San Francisco author Michelle Tea has teamed up with City Lights Publishers to launch the Sister Spit imprint with Tea’s Sister Spit: Writings, Rants, and Reminiscence from the Road (September, $16.95)
City Lights publisher Elaine Katzenberger was approached by Tea, curator of the Radar Reading Series and cofounder of the popular lesbian open-mic literary performers Sister Spit, 18 months ago with the idea of starting her own imprint. “We let the idea simmer, and by the time Michelle got back in touch with that idea it seemed like a natural match for our two organizations,” Katzenberger said. City Lights will publish two or three titles a year under the Sister Spit imprint.
City Lights is a San Francisco institution, part of the local literary life. “From the beginning,” Katzenberger said, “we’ve been publishing the radical outliers, the literary renegades, and writing that’s often political. The work we’ll publish under the Sister Spit imprint will be a continuation of a particular strand of what we’ve always done, but with Michelle Tea’s curatorial stamp most definitely upon it.” Tea’s novel Valencia won the 2000 Lambda Literary Award for best lesbian fiction.
