Press Release
Spinifex Press to cease publishing new books!
After 15 years, Australia’s most successful feminist press will cease publishing new books. Publisher, Susan Hawthorne, says that in the past five years she and her partner Renate Klein have watched as feminist publishers around the world have closed their doors. "We resisted this and came up with strategies for increasing our visibility and turnover. We have survived criticism and marginalisation. What we cannot survive is lack of interest from media and all but the best bookshops."
Spinifex has 170 books in its catalogue, a long list of state, national and international awards, and a staggering number of translations and co-productions. In the last few weeks alone, Spinifex has accepted offers to translate titles into Russian, French and Slovenian, as well English-language releases in Asia and the USA.
Spinifex has published groundbreaking books on women’s health, including RU 486, menopause, HIV, cancer, female genital mutilation and violence against women. It published the first books on women and information technologies and on feminist perspectives on September 11. Its fiction and poetry authors include new and established writers from Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Botswana, South Africa, Philippines, and India and non-fiction writers from Australia, Egypt, Lebanon, USA, Germany, Japan, Canada and elsewhere. Through international anthologies, Spinifex has authors located in every continent. Spinifex has published books by Indigenous authors and on issues of importance to Indigenous women; it has published books by women with disabilities and books that focus on the politics of disability; it has published books on trade unions and books of importance to working class and poor women; it has published books by lesbians across fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
"The media pigeon holes us," says Susan Hawthorne, "because our publishing program includes lesbian books. They forget that lesbians play an important role in fostering social justice in Australia and internationally, and they forget that as lesbians we feel the impact of social injustice acutely and that is why we have published across such a broad range of issues, much of which is ignored."
"When we began, our mission statement was to publish controversial and innovative feminist books with an optimistic edge. We have done that, but after 15 years, we have decided to shift our focus to promoting and increasing the profile of the books we have already published. We will continue to publish those books that have already been contracted." Both Australian and overseas distribution will continue as usual, and in 2006 we will be publishing at least four books. These new titles will be distributed as all our other titles have been and continue to be. We do not intend to close the doors on Spinifex, but simply to cease publishing new books. We will continue to reprint titles and give them a new lease of life with new covers and new promotional campaigns. Spinifex titles remain available through their distributors: in Australia and Asia, Macmillan; in Aotearoa/NZ, Addenda; in USA and Canada, Independent Publishers Group; and in UK, Gazelle.
To arrange an interview, please contact Susan Hawthorne on 0418 506 645.
To find out more about what Spinifex will be doing over the coming year, read on…
Birthday Celebrations
Spinifex Press is turning Fifteen! Happy Birthday to us! To celebrate this very special occasion, we’re throwing ourselves a birthday party, and you’re invited.
From March 3-5, we will be hosting Story Passions: A weekend of women’s literary and arts festivities at the North Melbourne Town Hall Arts House. We have a very exciting program lined up, with sessions on Living Activism, Healthy Havens, Politics and Poetics, The Future of Feminism and Dramatic Divas.
Women will be coming from far and wide to present, perform, play and participate, so you won’t want miss out on this spectacular event. Full details, along with a list of the fantastic speakers and performers are inthe news section of our website.
Tell your friends, tell your colleagues, tell your students (and let us know if you would like promotional material to display) but don’t miss out, this is the event of the year, even if we do say so ourselves!
RECENT RELEASES
Holding Yawulyu: White Culture and Black Women's Law
by Zohl dé Ishtar
For two years, Zohl dé Ishtar lived in a one-room tin shed with the women elders of Wirrimanu. As their ‘Culture Woman’, Zohl assisted the elders in establishing and coordinating the Kapululangu Women’s Law and Culture Centre. Holding Yawulyu: White Culture and Black Women's Law tells the amazing story of Zohl’s journey as she documents White culture’s effects on Indigenous Women’s Law.
A multi-dimensional epic Holding Yawulyu (pronounced ya-wool-yu) layers Zohl’s observations with the history of Wirrimanu – from missionisation, through to bureaucracy, to the art and culture industry of today. What results is an insightful, disturbing and highly moving portrayal of life in an Aboriginal community that testifies to the reality that what is often misperceived as Indigenous dysfunction, is in fact the direct result of some very disturbing traits of White culture.
Holding Yawulyu is both a courageously honest portrayal of Zohl’s journey of recognising the role of her own culture, and the remarkable story of the women elders’ struggle to hold onto Yawulyu – Law – their culture, spirituality, ceremony, and way of life. Against seemingly insurmountable obstacles, they continually strive to maintain the integrity of this, their very being. To ‘grow up’ their young people ‘proper way’ so that they will be strong and whole.
Holding Yawulyu is a touching personal story of courage and resilience in the face of adversity. This book is a must for any researcher, as it re-defines methodologies, and what it means to be an active participant in the culture you are ‘studying’. But it is also essential reading for anyone who wishes to better understand the competing interests that make Indigenous and White interactions complex, often painful, and fraught with problems.
Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 in recognition of her collaboration with Indigenous women across Australia and the Pacific since 1979, Zohl dé Ishtar has travelled extensively, conducting research in 27 countries. She sailed to Moruroa to protest French nuclear testing and has published Pacific Women Speak Out for Independence and Denuclearisation and Daughters of the Pacific. She has also been a puppeteer with a horse-drawn circus, ridden a bicycle throughout Europe on the World Bike Ride for Peace, and lived at Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp. Zohl will be speaking at Story Passions.
RRP: $32.95
If sheer detail, empathy, commitment and a fierce intelligence count for anything, then Zohl dé Ishtar has produced a groundbreaking insight into the traditional lives of Aboriginal women. –Sydney Morning Herald
...such a beautiful book, it is full of treasures and written so well, so clearly and so gently, but is uncompromising. Do you know that feeling when you read a book that just fills you? Like The God of small things, so poetic, so filling. This book is like that for me. It is such a rare feeling, you have to read so much other stuff, to discover this feeling. The feeling is recognizable, and I have to tell myself to slow down, to not 'guts' the book, to not read it so fast. –Ryl Harrison
The Butterfly Effect
by Susan Hawthorne
The butterfly effect is a concept from physics in which small actions can have enormous consequences: the flap of a butterfly’s wing in one part of the world can cause devastating storms on the other side. Susan Hawthorne explores this idea by looking at the effect of the word "lesbian" which can destroy families and bring down governments, and is a force full of vitality and world-changing creativity.
She evokes the ancient worlds of pre-Vedic and Sapphic lovers, of Mediaeval jonglaresas, and nuns "fingering petals and hips" as well as the contemporary world of circuses, global politics, friendship, betrayal and death. These poems fold in on themselves, exploding through concentric rings of meaning. They are also an experiment in form, opening out the conversation on language.
The Butterfly Effect is a marvellous journey through a labyrinth of codes. Here are poems about travels in India, meditations on physics, and a history of lesbian culture. Here too are poems of loss, betrayal, and celebration, speaking through the individual as well as the collective life. Performance poems — works that form the textual movements for aerials and circus — thread throughout the collection. Hypertextual paths fork, meander, play and interplay.
Susan Hawthorne is the author and editor of numerous books. When she is not working in publishing or academia Susan Hawthorne is indulging in her passion for aerials and has performed with the Women’s Circus and the Performing Older Women’s Circus and trained with Circus Oz. She will be speaking and performing at Story Passions.
RRP: $24.95
Woven into her beautiful lines about discovery and community, the destruction of life, cruelty and the intimacy of her mother’s death, Hawthorne is telling us that love and courage do triumph; love in all its forms, including the punishable love of lesbians. Only connect and the understanding will spread; we have beauty to contemplate in these poems, but the thread of urgency, of the necessity of witness is strong and insinuating. Be enchanted, be moved but also the poems speak - acknowledge and be moved to action. –Theresa Wolfwood
It’s the immediacy, the simplicity, the accessibility of these poems that appeals to me the most. The way Susan is as able to describe an emotional response, Tears strolled down my face, a moment of joy, we suck at mangoes straight off the tree, as she’s capable of making a political point, and there’s no one who wants to listen / to the lesbian who’s been tortured… All within the framework of our own lesbian cultural parameters. As we read and are reminded of our own losses we’re comforted by some universal sense of our tenuous but robust place in the world. –Jean Taylor
Spinifex books are available at all good book stores, or through our secure website: www.spinifexpress.com.au where you can also browse our whole catalogue.
A Spin Around the World
We are delighted to report that Betty McLellan’s world-wide best-seller HELP! I’m Living with a -Man- Boy is now being translated into Slovenian. This makes 14 different translations of this book! Betty McLellan will be speaking at Story Passions.
We are also very pleased to announce that The Screaming of the Innocent, by Unity Dow, will be translated into French.
UPCOMING RELEASES
Defiant Birth: Women Who Resist Medical Eugenics
By Melinda Tankard Reist
Imagine: you’re pregnant, excited and looking forward to the birth of a much-wanted child. The doctor suggests you have an abortion…
Today’s society demands physical perfection from all and regards medical and scientific technologies as saviours to be embraced whatever the cost. To have a child who has been diagnosed as disabled is deemed not just unnecessary, but careless and even immoral.
Defiant Birth tells the courageous stories of women who continued their pregnancies despite intense pressure from doctors, family members and social expectations. These women were told they shouldn’t have their babies because of a perceived imperfection in the child, or because their own disabilities do not fit within the parameters of what a mother should be. In the face of silent disapproval and even open hostility, they have confronted the stigma of disability and had their children anyway.
Some of the writers tell of grave misdiagnosis, others of life-changing experiences, discovering the joy and love in children considered unworthy of life.
Melinda Tankard Reist dares to expose how eugenics is practised today, and how it is condoned, even expected, by mainstream society. More than ever before, doctors are diagnosing babies in the womb as less than perfect. But what if the only ‘cure’ they offer will end the child’s life.
Melinda will be speaking at Story Passions.
Defiant Birth will be released in March 2006, launch details below.
RRP: $27.95
HONOUR: Crimes, Paradigms, and Violence against Women
Edited by Sara Hossain and Lynn Welchman
THIS BOOK IS NOT MADE UP!
Norma Khouri brought the issue of honour killings into the news in Australia. Whatever one thinks of Khouri, the story she had to tell was based on the reality of many women’s lives, not only in Jordan but also in Italy, Kurdistan, Latin America, the UK, South Asian and Nordic countries.
The purpose of this book is to support human rights activists, policymakers and lawyers by explaining what constitutes honour crimes and how they vary across different country contexts. It develops a human rights framework as an alternative to a cultural relativist approach. It urges the reform of many national legal systems which enable men to rely on the pretext of ‘honour crimes’ in order to get a reduced sentence. Like other acts of violence against women, they have no justification.
Sara Hossain is a barrister practicing at the High Court Division at the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. Lynn Welchman is a Senior Lecturer in Islamic Law at the Law Department of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.
‘The volume helps to debunk the view that honour crime is a ‘Muslim’ phenomenon, that it is separate from the issue of violence against women and that the struggle for women’s human rights is somehow ‘alien’ to non-western or minority communities. Thoughtful and thought provoking, the volume is an indispensable tool for anyone seriously committed to eradicating violence against women in all communities.’ –Pragna Patel, Southall Black Sisters, London.
Honour will be released in March 2006.
RRP: $39.95
RU486
As the Australians on our list will know, the ‘abortion drug’ RU 486 is back in the spotlight, with many unsubstantiated claims being made. If you would like to know the facts about this drug concoction, you obviously can’t go past one of the few books based on actual research, rather than a purely moral or political stance. RU 486: Myths Morals and Misconceptions was researched and written by Doctors Renate Klein, Janice Raymond and Lynette Dumble, and was commended in the Human Rights Awards for non-fiction in 1991. The book was translated into German and was also released by publishers in USA and Bangladesh, such is its international importance. It is now out of print, but in the interests of community awareness of this drug and its consequences, we have made it available on our website. If you would like to know the truth about RU 486, read it at www.spinifexpress.com.au
Spinifex Author News and Events
Congratulations to Patricia Sykes, who was recently awarded an Asialink Writer's Residency Fellowship, which enables her to spend four months in Malaysia. Trish’s latest book Modewarre: Home Ground was recently shortlisted for the Judith Wright Award.
Sandy Jeffs will be participating in Poets and Presses, at La Mama Theatre, 205 Faraday St, Carlton, Victoria, on Monday February 27 at 8.00pm
Drs Cathie Dunsford and Karin Meissenburg are holding a writing workshop: From Conception to Climax: Easter Writing School, The Writing Retreat, Auckland. Email dpcglobal@aol.com for further details. We are very honoured that Cathie and Karin are also organising Manawa Toa: Heart Warriors- a Dedication to Spinifex Press, for an invited audience at Mohala Gardens, on March 4th.
We are very proud to report that A Girl’s Best Friend: The Meaning of Dogs in Women’s Lives, has inspired an International Women’s Day pooch-themed event:
A GIRL’S BEST FRIEND Morning tea and celebration will be held in Hobart, on the Parliament House Lawns on March 13 at 10:30 a.m. Entry is $15 for adults, $5 for children, free for dogs. Proceeds go to the Hobart Dogs’ Home. More information on this fabulous event inour news section
BOOK LAUNCHES
Spinifex Press & Readings would like to invite you and your friends to the launch of
Defiant Birth: Women Who Resist Medical Eugenics
by Melinda Tankard Reist
6:30 pm Wednesday 1 March
Readings Books & Music, 309 Lygon St, Carlton, Victoria
Defiant Birth will be introduced by Dr Renate Klein with readings by contributors, Leisa Whitaker and Teresa Streckfuss.
Please RSVP to (03) 9329 6088 or women@spinifexpress.com.au by 27 February 2006
Defiant Birth may also be launched Canberra, stay tuned to www.spinifexpress.com.au or http://defiantbirth.com for details
International Women’s Day
Happy International Women’s Day for March 8! To celebrate this much-deserved day, we have a special offer for The Spin readers. Buy any two books from our catalogue, and get a third FREE, and pay NO POSTAGE! Simply phone, fax or email your order, and mention this IWD offer, to get your third book absolutely free.
Phone: 03) 9329 6088 fax: 03) 9329 9238 email: women@spinifexpress.com.au
Spinifex Press Booklet
As part of our 15th birthday celebrations, our wonderful printers, McPhersons Printing Group, have sponsored the printing of a Spinifex booklet that outlines some of our successes, and includes contributions by authors, colleagues in the book industry and readers. If you would like a copy of this booklet posted or emailed to you, let us know your details and we would be happy to send you one.
After the booklet had been printed, we received the following contributions, which we thought we would share with you here.
Congrats for fifteen years of Spinifex publications. Your books have changed my life, given me a sense of hope, that there are women out there like me who are fighting to change this world, against all the odds. –Merci Angeles, Philippines
Story Reality About Spinifex : The Press That Opens Doors
Evelyne Accad
I first got involved with Spinifex in the middle nineties when I was asked to write an article on Sexuality and War in the Middle East, which had become one of my specialties at the time. When I saw the book it had been published in: Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed. (Edited by Diane Bell and Renate Klein) I felt truly great about being included in such a volume with women whose writing I respected and admired, in a politically committed collection of remarkable essays.
My overall feeling then was: here is finally an editor one can be proud of, not afraid to voice strong yet well-researched writings with an avant-garde approach. I find my place in it. I can express myself freely like in no other place.
And when my book The Wounded Breast: Intimate Journeys through Cancer was accepted for publication at Spinifex, I felt I could do things like I had not been allowed to do with my other publishers (this book had first come out in French as Voyages en Cancer (Préface Yves Velan). Paris: L'Harmattan, Tunis: Aloès, Beirut: An-Nahar, 2000. Phœnix Literary Award 2001) in Paris, Tunis and Lebanon. I could include pictures of my mutilation and of friends' wounds to cancer. I could be creative in the page layout and show the various voices (letters from friends, quotes from books, remarks from readers, etc.) of the text in a visually suggestive way also, in what I consider a truly feminist way of writing.
Then came September 11 and to my knowledge Spinifex was the first press to come out with a volume on this painful topic with a truly feminist approach (September 11, 2001: Feminist Perspectives, Eds Susan Hawthorne and Bronwyn Winters). Here again I found I could speak out without censorship and was able to express myself in an essay entitled ‘The Phallus of September Eleven’.
I truly feel that Spinifex has maintained a degree of commitment, honesty and beauty not found with other publishers. Our world is certainly a better place thanks to them.
Bronwyn Whitlocke, Chinese Medicine and Shiatsu Therapist.
Just when you thought Spinifex couldn’t possibly get any more diverse or interesting, our North Melbourne office is now part-time home to Bronwyn Whitlocke, Chinese Medicine and Shiatsu Therapist.
Bronwyn is the author of Chinese Medicine for Women, and Shiatsu Therapy for Pregnancy. She will be available at 504 Queensberry St North Melbourne on Thursdays from 10am to 6pm, and every second Saturday from 10am to 1pm.
So for all your Traditional Chinese Medicine and Shiatsu Therapy needs, call Bronwyn Whitlocke on 9503 4385 to make an appointment.
If you can’t make it to North Melbourne, Bronwyn’s other clinic is at 3 Galtum Ave, Bentleigh, same phone number for appointments.
Spotlight on…
Our feature book for this edition is Not For Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography, edited by Christine Stark and Rebecca Whisnant. Released in 2004 in Australia, and 2005 elsewhere, with the US release dedicated to the memory of Andrea Dworkin, Not for Sale is an international anthology which brings together research, heartbreaking testimonies from survivors of the sex industry, and theory from over thirty men and women – activists, survivors, academics and journalists. Not For Sale is groundbreaking in its breadth, analysis and honesty.
Debunking the assumption that ‘sex work’ is harmless entertainment for men and liberating work for women, Not For Sale argues that prostitution and pornography cause harm to those involved and undermine movements for human equality and meaningful sexual relationships.
Not For Sale analyses the connection of pornography and prostitution with broader social issues, such as racism, poverty, colonisation and globalisation, unbridled corporatisation and militarism.
Contributors include: Andrea Dworkin, Chong Kim, Donna Hughes, Seiya Morita, Gail Dines, Melissa Farley, John Stoltenberg, D.A. Clarke, Mary Sullivan, Joyce Wu, Sheila Jeffreys, Jane Caputi and Robert Jensen.
Not For Sale normally sells for $34.95, but phone, fax or email us to order a copy, mention The Spin, and get it for just $30.
Phone: 03) 9329 6088 fax: 03) 9329 9238 email: women@spinifexpress.com.au
Opportunities for women writers
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Homelands: Women's Journeys Toward Meanings of Home (tentative title)
Edited by Patricia Justine Tumang and Jenesha de Rivera
To be published by Seal Press, USA Winter 2007
For as long as people have left their homes and returned, there have been stories written about journeying to the homeland. Yet, what does this journey look like when a homeland no longer exists? When its borders are policed by government-enforced laws and restrictions? When the memory of a physical place is too far removed, or possibly forgotten?
This anthology will explore women's journeys to their "homeland(s)"specific geographic locations, an imagined community, part of one's identity/ body, or a memory. The editors are looking for personal essays written in first-person that investigate the complexities of how women experience, remember, or imagine journeys to their homelands. The essays will be told from the perspective of a journey. We are not looking for submissions on travel adventures abroad. Rather, we are looking for unique, well-crafted personal essays from women of all races, classes, ethnicities, abilities, sexualities, religions, and nationalities, who have been transformed by their journeys&Mac220;physical, spiritual, political, or imagined&Mac220;to their homeland(s).
Deadline: April 1, 2006
For more information, including submission details, please email homelandanthology@gmail.com.
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