The Feminist Press is an independent nonprofit literary publisher that promotes freedom of expression and social justice. It publishes exciting writing by women and men who share an activist spirit and a belief in choice and equality. Founded in 1970, the Press began by rescuing “lost” works by writers such as Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance...

 and Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a prominent American sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform...

, and established its publishing program with books by American writers of diverse racial and class backgrounds. Since then it has also been bringing works from around the world to North American readers. The Press seeks out innovative, often surprising books that tell a different story. They operate out of the City University of New York

City University of New York

The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...

.

Founding

From the beginning, in partnership with women’s studies, The Feminist Press has provided the books and other educational materials essential to changing the content and focus of classroom education. By the end of the 1960s, both Florence Howe

Florence Howe

Florence Howe, American author, publisher, literary scholar and historian, is understood to be a nationally recognised leader of the contemporary feminist movement....

 and her husband Paul Lauter had taught in the Freedom Schools

Freedom Schools

Freedom Schools were temporary, alternative free schools for African Americans mostly in the South. They were originally part of a nationwide effort during the Civil Rights Movement to organize African Americans to achieve social, political and economic equality in the United States...

 in Mississippi, and Howe was already attempting to compile a mini-women’s studies curriculum for her writing students at Goucher College

Goucher College

Goucher College is a private, co-educational, liberal arts college located in the northern Baltimore suburb of Towson in unincorporated Baltimore County, Maryland, on a 287 acre campus. The school has approximately 1,475 undergraduate students studying in 31 majors and six interdisciplinary...

 in Baltimore.

As the 1970s approached, Howe was convinced that, just as she needed texts for teaching abut women, so would other educators. Her appeal to a number of university and trade publishers to issue a series of critical feminist biographies proved of no avail. Ultimately, the Baltimore Women’s Liberation, an active local group and publishers of a successful new journal, helped to raise money for the Press’s first publications.

In The Press’s founding years, Tillie Olsen

Tillie Olsen

Tillie Lerner Olsen was an American writer associated with the political turmoil of the 1930s and the first generation of American feminists.-Biography:...

 changed its course dramatically by giving Howe a photocopy of the 1861 pages of the Atlantic Monthly

The Atlantic Monthly

The Atlantic is an American magazine founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. It quickly achieved a national reputation, which it held for more than a century. It was important for recognizing and publishing new writers and poets,...

 containing an anonymously published novella called Life in the Iron Mills

Life in the Iron Mills

Life in the Iron Mills; or, the Korl Woman is a short story written by Rebecca Harding Davis in 1861, set in the factory world of the nineteenth century. It is one of the earliest American realist works, and is an important text for those who study labor and women's issues...

. In 1972, The Press issued this work by Rebecca Harding Davis

Rebecca Harding Davis

Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis was an American author and journalist. She is deemed a pioneer of literary realism in American literature. She graduated valedictorian from Washington Female Seminary in Pennsylvania...

 as the first of its series of rediscovered feminist literary classics. Olsen’s second suggestion, Daughter of Earth

Daughter of Earth

Daughter of Earth is an autobiographical novel by the American author and journalist Agnes Smedley. The novel chronicles the years of Marie Rogers’s tumultuous childhood, struggles in relationships with men , time working with the Socialist party, and involvement in the Indian independence...

 by Agnes Smedley

Agnes Smedley

Agnes Smedley was an American journalist and writer best known for her semi-autobiographical novelDaughter of Earth. She was also known for her sympathetic chronicling of the Chinese revolution...

, and Elaine Hedges’s suggestion, The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story by the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine. It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the nineteenth century toward women's physical...

 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a prominent American sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform...

, were published in 1973, and both of these have become staples of the American literature and women’s studies classrooms since.

The Feminist Press also publishes WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly

WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly

WSQ is a peer-reviewed academic journal of women's studies that was established in 1972. It is published by biannually The Feminist Press at the CUNY Graduate Center...

, an interdisciplinary academic journal.

Significant Works

Life in the Iron Mills

Life in the Iron Mills

Life in the Iron Mills; or, the Korl Woman is a short story written by Rebecca Harding Davis in 1861, set in the factory world of the nineteenth century. It is one of the earliest American realist works, and is an important text for those who study labor and women's issues...

 by Rebecca Harding Davis

Rebecca Harding Davis

Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis was an American author and journalist. She is deemed a pioneer of literary realism in American literature. She graduated valedictorian from Washington Female Seminary in Pennsylvania...

The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story by the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine. It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the nineteenth century toward women's physical...

 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a prominent American sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform...

Long Walks and Intimate Talks by Grace Paley

Grace Paley

Grace Paley was an American-Jewish short story writer, poet, and political activist.-Biography:Grace Paley was born in the Bronx to Isaac and Manya Ridnyik Goodside, who anglicized the family name from Gutseit on immigrating from Ukraine. Her father was a doctor. The family spoke Russian and...

Changes by Ama Ata Aidoo

Ama Ata Aidoo

Professor Ama Ata Aidoo, née Christina Ama Aidoo is a Ghanaian author and playwright.-Life:She grew up in a Fante royal household, the daughter of Nana Yaw Fama, chief of Abeadzi Kyiakor, and Maame Abasema. She was sent by her father to the Wesley Girls' High School in Cape Coast from 1961 to 1964...

Still Alive by Ruth Kluger

Ruth Klüger

Ruth Klüger is Professor Emerita of German at the University of California, Irvine. She was born in Vienna and, after the Nazi annexation of Austria, she was deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp together with her mother at the age of 11; her father had tried to flee abroad, but was...

La Respuestra by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz

We Walk Alone by Ann Aldrich

Brown Girl, Brownstones

Brown Girl, Brownstones

Brown Girl, Brownstones is the first novel by the internationally recognized writer Paule Marshall, published in 1959. It is about Barbadian immigrants in Brooklyn, N.Y.-Plot summary:...

 by Paule Marshall

Paule Marshall

Paule Marshall is an American author. She was born Valenza Pauline Burke in Brooklyn to Barbadian parents and educated at Girls High School, Brooklyn College and Hunter College . Early in her career, she wrote poetry, but later returned to prose...

Baghdad Burning by Riverbend

Series

• 2X2 Series

• Classic Feminist Writers

• Contemporary Classics by Women

• The Defiant Muse

• Femmes Fatales

• The Helen Rose Scheuer Jewish Women's Series

• Jewish Women Writers

• Women Changing the World

• Women's Lives, Women's Work

• Women Writing Africa Project

• Women Writing in India

• Women Writing the Middle East

Facts

• The Feminist Press was founded after Florence Howe received $100 in contributions in her mailbox.

• The Feminist Press is the longest surviving women’s publishing house in the world.

• The first book to be published was Barbara Danish’s The Dragon and the Doctor.

• Gloria Jacobs is the Executive Director of The Feminist Press.