Welcome to the first Small Press Spotlight feature!  I’m very excited to start this series, and I hope it’s helpful to those of you who earnestly desire to support small/local/independent book publishing.

Today, the Spotlight is on Shade Mountain Press, an inclusive, inter-sectional feminist press publishing literary-quality work written by women.

smp_logo_home

The first thing you’ll notice in visiting the website is a great tagline: “a mob of scribbling women.”  Way back in 1855, Nathaniel Hawthorne (of Scarlet Letter fame) apparently complained about women taking over the publishing industry, so Shade Mountain Press is a nice retort.

Shade Mountain Press is devoted to promoting women’s voices.  Because women’s voices are still marginalized in the publishing industry, Shade Mountain publishes exclusively female writers, often focusing on stories that engage the reader politically, challenge the status quo, ask the “tough” questions, and bring to light stories that go unheard.  They actively seek authors who are women of color, women with disabilities, and women on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum.

In order to publish work of a high caliber, Shade Mountain publishes 1-2 books a year. In 2015, the book White Light by author Vanessa Garcia was named as one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year.

You can order any of their books via their website.  Books are available to order in print as well as e-formats.

I do definitely recommend Shade Mountain Press.  It’s so refreshing to see women supporting women and keeping the fight alive to push back against the marginalization of the female voice.

I’ve had the pleasure of reading and reviewing a Shade Mountain title, Not A Self-Help Book: The Misadventures of Marty Wu by Yi Shun Lai. Other titles and descriptions are below.

Robin Parks, Egg Heaven: Stories
Lyrical tales of diner waitresses and their customers, living the un-glamorous life in Southern California.

Lynn Kanter, Her Own Vietnam
Decades after serving as a U.S. Army nurse in Vietnam, a woman confronts buried wartime memories and unresolved family issues. Silver Award, INDIEFAB Book of the Year, War & Military Fiction.

Vanessa Garcia, White Light
A young Cuban-American artist distills her grief, rage, and love onto the canvas. An NPR Best Book of 2015. First Prize, 2016 International Latino Book Awards.

The Female Complaint: Tales of Unruly Women
Short story anthology featuring nonconformists, troublemakers, and other indomitable women. Edited by Rosalie Morales Kearns. Finalist, INDIEFAB Book of the Year.

Yi Shun Lai, Not a Self-Help Book: The Misadventures of Marty Wu
Marty Wu, compulsive reader of advice manuals, ricochets between a stressful job in New York and the warmth of extended family in Taiwan.

Mary A. Hood, All the Spectral Fractures
New and collected poems by the microbiologist/naturalist/poet. Forthcoming, November 2017.

Kirsten Imani Kasai, The House of Erzulie
Novel of obsessions, racial guilt, and family secrets on an 1850s Louisiana plantation. Forthcoming, February 2018.

To learn more about Shade Mountain Press, visit their website.  You can also follow them on Twitter and Facebook!