A new publisher aims to celebrate women authors over 50, with plans to publish six new novels and memoirs this fall.

Headquartered in Grass Valley, Calif., Sibylline Press is the brainchild of four women in publishing who noticed that older women writers often go unseen or experience a lack of opportunities to have their books published. The publisher is named after the ancient Greek oracles the Sibyls and the Sybilline Books, books collecting oracular utterances by the Sibyls that were consulted during great crisis points in Roman history.

“We believe women, our Sibyls, are formidable especially when collaborating," said publisher Vicki DeArmon. "Sibylline is a traditional publisher, but we’re giving our authors unheard of support and access in producing and collaboratively promoting their books. We’re a team. We also know that the better an author understands the industry, the better she can work within it and with us to achieve success for her book.”

DeArmon is the former publisher of San Francisco’s Foghorn Press, which she started at age 25. (She sold it 13 years later to Avalon Books, which is now owned by Hachette.)

DeArmon’s partners are novelist and journalist Julia Park Tracey, who serves as executive editor and has helmed multiple newspapers and magazines in California; Alicia Feltman, design director for the press and the go-to web designer for the American Booksellers Association (ABA), IndieCommerce, and CALIBA; and Connecticut-based Anna Termine, who serves as rights and special sales director. Termine has been in the book industry for more than 30 years, working in both trade and academic publishing and specializing in rights and licensing.

Sibylline is distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West, and plans to publish twelve books annually starting next year. Titles to be published in fall 2023 by Sibylline include:

  • These Broken Roads: Scammed and Vindicated: One Woman’s Story by Donna Marie Hayes (memoir). The story of a Jamaican immigrant who overcomes hardships to find American success, only to be scammed and robbed of her life’s savings by the “love of her life” met on an online dating site. When Hayes vindicates herself, she overcomes a lifetime of bad romantic choices. (Pub Oct. 3, 2023)
  • The Bereaved: A Novel by Julia Park Tracey (historical fiction). A grieving widow tries to support her children in the squalor of 1859 New York City, losing them to the Home of the Friendless and the Orphan Train, before setting out to reclaim them. (Pub Aug. 8, 2023)
  • Maeve Rising: Coming Out Trans in Corporate Americaby Maeve DuVally (memoir). The story of a top public relations executive coming out transgender in one of the most high-profile financial institutions in America, Goldman Sachs. (Pub Aug. 15, 2023)
  • The Rotting Whale: A Hugo Sandoval Eco-Mystery by Jann Eyrich (mystery). An old-school San Francisco building inspector, with his trademark fedora, is a media darling, reluctant bachelor and people’s hero fighting the good fight in a modern era. In his first case in the series, Sandoval must find his sea legs before he can solve the mystery of how a 90-ton blue whale became stranded twice in a remote inlet off the North Coast. (Pub Sept. 12, 2023)
  • Unsettled: A Novel by Patricia Reis (historical fiction). Upon the death of her cold father, a repressed woman begins an ancestral quest through the prairies of Iowa in the late 1800s, awakening secrets and herself. (Pub Oct. 10, 2023)
  • Reading Jane: A Daughter’s Memoir by Susannah Kennedy (memoir). After the calculated suicide of the author’s domineering and narcissistic mother, Kennedy discovers diaries spanning 45 years that challenge and upend long-held truths. (Pub Sept. 5, 2023)

The complete list of Sibylline's upcoming releases can be viewed at sibyllinepress.com.