We have published over 125 books by lesbians. Here are just some of the highlights…
A history of feminist and lesbian thinking from the 1970s to the present
Across almost 50 years of writing, Susan Hawthorne’s essays on lesbian culture and politics take the reader on a journey through the concerns of radical feminists engaged in the Women’s Liberation Movement. Not only does she trace the experiments of lesbians creating a vibrant woman-loving culture, but she also traces the backlash against lesbians and a history of violence perpetrated by the state, corporations and individual men.
She begins with a recollection of a rape in her pre-feminist days, followed by a critique of the institution of heterosexuality and the role of lesbian feminism as a strategy. She is soon asking questions about lesbian existence. The essays span reflections on lesbian literature and the development of lesbian culture, including the politics of physical expression in circus.
Susan Hawthorne writes about cultural appropriation, depoliticisation and the erasure of lesbian inventiveness. She researches violence against lesbians including rape, torture and murder and the way in which this violence is ignored and often distorted by the media.
Her investigations include lesbian refugees, lesbian economics, violation of lesbian human rights and the impact of the transgender industrial complex on the existence of lesbians as a political force.
SEPTEMBER 2024 | ISBN 9781925950984 | Paperback | 360 pages | 152mm x 228mm
It’s 1974 when 20-year-old Grace arrives in London determined to shrug off her Australian past and reinvent herself. While embracing her new life in the Free Republic of Beltonia, a street of communal squats, she’s haunted by the unbearable thought that she might be a lesbian – a fate she considers almost worse than death. Before long, she falls (secretly) in love with Marigold, upper class, enigmatic and avowedly straight. When Marigold mysteriously disappears without a trace, the search for her leads Grace to a life-changing epiphany.
Evoking the spirit of 1970s London through the world of squatting and political protests, street parties, encounter groups and gurus, and the mayhem of a rackety publishing outfit where Grace gets a job, Grace and Marigold is both witty and moving in its exploration of the inner turmoil, and ultimate liberation of a young woman’s journey to self-acceptance.
6 AUGUST 2024 | ISBN 9781922964045 | Paperback | 272 pages | 228 x 152 mm
To an observer I am simply a sleeping patient in a hospital bed in recovery. One of rows and rows and rooms full of us. But what small miracles are occurring? How do we right ourselves, our physical bodies, and bring the rest—psyche, soul, ether—into alignment? Protection is required lest one surfaces with fault lines …
Loretta Smith is renowned as the bestselling author of A Spanner in the Works, the biography of Alice Anderson, the ‘garage girl’. Now in Corpus in Extremis, Loretta shares the details of her own fascinating and incredible life; a life in which she has had to negotiate the pain, physical restrictions, and medical interventions of Osteogenesis Imperfecta, also known as brittle bone disease.
She shows that despite being a patient for a lifetime, she has survived, and even thrived with an imaginative brain more agile than her body. You will be charmed, challenged, and will laugh out loud at her wit and ingenuity and as she embarks on travel, engages in work, grapples with family and relationships and takes up creative endeavours, all while enduring continuous medical treatments.
Loretta explores what it is to reside in a body pushed to the extreme; what it is to be human, to be fractured, to be whole and to heal. She lucidly argues that nobody escapes being disabled, disenfranchised or othered in one way or another.
As long as we stand in light there is always shadow, always something to challenge truth, justice, knowledge, physical and mental wellbeing. As humans we are at once strong, yet vulnerable, immutable and forever changing.
Corpus in Extremis is an extraordinary story of survival and resilience against considerable challenges centred around Smith’s brittle bones. Despite all, she tells her memoir with vigour and good humour taking the ‘dis’ out of disability and wiping the floor with it.
—Sara Hardy, author of The Unusual Life of Edna Walling and A Secretive LifeThis exquisitely written memoir tells compelling tales about broken bones and heartbreak, as well as about one extraordinary woman’s strong-willed and creative mind and quiet courage. While Smith navigates difficulties unimaginable to most of us in her everyday, she’s woven out of their painful threads such a vital story of a passionately lived life that I found it difficult to part with the book when it came to an end.
—Lee Kofman, author of The Writer Laid Bare and Imperfect
11 JUNE 2024 | ISBN 9781922964069 | Paperback | 200 pages | 152 mm x 228 mm
What do you do when you fall in love with your next-door neighbour? You peer at each other through a hole in the fence and eventually climb over.
Sybil is a member of The Good-Hearted Gardeners, a Society for Well-Meaning Efforts for the Betterment of Language and the Salvation of the Planet, which her lover, Demo, is allowed to join. It’s funded by MI5, who ask them to monetise and weaponise the English language. Soon afterwards they discover that English is even more widespread than anyone had thought. Even the birds and the fish, the cows and the kangaroos can speak it – when they choose. The Good-Hearted Gardeners set about trying to talk to anyone – crows, magpies, robins, goldfish, cows, horses, rats, mice – who will talk to them.
With climate change and technology gone mad, what’s in store is a frightening scenario that threatens everyone – humans, animals, plants. Can the headlong rush to extinction be halted?
When the birds, and the cows and the horses and the mice and all the rest come together, much is made possible. But at what cost? Will the planet and its inhabitants be saved?
A comedic allegory for our future.
NOVEMBER 2023 | ISBN 9781922964007 | Paperback | 112 pages | 148 x 210 mm
Do we want to live in a world without birdsong? The pesticides, the coal mines, the clear-felling forestry industry, the industrial farmers are destroying the earth with their insistence on profit. But what point is profit on a dead and silent planet?
In this enlightening yet devastating book, Susan Hawthorne writes with clarity and incisiveness on how patriarchy is wreaking destruction on the planet and on communities. The twin mantras of globalisation and growth expounded by the neoliberalism that has hijacked the planet are revealed in all their shabby deception.
Backed by meticulous research, the author shows how so-called advances in technology are, like a Trojan horse, used to mask sinister political agendas that sacrifice the common good for the shallow profiteering of corporations and mega-rich individuals.
The biotechnologists see the lure of cure, rising share prices and profits.
She details how women, lesbians, people with disabilities, Indigenous peoples, the poor, refugees and the very earth itself are being damaged by the crisis of patriarchy that is sucking everyone into its vortex. Importantly, this precise and insightful volume also shows what is needed to get ourselves out of this spiral of destruction: a radical feminist approach with compassion and empathy at its core.
Shame is an emotion of the powerless because they cannot change the rules.
The book shows a way out of the vortex: it is now up to the collective imagination and action of people everywhere to take up the challenges Susan Hawthorne shows are needed.
This is a vital book for a world in crisis and should be read by everyone who cares about our future.
NOVEMBER 2020 | ISBN 9781925950168 | Paperback | 152 mm x 228 mm | 196 pages
“I am in the very fortunate position of having been able to contribute to two waves of feminism: The Women’s Liberation Movement and the new wave that is taking place now.”
Trigger Warning: My Lesbian Feminist Life is both an engaging autobiography and a fascinating account of feminist history. From the heady days of the Women’s Liberation Movement through to the backlash against radical feminism as neoliberal laissez-faire attitudes took hold. Fast forward to the current re-examination of feminism in light of the #MeToo movement and an emerging new wave of radical feminism.
Sheila Jeffreys' bold account makes it clear that the feminism and lesbianism she has championed for decades is needed more than ever. With honesty and frankness, she tells of victories and setbacks in her unrelenting commitment to women’s freedom from men’s violence, especially the violence inherent in pornography and prostitution. We also learn what her steadfastness has cost her in terms of personal and professional rewards.
Trigger Warning places radical feminism within a cultural, social and intellectual context while also taking us on a personal journey. Sheila Jeffreys has tirelessly crossed the globe to advance radical feminist theory and practice and we are invited to share in the intellectual and political crossroads she has encountered during her life.
Accessible yet detailed and rigorous, this landmark volume is essential reading for everyone who has ever wondered what radical feminism really is.
SEPTEMBER 2020 | ISBN 9781925950205 | Paperback | 234 x 153mm | 240 pages
“What characterizes women as a group is our colonized status. To be colonized is not to think for oneself...in short, not to exist.“
Winner, 2019, The Griffin Prize for Lifetime Achievement
Nicole Brossard is known internationally for her writings on feminism, on lesbian existence and on writing. This edition released for a new wave of feminist outrage is a book full of spirit, energy, insight and cheek. She is a major voice in contemporary literature with incisive and inspiring essays about feminist imagination and culture.
Nicole Brossard writes, "I believe there's only one explanation for all of these texts: my desire and my will to understand patriarchal reality and how it works, not for its own sake but for its tragic consequences in the lives of women, in the life of the spirit. Years of anger, revolt, certitude and conviction are in The Aerial Letter, years of fighting against the screen which stands in the way of women's energy, identity and creativity."
2020 | ISBN 9781925950106 | Paperback | 152 x 229 mm | 144 pages
In the cold winter of 1875, two rebellious spirits travel from the pale sunlight of England to the raw heat of Australia. Harriet Rowell (age 23) and Alice Moon (age 20) were champion swimmers in a time when women didn’t go into the sea; they were athletic and strong in a time when women believed men who told them if they didn’t bind their bodies in whalebone corsets they would fall over or ruin their childbearing purpose; and they were in love in a time when many women were in love with each other but held such love secretly, for fear of retribution.
In Australia, they will achieve their freedom and create a path for others to follow. With Alice’s wealth, they open a Women’s Gymnasium and begin to teach mothers and daughters how to be strong; daring them to throw off the shackles of fashion and social laws that bind their natural female bodies and minds. With courageous defiance and rebellious natures, Harriet and Alice take on the world at a dangerous time for women’s freedom of expression.
Love ends. Alice breaks free from Harriet’s life and pursues her own destiny with new friends, as an author living in Sydney. Harriet, rejected and in despair, sells up and futilely follows her and thus, while struggling to come to terms with their painful separation, tragedy strikes. Alice, who all her life has laughed in the face of death and danger, is found dead in her bed. She is 37. Thrown into turmoil, her female friends build a wall of silence around the shocking death. Their suspicions rest upon the powerful, chauvinistic scientist, John McGarvie Smith with whom Alice had been working in her newfound capacity as a journalist. They leave a public accusation on her gravestone, a clue for a future woman to bring justice. I am that woman.
2019 | ISBN 9781925581713 | Paperback | 276 pages | 234 x 153 mm
A love letter from Kate to Mercedes. Mercedes is shot in a dawn raid on their home in Melbourne. Kate is arrested. In her despair of not knowing if Mercedes is alive or dead Kate writes to her, about her, about their lives. She invents stories and rearranges the rich mythic traditions of Greece.
This is a novel of resilience in the face of trauma and uncertainty.
2017 | ISBN 9781925581089 | Paperback | 232 x 154 mm | 192 pp
This stunning literary debut, voiced by a lesbian gangster Donna and her streetwise daughter Aurora, is steeped in the gang and gun culture of Manchester's criminal underworld. It is both an unforgettable love story and an unputdownable revenge thriller.
Donna and Carla run the all-female Bronte Close Gang, carving out their own empire in the toughest streets of Manchester. But when Carla is gunned down for seducing the wife of a local gangster, it is left to Donna to keep the gang together, take care of Carla's ten-year-old daughter, Aurora, and seek retribution for her murder.
A tale of friendship, survival and finding out how far you'd go to avenge and protect those you love, We Go Around in the Night and Are Consumed by Fire is a thrillingly original crime novel that unfolds at breakneck speed - at once furious, tender and heartbreaking.
2017 | ISBN 9781925581188 | Paperback | 288 pages | 195 x 130mm
but I am madness
and madness is me
it holds you captive
like a hapless bunny
caught in the headlights.
In this moving collection of poems, award-winning writer Sandy Jeffs shares her journey through madness over four decades, drawing inspiration from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and the motley gathering of characters at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Both delightful and insightful, playful and serious, witty and whimsical,The Mad Poet’s Tea Party provides a devastating commentary on how our society treats those with mental illness from the perspective of someone who has experienced all its interventions. It captures in poetic form the enigmas and contradiction in madness.
2015 | ISBN 9781742199498 | Paperback | 210 x 148 mm | 82 pages
Sydney, Milsons Point, 1926. Entire streets are being demolished for the building of the Harbour Bridge. Ellis Gilbey, landlady by day, gardening writer by night, is set to lose everything. Only the faith in the book she’s writing, and hopes for a garden of her own, stave off despair. As the tight-knit community splinters and her familiar world crumbles, Ellis relives her escape to the city at sixteen, landing in the unlikely care of self-styled theosophist Minerva Stranks.
When artist Rennie Howarth knocks on her door seeking refuge from a stifling upper-class life and an abusive husband, Ellis glimpses a chance to fulfil her dreams. The future looms uncertain while the past stays uncannily in pursuit.
This beautiful novel evokes the hardships and the glories of Sydney’s past and tells the little-known story of those made homeless to make way for the famous bridge. Peopled by bohemians and charlatans, earthy folk and fly-by-nighters, The Floating Garden is about shedding secrets, seizing second chances, and finding love amongst the ruins.
2015 | 9781742199368 | Paperback | 256 pages | 146 x 210mm
Remember The Tarantella is a remarkable work. It's learned and frivolous, female not feminine, silly and serious. Written in several strands of narrative, the many characters create a space as if reading were a dance party. Story is not the main objective. Private conversations and thoughts are always within earshot of the rhythm of others, like the stamping of feet and the beat of the music. This is concerto-like poetry; many instruments of different tones assist the reader to know who is who.
2011 | ISBN 9781876756932 | Paperback | 204 x 132 mm | 300 pages
You will not elude me. I will measure your every dimension, I will trace your smallest lines. I will undo you from the inside. You will feel it like waves running across your floorboards, you will feel it like water rising through your walls, you will feel it like a sudden disorientation, you will wonder what happened to your foundations.
An obsessive-compulsive cartographer trapped in the mapping of her own house. A painter turned codebreaker trying to find the lover she lost in the war. Two sisters on a collision course.
In My Sister Chaos two sisters escape an unnamed war-torn country into separate lives of exile. The cartographer is obsessed with keeping the world in order, but finds it unraveling under her own demands. Her sister, an artist, arrives unexpectedly. Her very presence is a sign of chaos for the cartographer. But in spite of this, the sister has a firm grip on the real world, and a greater connection to the past. Chaos and order in tension provide the scaffolding for this compelling work of fiction. Presented within a world of obsession and trauma it asks whether any of us is immune to the forces of destruction.
Winner: Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction (USA)
Shortlisted: Dobbie Literary Award
Finalist: Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Debut Fiction (USA)
2010 | ISBN 9781876756840 | Paperback | 200 x 130 mm | 214 pages
Zest for Life draws on lesbians’ experiences of menopause to highlight how lesbians, particularly at midlife, are invisibilised in society at large. Many writers and researchers have critically analysed the medical construction of menopause, yet even they fail to ask whether the issues are the same for lesbians. Zest for Life includes the voices of lesbians who tell us that despite lesbian invisibility and homophobia, many are resisting current standards that exclude them. The experiences of these women challenge negative, stereotypical views of menopause and add a new positive dimension to the presently narrow and medicalised view of women at midlife. An important uplifting book both for lesbians and heterosexual women as well as health professionals which shows that menopause need not be a time of despair.
2005 | ISBN 9781876756468 | Paperback | 200 x 130 mm | 235 pages
eBook Available
For more paperback copies, please visit IPG Book in the US or Gazelle Book Services in the U
Judy Horacek’s work … is a serious challenge to the established order. — Dale Spender
Life on the Edge is a whole book of laughter by one of Australia’s most irrepressible cartoonists. Judy Horacek can make you laugh about love and loss, about science and postmodernism, about serious social issues and the light-hearted events of life. They will make you laugh on the way to heaven, or the revolution, or over the edge.
2003 | ISBN 9781876756413 | Paperback | 222 x 182 mm | 96 pages
Poppy Sinclair is approaching fifty, and mostly loves her life; teaching young children, living in her Auckland home, intimately connected to family and friends. After a fairytale romance with Kate ends tragically, she reshapes her life to living alone. Still, you can't shut out love, and with the arrival of a surprise visitor, anything can happen. An evocative look like at life and love, Poppy's Progress is a delightful story of a woman coming to terms with loss and discovering that you can be surprised, even by those you are closest to.
2002 | ISBN 9781876756284 | Paperback | 200 x 130 mm | 184 pages
Janice Raymond offers a vision of female friendship that is as exhilarating as it is controversial. In this feminist classic, she explores the many manifestations of friendship between women, including the ancient Greek hetairai, the sisterhood of medieval nuns and the marriage resisters of China. Thousands of women have created their own communities and destinies through friendship. She also examines the contemporary women's movement and its networks and friendships – as well as the forces operating against friendship between women. A tough and clear-sighted analysis, and a book to read again and again.
2001 | ISBN 9781876756086 | Paperback | 230 x 154 mm | 275 pp
VERY SLOW STOCK - EBOOK AVAILABLE
A Spinifex feminist classic, and winner of the Angus and Robertson manuscript prize.
Growing up in a rural working-class home, Maureen Craig rebels against her angry mother, the privileges of her favoured brother and the relentless conformity of 1950s Australia. University promises a new world both terrifying and exhilarating in its challenges. She explores her sexuality and sets out to make a place for herself in the world. Passionate, funny and heartbreaking, this remarkable novel traces a young woman’s turbulent coming of age.
Originally published under the pseudonym Elizabeth Riley. This edition includes an Introduction by Harriet Malinowitz and an Afterword by the author.
2001 | ISBN 9781876756147 | Paperback | 197 x 130 mm | 256 pages
In the nineteenth century Charles Dickens wrote his novels as serials; in the late twentieth century Merilee Moss conjures up a new kind of serial fiction: of ghosts, of crime, of satire and of lesbian desire.
When the ghostly Fedora interrupts Julie Barnard's morning coffee in Brunswick Street, Julie's life is set to change. An out-of-work PI, Julie is seduced by Fedora's French accent and flamboyant hats, but soon discovers that wearing beautiful hats is a dangerous activity.
2001 | ISBN 9781876756048 | Paperback | 200 x 130 mm | 88 pages
The C-Word is an honest and forthright account of cancer. It deals with the loneliness the partner of a sufferer faces, the gruelling treatments of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and the terror and calm of facing death. A story of a powerful lesbian partnership, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of community.
2000 | ISBN 9781875559992 | Paperback | 200 x 130 mm | 291 pages
I had thought once that I felt most at home in a plane in mid-air, but that isn't true. I belong to India and to the West. Both belong to me and both reject me. I have to make sense of what has been and what there is.
Suniti Namjoshi traverses the cultures of the East and of the West. She muses on the patterns of her life, and of the impact of colonisation, both the resistances and the acceptances of it. Growing up a princess in the ruling house of Maharashtra, the two most important relationships in her life were with her grandmother, the Ranisaheb, and with Goja, the servant woman who slept beside her bed. When she was ten, her test pilot father was killed in an air accident and Suniti was sent away to boarding school. After working in the Indian Civil Service for some years, she decided that she wanted to be a poet and she moved to the West. In the US and Canada she became just another brown-skinned immigrant without the privileges of her childhood. In beautifully crafted prose, Suniti Namjoshi converses in her head with Goja and grandmother Goldie. They talk about the East and the West, about class privilege and poverty, about language and literacy, and about all the contradictions which Suniti’s life has brought into their relationship. Suniti Namjoshi has a marvellously rich story to tell and she tells it with poetic charm and a light touch. She delves deeply into the paradoxes of her life, and has much to share with others. She is articulate and a fine conversationalist. Suniti Namjoshi is a fabulist, poet, novelist, and now, autobiographer.
2000 | ISBN 9781875559978 | Paperback | 200 x 132 mm | 157 pages
Coleen Clare
Against the backdrop of ancient history, a modern-day mystery unfolds among the mountains, beaches and archaeological sites on the Greek island of Crete.
Four women arrive in Iraklion for a two-week tour of the island led by Eve, known for her expertise in Minoan culture, and Bethan, who manages the daily ups and downs. Lovers, Sophia and Kelly, are hoping this trip will help them settle their differences; Yasmin, from Paris, is dealing with her inner demons resulting from working with war-traumatised women; while Zoe from Devon is taking time out from caring for her sick daughter.
They are surrounded by the women who run the hotels, the kitchens, the transport and much of the island. Cretan prehistory and contemporary worlds intersect as unexpected memories and experiences burst into the present, where unknown dangers threaten to disrupt an idyllic holiday.
Life changes for the six women who set out on a journey through Crete following in Minoan footsteps. Will any of them emerge unscathed?
JUNE 2025 | ISBN 9781922964229 | Paperback | 230 pages | 152 × 228 mm