Dinah Press Ready to Launch October 01, 2011 www.dinahpress.

com Dinah Press, a publishing press specifically by/for women of colour, queer women, trans women, Indigenous women, and other talented writers who are too often deemed unmarketable, launches its new website and aims to fundraise $3,000 by January 2012 in order to publish extraordinary literature by Cynthia Dewi Oka, Elena Rose, and Julia Glassman. Dinah Press, a volunteer-run collective publishing press, works to fill in the gaps in todays literary landscape by publishing fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and everything in between by women of color, trans people, people with disabilities, members of colonized peoples, and other talented writers whose work has been deemed unmarketable by mainstream publishers. Dinah Press believes that our stories and writing cannot be separated from the organizing that we do. Our work, our words, our representations and our survival are interrelated, informing and growing from one other. Dinah Press mission is intrinsically political, although the work we publish may not define itself as such. In building solidarity with individuals across communities and letting writers control the production of their work, we strive to break down the idea that writing is a solitary, isolated, and privileged act, or that publishing is necessarily hierarchical. Writingespecially when ones voice is not valued in mainstream societyis a necessity, not a luxury. We are now in the process of fundraising $3,000 by January 2012 so that we can publish original work by three incredible writers! Cynthia Dewi Oka, poet, community organizer, revolutionary mother, twice alumnus of the Voices of Our Nations Summer Writing Workshops for Writers of Colour and previously published in 580 Split: Journal of Arts and Letters, Kweli Journal, SCHOOL Magazine, P U L S E Media, and Leftturn: Notes from the Global Intifada, is finishing her first book-length poetry collection. Okas work seeks to recover terrains of joy, possibility and power inside the complicated/complicit spaces of late imperialist/colonial/hetero-patriarchal capitalism. Religion scholar, medic, and Filipina-Ashkenazic mixed-class trans dyke mestiza Elena Rose is working on a collection of fiction and essays. Her writing can be found online at http://takingsteps.blogspot.com, as well as everywhere from law school classrooms and academic conferences to bathroom mirrors and protest marches. Elena Rose serves on the advisory board of the Allied Media Conference in Detroit; has twice been a San Franciso Pride Featured Performer with the National Queer Arts Festival production Girl Talk: A Cis and Trans Woman Dialogue, and was a charter member of the Speak! Radical Women of Colour Media Collective. Radical librarian Julia Glassmans debut novel, Other Life Forms, a meditation on the complexities of creation, identity, strength, and the self, is forthcoming this spring. Glassman has written fiction and essays for make/shift magazine,The Missouri Review, Kitchen Sink, Monkeybicycle, and various blogs, including Feministe, JVoices, and Alas, a Blog.

Media contact: Vanessa Fernando tel: (438) 868 6032 email: dinahpress@gmail.com