he writes about his about his relation-
ship with his father.
Both Street Noise and Arsenal Pulp
publish books representing a variety of
marginalized voices, but even presses
focused on a particular community
may find themselves expanding into
the conversation around LGBTQ
issues. Dottir, for instance, was
founded in 2017 as a feminist press;
the name is Icelandic for daughter. But
this May it will publish Pass with
Care, a memoir by Cooper Lee
Bombardier, a transgender man,
that’s in large part about
masculinity.
For Dottir’s founder, Jennifer
Baumgardner, the book aligns well
with the publisher’s mission.
“Feminism to me is totally engaged
with manhood, and how men are
socialized into themselves,” she says.
“I’m really interested in having a lot
of space and breathing room, as a
feminist and as a feminist publisher, to
talk about manhood.”
Another newer press, Amazon
Publishing’s Topple, is helmed by
Transparent creator Jill Soloway.
Launched in 2018, Topple specializes
in books by women of color and people
who identify as queer or nonbinary.
Among its forthcoming titles is
Raising Them by Kyl Myers (Sept.), an account of the author’s
experience of raising her child without gender.
Topple may not have the independent bona fides of other
presses focused on marginalized communities, but Soloway says
that change can come even from large organizations like
Amazon. “A museum hires a woman of color. Amazon hires
more women, more queer people. There’s no institutional
change where people are just going to—change. You have to
replace the people who are the choosers with people are serious
about queerness, about race, about feminism.”
Part of Topple’s mission, Soloway says, is to make space for
an “intersectional gaze,” as distinct from the white cisgender
gaze that has historically shaped perceptions of the world. The
long list of marginalized communities “actually has its own
gaze, its own way of not only saying, ‘This how I feel,’ but, ‘This
is how it feels to have been object-ized my whole life.’ ”Queer enough?
Whether a publisher focuses on the LGBTQ community
specifically or on marginalized communities more broadly, itPut Your LGBTQ Books
Fi nger
on the
Pulse
of Publishing
everyth i ng you n eed to know.
every day.
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