Jennifer Baumgardner, former director of the Feminist Press, has started Dottir Press, an independent publishing house specializing in books on women’s issues. The house will release its initial list of three titles in fall 2018.
Director of the Feminist Press from 2013-2017, Baumgardner is also an author, journalist, feminist activist and filmmaker. Dottir Press, she said, will focus on titles about feminist intellectual and creative legacies. Dottir Press titles will be distributed to the trade by Consortium.
The first titles coming this fall 2018 include Anastasia Higginbotham’s Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness, an illustrated children’s book about whiteness and racism; Brontez Purnell’s The Nightlife of Jacuzzi Gasket, a kids’ book about an older sibling taking care of a younger sibling, with illustrations by Elise R. Peterson; and Wakeful Night: A Structured Reflection on Loss and Illumination by Nicole Skibola, a book that explores grief and the trauma of struggling with cancer.
Next March, Dottir Press will publish Now That We’re Men: A Play and True Life Accounts of Boys, Sex & Power edited by Katie Cappiello, a book that examines rape culture.
Baumgardner, whose maternal family is Icelandic, said the name of the press is taken from the Icelandic word for “daughter.”
“As a third-wave feminist, I believe in creating culture as well as politics,” Baumgardner said. “Books are still one of the most powerful tools for empathy and transformation, as well as for sharing feminist ideas. Marrying rigorous art with feminist publishing—even with our children’s books—is part of what will make Dottir unique,” she said.
