Founded in 1965, the University Press of Colorado, led by director Darrin Pratt, is devoted to advancing and disseminating knowledge globally by publishing significant scholarly works and making them accessible to a wide audience. A unique nonprofit cooperative publishing enterprise, UPC is supported, in part, by 15 different institutions of higher learning. From 1965 to 2011, the UPC membership consisted of several institutions within the state of Colorado. The press expanded significantly when USU and UA Fairbanks joined as members, in 2012 and 2021, respectively, and their presses, Utah State University Press and University of Alaska Press, became imprints under the UPC umbrella. In 2019, the University of Wyoming Press imprint was established with the addition of UWyo to their membership. Across its four imprints, UPC now publishes in the fields of archaeology and anthropology, ethnohistory, environmental justice, fiction, folklore, history, indigenous studies, literature, the natural sciences, poetry, and composition, rhetoric, and writing studies. As an independent organization, UPC has been able to be creative and flexible, the press says, as it maximizes opportunities for growth.

UPC is proud to have published a number of bestsellers that continue to be relied on in classrooms. These include Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts by Jospeh Harris; Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies edited by Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle; and Fighter in Velvet Gloves: Alaska Civil Rights Hero Elizabeth Peratrovich by Annie Boochever and Roy Peratrovich Jr. UPC has also had great success with a number of recreation and natural history guides, such as Outside in the Interior: An Adventure Guide for Central Alaska, second edition, by Kyle Joly; Manual of Grasses for North America edited by Mary E. Barkworth, Laurel K. Anderton, Kathleen M. Capels, Sandy Long, and Michael B. Piep; and Colorado Flora, Eastern Slope by William A. Weber and Ronald C. Wittmann.

Among the press's books that exemplify this year's UP Week theme of #StepUP are "K for the Way": DJ Rhetoric and Literacy for 21st Century Writing Studies by Todd Craig, "a revolutionary conversation about writing and communication in the twenty-first century," and Indigenous Voices in Digital Spaces by Cindy Tekobbe, which "applies Indigenous frameworks and epistemologies to online cultural movements through four case studies, including hashtags, memes, cryptocurrency, and digital artistry."

Upcoming books of note are Maya Blue: Unlocking the Mysteries of an Ancient Pigment by Dean E. Arnold, a "thorough, engaging, and accessible book," the press says, that chronicles the history of Maya Blue, one of the world's most unusual ancient pigments, and There Is No Making It Out: Stories-So-Far and the Possibilities of New Stories by Romeo García, a book that "speaks to the history and the legacy of modern/colonial and settlerizing designs and their continued dominant and haunting e/affect(s) on the ways we walk and see the world, as well as how we interact and exchange meaning with others."

There's also Beyond Cortés and Montezuma: The Conquest of Mexico Revisited edited by Vitus Huber and John F. Schwaller, "a compilation of nuanced reflections on the language, narratives, and memories of the conquista that balances the crimes of Spanish colonialism and asymmetries of power that existed within early New Spain with the abilities of Native peoples to resist, negotiate, and survive," and Brown Bears in Alaska's National Parks: Conservation of a Wilderness Icon edited by Grant V. Hilderbrand, Kyle Joly, David D. Gustine, and Nina Chambers, a lavishly illustrated book offering "a unique and thorough exploration of the conservation, ecology, and management of brown bears, including examinations of bear biology, human-bear interactions, population estimation methods, and the effects of climate change on bear populations."