River Box Press is a small independent press based in Afton, Minnesota. We publish print and digital work with a focus on Midwestern culture and cultural change.

About the Publisher

Valerie Stoehr (“Stair”) founded River Box Press following a career at the intersection of software development and publishing. Stoehr documented emerging technology at Silicon Valley start-ups that were early innovators in database design. She was managing editor of global digital products at Siemens, and she led the design and development of new digital and print products at the leading legal education publisher in the US.

Stoehr edited Surface Displacements, a 2023 Minnesota Book Award poetry finalist by Minnesota poet Sheila Packa. She also edited for Sinister Wisdom, an American lesbian literary and art journal published since 1976.

Collaborations include work with media composer and McKnight Foundation and Jerome Foundation fellow Kathy McTavish, internationally recognized quilter and fiber artist Karen McTavish, and the Transfigure Working Group.