To 50 Years at the Feminist Press

I began to see the Feminist Press as a way into a lost history, when Tillie Olsen gave me a copy of Life in the Iron Mills, a novella first published in 1961 and lost until that moment in 1971.

“Prologue: Memory, History, and the Missing Creative Bone” from A Life in Motion by Florence Howe

Florence Howe and the Feminist Press

Florence Howe—an eloquent activist, educator, editor, and writer—died in September 2020. Howe was a cofounder of the Feminist Press and a progenitor of the field of women’s studies. Her quote above, about writer Tillie Olsen passing her a book by another woman writer, is emblematic of the Feminist Press. For 50 years the press has been matching readers with the writers they should hear from. And it is committed to supporting writers and readers in the same spirit of solidarity as Olsen’s friendly, literary gesture to Howe.

Notable works of the press include the books in their Femme Fatales: Women Writing Pulp series. (From this series, I own two copies of burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee’s The G-String Murders, for some reason!) Feminist Press also has an imprint, Amethyst Editions, curated by Michelle Tea and dedicated to championing queer writers. And they have published four volumes of Women Writing Africa and Pussy Riot!’s Punk Prayer for Freedom, to name just a few more of their electic accomplishments!

So many of us are fortunate to be in the community and on the continuum created by the Press. In the mid-80s, I was working my way through graduate school (and becoming a union activist) in the basement of NYU’s main library. It was there I came across a Feminist Press advertisement for three “novels of the thirties.” The writers were all new to me, the idea of a “feminist press” intrigued me, and the books, which I purchased and happily devoured, resonated with me in a completely new way. Ultimately, one of the writers, Josephine Herbst, would become a focus of my dissertation.

The Anniversary Party

At “Fifty Years of Feminist Press: A Celebration of Revolutionary Publishing” on November 18th, the executive director of the Feminist Press, Jamia Wilson, teased out some of the Feminist Press’s magic. She asked the panelists—Camille Acker, Juli Delgado Lopera, Bishakh Som, and Michelle Tea—to talk about a Feminist Press book that helped shape their understanding of feminism. Two early books from the press, I Love Myself When I Am Laughing: a Zora Neale Hurston Reader and Witches, Midwives & Nurses by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, were among the books cited. But, as the discussion continued, it was clear that the bonds of feminism are not linear. They crisscross and interconnect, with Feminist Press providing a space for the “weird people,” the “unseen,” and the “underrepresented.” At the end of the program, Jamia Wilson stated, “I have a lot of faith in where we can go together.”

So, thank you to Florence Howe, the Feminist Press, the writers who have something different to say, the editors who discover them, and all of the people who read and champion them.

To read more from the WNBA-NYC, check out our blog!

Pamela J. Davis is a freelance editor and proofreader, who has a PhD in English and American Literature from New York University. Born and raised in Springfield, MA, she currently reads, writes, and walks around in New York City.