
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
- The Kite Runner, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
Every fact on this page was checked against the sources listed. Checked 17 October 2026. Reviewed by Harriet Ellis; read how we check facts.