The Hoffer Award was founded at the start of the 21st century by award-winning author Christopher Klim (with permission from the Eric Hoffer Estate) to honor freethinking writers and independent books of exceptional merit. The commercial environment for today’s writers has all but crushed the circulation of ideas. It seems strange that in the Information Age, many books are blocked from wider circulation, and powerful writing is barred from publication or buried alive on the Internet. Furthermore, many of the top literary prizes will not even consider independent books or previously unpublished prose, choosing instead to become the marketing arms of large presses.

The “Hoffer” honored prose is largely unpublished and the books are chiefly from small, academic, and micro presses, including self-published offerings. Throughout the centuries, writers such as Emily Dickinson, James Joyce, Walt Whitman, and Virginia Wolfe have taken the path of self-publishing rather than have their ideas forced into a corporate or sociopolitical mold.

The books and prose of the Hoffer Award are nominated by the people and judged by independent panels. Since its inception as the Writers' Notes Award, the Hoffer Award has grown in prominence. Winners of the “Hoffer” are given prizes, honors, and worldwide media exposure, as well as being covered in the annual anthology, Best New Writing.

The Hoffer Award will continue to be a platform for and the champion of the independent voice.