The Carnegie Mellon University Press was founded by Gerald Costanzo, a professor in the Creative Writing program, in 1972 as Three Rivers Press. Now publishing for more than 50 years, the CMU Press was among the first to publish works by poets who would become Pulitzer Prize winners, including Rita Dove, Ted Kooser, Franz Wright, Stephen Dunn and Peter Balakian.  In 2024, the Carnegie Mellon University Press brand expanded to include other publishing ventures at the university and through its literary division continues its strong commitment to publishing literary works.

In terms of literary publishing, the Press features the following series:

• Carnegie Mellon Poetry Series
• Carnegie Mellon Classic Contemporaries Series (reissuing of significant early books by important contemporary poets and writers of short fiction, including Pulitzer Prize winners in Poetry Carolyn Kizer, James Tate, and Philip Levine; and National Book Award in Poetry winners Philip Levine, James Tate, Gerald Stern, Jean Valentine, and Terrance Hayes)
• Carnegie Mellon Series in Translation
• Carnegie Mellon Series in Short Fiction
• Poets in Prose Series (titles have included texts in the form of poets writing about their writing lives, poetry criticism, and guidebooks and handbooks about the writing of poetry)