Independent publishing great Tyrant Books—which has been dormant since its founder Giancarlo DiTrapano’s death in 2021—is coming back.

As Publisher’s Marketplace reports, author and screenwriter Luke Goebel has acquired 50% of the company with an eye toward relaunching; the other half of the company still belongs to Matthew Johnson, of Fat Possum Records.

Tyrant Books, based in Rome and New York City, was founded in 2009 by the late DiTrapano. A few years later, DiTrapano teamed up with Fat Possum and Johnson, who took over the press’s business affairs. Johnson has long had an interest in books, and was instrumental in the writing of Nico Walker’s Cherry.

DiTrapano’s goal with Tyrant was to publish things others wouldn’t and be a champion for books and writers outside the mainstream. The publisher’s biggest hit was Atticus Lish’s Preparation for the Next Life, but Tyrant maintained a broad and odd catalogue with everything from a book of photographs of Iggy Pop to Marie Calloway’s what purpose did i serve in your life, which is so raunchy that one printing company refused to produce it.

New co-owner Goebel is not new to Tyrant, having worked as an unpaid assistant for the press for years. He aims to continue DiTrapano’s vision—“a stewardship rather than a takeover,” he calls it—with fiction, non-fiction, and collaborations in other media. A list of titles is promised soon.