Podcast: Inanna Publications: A feminist press

This month we talked with Evelyn Elgie, the assistant publisher at Inanna Publications about what it’s like to run a feminist press in today’s landscape, the challenges facing small presses, and why prioritizing marginalized voices and building community is so important to upholding the values of the company.

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Transcript

Jarin Pintana: Welcome to the "BookNet Canada" podcast. My name is Jarin Pintana, and I'm a research coordinator at BookNet Canada. Today I'm joined by Evelyn Elgie, the assistant publisher at Inanna Publications. They hold a master's of publishing from Simon Fraser University and a master's of gender, race, sexuality, and social justice from the University of British Columbia. They are the co-founder of Eavesdrop Literary Magazine, and the author of the chapbook, "Conversations with the Ocean." Inanna Publications is one of only a very few independent feminist presses in Canada committed to publishing fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction by and about women, and complementing this with relevant nonfiction that bring new, innovative, and diverse perspectives with the potential to change and enhance women's lives everywhere. Evelyn, welcome to the podcast. You are the assistant publisher at Inanna, so let's jump right into it. Can you tell me briefly for our listeners what that role entails?

Evelyn Elgie: Hi, Jarin. Yeah, it's great to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me on the podcast. I'm the assistant publisher at Inanna Publications. So, that's kind of an unusual role for us right now. Folks who are familiar with Inanna might know that we almost folded about a year ago, we lost a lot of our staff. So, as the assistant publisher, I'm actually wearing a lot of hats right now. When we almost folded, we were potentially looking to be acquired by a different publishing company, ideally a different indie feminist Canadian publisher, and that didn't happen. So, a lot of people think that we've been acquired by Radiant Press. We are in a management contract with them right now.

So, our publisher is Debra Bell from Radiant Press, which is based in Saskatchewan. We're in a temporary management contract with them. So, she's our interim publisher, and I'm the assistant publisher. But sort of functionally, day to day, what that looks like is that I am doing a lot of different stuff. I am going to conferences. Last week I was at the National Women's Studies Association conference in Puerto Rico. So, I was selling our books to people. I was talking to academics, potentially looking for new authors to write nonfiction books for us. I support on sales and marketing. I do our metadata. I answer the phone. I send website orders. I sell foreign rights. I write grant proposals. I write catalog copy. Like, I do all the things right now. I'm also managing acquisitions and liaising with our board of directors.

So, functionally, I'm sort of doing the publisher or the managing editor's role, but with the support of Radiant Press. So, the goal is that sort of mid next year, March or April next year, I will be the managing editor and the publisher, and will disengage from our contract with Radiant Press. And so, they're supporting me to be the incoming publisher and managing editor. That's sort of what my role is right now, which is a little bit strange as our press is going through a lot of changes.

Jarin: That is a lot of things. No, that's so excellent, though. Thanks for giving us a bit more detail on your role and kind of where Inanna Press is at in the current moment. For our listeners who might not be as familiar with Inanna, can you share a bit about the press's mission and maybe kind of what it means to be a feminist publisher in today's publishing landscape?

Evelyn: So, you already read our mission statement. But generally, our aim is to conserve a publishing space that's dedicated to feminist voices. So, that's books that are by and about women. We do also publish some books by men, we've published books by non-binary people, we've published books by trans women. So, it's a very inclusive umbrella for us. Feminist thought is not just for cis women, you know, and feminism benefits everybody. So, that's been really important for us the whole way along, since our founding in 1978. Something that's always been really important for us as well is been making sure that we platform the voices of disenfranchised and marginalized women. And we're really committed to working with debut authors and emerging writers. So, platforming authors that might not otherwise get a chance to have their voices heard in the publishing landscape.

Sort of regarding what it looks like to be a feminist publishing house right now. Obviously, the landscape of feminism and feminist activism has changed a lot since Inanna's founding in 1978. We live in a really different political and media landscape. But I do think that there's still a stigma around the word feminist, right? We've come so far in the struggle for women's rights, but there's still so much pushback. I've noticed a lot when we go to markets like Word on the Street, or the indie market, the people who approach our booth still tend to be almost exclusively women, sometimes queer people, but you do notice as soon as they see the word feminist, men tend to move on. So, I think that in our society, we're really socialized to think that things that are marketed for men should be for everybody. And things that are by and about women should only be for women. And I think that there's a lot of internalized misogyny that everyone of us still needs to work on unpacking about, you know, what does it mean to read feminist voices? What does it mean to listen to women's experiences?

So, I do think there is still a stigma around it, but there's also a really amazing community of people who support the struggle for gender equality. A lot of really, really amazing people are in our community, and really support our mission, and support our press. And without that community of really engaged, passionate, committed people, we definitely would not have survived as long as we have. And definitely we wouldn't have survived last year without our really, really amazing community.

Jarin: That is really, I don't know if inspiring is the right word, but, you know, optimistic, I suppose, to hear. And I guess Inanna has been doing this for a while then, nearly five decades. You may have partly answered this, but how has feminist publishing evolved since the press was founded? You know, what's some of the history behind Inanna's vision? And I guess what were the needs that spurred the founding of the press?

Evelyn: Now, just to be clear, I was not there at the founding of the press. I was hired six months ago and it's been really cool to be able to work with older feminists, people who have been doing this work since 1978. I may be getting a little ahead of myself to say that, but I think it's so important to say when I talk about the history that it is so cool to really feel the legacy of those people. And I think that as young people working in media and in publishing, it's kind of easy to feel like we invented everything. You know, like only our generation is feminists or, you know, something like that. This feeling of, like, TikTok feminism, right? That we're inventing the whole cloth. We invented queerness whole cloth. Like, we didn't.

Inanna started as the "Canadian Woman Studies" journal. So, right now we still have our book publishing arm and our journal arm. So, the "Canadian Woman Studies" journal was conceived in 1976 and formally opened in 1978 by a group of friends who are mostly academics working out of York. So, a lot of those people are still involved with the journal and are faculty at York now. And a lot of the early contributors to the journal have gone on to have, like, really, really amazing careers as feminist writers and feminist activists. So, 1978, right in the middle/towards the end of sort of the second wave of feminism, a lot of the early work of the journal really dealt with, like, abortion rights, reproductive rights, agitation for the recognition of domestic labor. So, a lot of the scholars involved in the journal at the beginning were big advocates in the wages for domestic work movement. But as we grew, sort of the feminist movement was also growing. The third wave is loosely understood as starting in the early '90s, which is right about when we were producing our first books.

So, Inanna as the book publishing arm didn't start till 2004. Our first books were offshoots of the journal. So, we would do an issue of the journal and then scholars would have more to say, or we would think that there was a need for a book there. So, one of our first books was the Graduate Women's Studies Reader in 1996, which collected essays and articles from the journal intended to be used in graduate women's studies courses, or I think about "Equity and How to Get It," which was from 1999, edited by Kay Armitage, which was challenging patriarchal Eurocentrism, right? So, we're talking about people who are right on the forefront of really interesting interdisciplinary feminism in the '90s. So, from the beginning, all of our books and the journal have been really intersectional, platforming Indigenous voices, women of colour, international voices, and really just being attentive to the difference in experiences of people in different positions in the feminist movement.

Yeah. So, Luciana Ricciutelli was the one who spearheaded the move into book publishing for us. That was in 2004 and we expanded into publishing fiction and poetry, as well as our previous focus on academic non-fiction. And that was partially to support the journal financially and that was partially to recognize that there's, you know, a lot of fiction and poetry that can really support our values and our movement.

So, something that's been a really huge conversation for our board and our journal as we're in kind of a moment of renewal, having almost just folded and then, you know, come back from the dead, what does feminist publishing look like in 2025? How does that look different from 1978? So, we're nearly 50 years old. How are the next 50 years going to look different from the previous 50 years? The publishing landscape is so different. The internet exists. Publishing in a way is much more democratic, but also the internet is full of misinformation. The algorithms are really changing the way that we engage with information. And the feminist landscape is really different, but the fight there is also very much not over. We see really reactive, misogynistic politics in both America and here in Canada. So, something that's really important for me as the incoming publisher is thinking about how can our press respond to what the world looks like right now. We've changed a lot since 1978. Obviously, we have our poetry and fiction imprints. We've also changed the language we use as we go through.

So, something that's been really cool for me going through our office and our backlist of journals is really watching the language change in various issues. So, our very first issue that we did in collaboration with a community of Indigenous women, it was called the Native Women issue, right? And then in different journals, we use the language, Aboriginal, we use language, First Nations, and now we use the language, Indigenous. And so, that was really driven by how the people that we were working with in those communities referred to themselves at the time when the issues came out. So, I think, like, there's a really important history in what we've already been doing, that we've changed our language, we've changed how we thought about people. But something that hasn't changed is that we've been engaging with the communities that need a platform. And so, I think that that's something that's gonna be really important for us going forward is what does it look like for us to renew our press, reimagine our place in the broader Canadian landscape of both feminism and publishing without losing the values that have really held us together for 50 years of engaging meaningfully with communities and platforming voices that need to be platformed.

Jarin: Absolutely. And that is such a rich history. I think, you know, it's such a good reminder that it's important to remember all the work that is done in an organization to get us to the current moment. And I know on the note of the current moment, you talked a bit about, you know, feminism in 2025. So, right now, what are you seeing in terms of what kinds of stories, voices, or themes that are resonating most strongly with your readers right now? Are there particular gaps or opportunities you see in the representation of women's experiences in Canadian literature these days?

Evelyn: That's a huge question. I've only been at Inanna six months, you know, and I come from a really particular positionality. I think it's really important when we think about, like, what gaps are there in the whole Canadian literature industry, right? The whole publishing industry is much bigger than me or you. And as someone who's young, mostly able-bodied, White, queer, university-educated, right? I occupy a very specific position. And so, as I say, any of what I'm about to say, right? This is just what I think. And I really feel that my role at Inanna right now is a listening role, where I'm trying to hear communities. So, when I talk about gaps or opportunities, that's my little disclaimer.

For our readers right now, we have a pretty particular demographic. Our readers tend to be older, they tend to have been people who were really engaged with Inanna when it was starting. So, I think there's a really important space for older women's voices. I think in our society right now, even with all the progress we've made, I do think there's still a lot of internalized ageism and sexism that drives older women to the margins in most conversations in mainstream media. The perception of older women is really, like, invisible at the margins, grandmothers, mothers, sort of reduced to this sort of more two-dimensional space.

So, the community of older women that I see at Inanna is really, really powerful of women who are writing on all sorts of different aspects of society. The different things that are important to older women that we often don't talk about that can maybe be taboo. For instance, we have a book called "Writing Menopause," which is an anthology. I have taken it to every market that I've done, every sort of tabling opportunity since I've been at Inanna. I took it to the National Women's Studies Association Conference last weekend in Puerto Rico. And what I consistently see is that it gets a ton of attention. There's not a lot of work on women's experience of menopause.

Yeah. I think that also as Inanna's community has aged and has become part of this older demographic, I'm also seeing a lot of submissions about the unglamorous reality of care work in our communities. I think that's often not talked about, the way that that burden falls on older women, is not always recognized, is not always acknowledged. I think that's a really urgent thing to be exploring in a world that's increasingly fractured and where mutual care is more important than ever. I do think that even in a market where book talk is having a big moment, femininity is having a big moment, there's still a really important gap and a niche for agitating for women's rights, to tell the stories of people at the margins, to publish unusual feminist literature, and things that explore outside of the amatonormative, heteronormative conceptions of womanhood. And so, I think there's a gap for academically rigorous works on gender studies, women's studies, and queer studies.

Jarin: Absolutely. And that's such an interesting insight, especially from, you know, your position and your position within the press as well. Let's move to a wider industry perspective as an independent press. What are some of the biggest challenges and advantages of operating in today's publishing climate, particularly within Canada's small press ecosystem?

Evelyn: So, I think as someone who's coming into the small press ecosystem, I'm quite new to it. I'm navigating these relationships and I'm navigating running a small press, which is largely grant-funded under an austerity government and where there is a lot of discussion around of, you know, is there gonna be less funding for books? Is there gonna be less funding for publishing? So, obviously funding is a huge problem. As a smaller press operating in, like, a really saturated publishing landscape and a saturated media landscape that moves so quickly, it's hard to get in front of anyone's eyes. It's hard to retain people's attention. The big stars of the publishing world take up so much airspace, partially because they have the reach, they have the marketing budget, they have the star power, right? So, how does an indie press compete with that?

And I'm not the right person to speak to this. There's plenty of people who have been operating indie presses for literally decades who could speak way more to this. But I think as someone who is coming into this world new as a young publisher, I've hugely appreciated the solidarity and the power between indie presses. I've really noticed that as a small press, there's a ton of community support. I have felt really supported. I have felt really mentored, not just by Radiant who have been amazing. Debra Bell and John Kennedy have really been just so, so crucial to our press's success, and to us being able to survive, and helping me to take on this mantle. But I've also really felt supported by the Association of Canadian Publishers and the LPG, so the Literary Press Group. They have mentorship programmes where I've been able to access a lot of help and ask a lot of questions. I think it's really important to have that broader community and that community of small presses has been exceptional for things as important as having access to the LPG's shared sales force, to the Amanda Group, or even just for things like the Certified Canadian Publisher Programme, which I think has been a really cool initiative and has been, I hope, is going to be really game-changing for us.

Jarin: It sounds like community is a bit of a through line across all of this, both within the press and its mandates, and the work that you're doing. But also within the broader scope of just the publishing community.

Evelyn: I think that that's something that's been really important for us that I also want to make sure that we give back to. So, in terms of our relationships with other presses, we attended the National Women's Studies Conference in Puerto Rico, and we took books for Fernwood Press and for Between the Lines so that they could also have books on display for the academics there. And I do think that that's a big advantage to being a non-profit, is that we can focus on message, we can focus on working together rather than worrying about competition. Like, I think that's really important and beneficial to recognize that our message is in solidarity with these other presses.

Jarin: Okay. Let's turn to... Okay. So, BookNet Canada often focuses on data and discoverability. How do you think feminists and independent publishers can leverage data or market insights to reach wider audiences without compromising their values or editorial vision?

Evelyn: I think it is very tempting. When we look at the data, when we look at market insights, when we look at what's trending right now, it can be really tempting to jump onto bandwagons and try really hard to follow the trends. We could jump on trends and current market insights to try and publish things that we think would sell. And we should do that to some extent. But I think it's much more important to us to be true to our values, and publish books that are a little more outside the norm, and promoting voices from the margins, and that speak to these diverse lived experiences of Canadian women. So, I do think that we can absolutely use data to support our work, help get in front of more eyes. But as soon as we start letting market trends guide our acquisitions instead of our values, I think that we have failed as a feminist publisher. I think we are much better off publishing the voices that we genuinely think have something really important to say, and those books will reach the people that they need to reach.

Jarin: On trends then, you know, in recent years, we've seen shifts in how books reach readers, you know, through social media, book talk, and online communities. How has Inanna adapted to these changes? What has worked or not worked in connecting with readers digitally?

Evelyn: So, obviously, our community largely comes from a much older generation. We're lucky to have really strong roots in our community in that older generation. As social media platforms have been shifting towards more of an algorithmically-driven engagement sort of system, I've been seeing more and more content in marketing spaces about the importance of owning your own list. So, having your own newsletter, having your own channel, having a list of people that are having your own channel, having a list of subscribers that actually that you own and that belongs to you, and isn't mediated or owned by, like, Meta, or TikTok, or someone in another country. So, I think in that sense, we have a really, really strong platform. We have a long-standing newsletter. We also have a direct mail list. We've been doing direct mailings for funders, and then for ordering, and for the journal since we started. And so, I think there's a real lasting power to that of owning your lists, and knowing your community, and speaking directly to them. I also think that people of the generation that are mostly in our community, which is sort of people 50 plus, are more likely to engage with things like a mailed campaign or a newsletter.

That said, I also think that we as a press have a lot of room to expand our social media reach to younger readers. We have a lot of strength in our community, but I think that there's a lot of space for us to grow, to reach younger readers who are so engaged in conversations about feminism. There's a lot of young feminists using platforms like TikTok and Instagram to have these conversations about domestic labor, about relationships, about gender, about queerness, right? So, I think that we could really engage more in that. I want to make sure that we don't focus on social media to a degree that we lose our existing connection with our community because I think that can be a trap.

Jarin: It's always a balance and, you know, it's good to know that there is space to grow. But you have to prioritize, you know, what you already have before, you know, jumping off and trying to find something else, I suppose. This brings us to my final question. Inanna has long prioritized publishing diverse and marginalized voices. Can you tell me just a little bit, what does that look like in practise from acquisitions to marketing, to community partnerships?

Evelyn: So, we started publishing, as I mentioned, as the Canadian Women's Studies Journal. Our work publishing books emerged really organically from that. So, many of our early journal issues and our early anthologies came about because a different organization approached us with an idea for a theme that they thought would benefit the people in their community. So, for instance, our labor issue, one of our very early issues was because labor unions would approach us and say, "Hey, we want to publish for the benefit of the members of our union."

On the other hand, it might have been that the managing editors would approach a group who they thought would be interested in being the editorial board for any given issue. So, that happened with our 10th volume, Native Women in 1989, which I mentioned earlier. And I think that the most important part of that for me has been a very big, nothing about us without us ethos. That's always been a really important part of our editorial mandate. In terms of acquisitions, over the years, Inanna has had a lot of times where we've accepted manuscripts that needed more work because the idea at the heart of the manuscript was important and urgent. My predecessor, Luciana Ricciutelli, worked really personally and tirelessly with new authors to make sure that we were platforming them because she really believed in these authors and these stories.

On the inside of things, so for our staffing and our board, this has always looked like having really lively conversations about labor, about making sure that we are living feminist values for our staff. So, we want to make sure that when people like our board of directors or other volunteers are giving their time freely to us, we're respecting their personal time, we're making space for those who are raising children, we're having equitable practise when it comes to the gift of their time. And as with anything, I think that these are all ongoing conversations. Things like feminism, things like trying to unsettle and decolonize our own perspectives, those require work and commitment to do them right. It's not something that you can say once, you can't say a land acknowledgement once and get a big sticker for doing it, right? It's work that you have to keep on doing forever.

So, I think for Inanna, trying to live feminist, intersectional, and decolonizing values is something that we're continuing to work on and I expect will continue to work on for as long as we exist as an organization. So, for me personally, I try to approach the work from a mindset of growth, listening, generosity, trying to truly understand my differences with people and meet them where they are. You know, remembering that at the end of the day, we're all learners and we're all going to be lifelong learners.

Jarin: Evelyn, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been incredibly insightful and we very much appreciate you taking the time to be here.

Evelyn: Thanks, Jarin.

Jarin: Before I go, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge that BookNet Canada’s operations are remote and our colleagues contribute their work from the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee, the Wyandot, the Mi’kmaq, the Ojibwa of Fort William First Nation, the Three Fires Confederacy of First Nations (which includes the Ojibwa, the Odawa, and the Potawatomie), and the Métis, the original nations and peoples of the lands we now call Beeton, Brampton, Guelph, Halifax, Thunder Bay, Toronto, Vaughan, and Windsor. We encourage you to visit the native-land.ca website to learn more about the peoples whose land you are listening from today.

Moreover, BookNet endorses the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and supports an ongoing shift from gatekeeping to spacemaking in the book industry.We'd also like to acknowledge the Government of Canada for their financial support through the Canada Book Fund, and of course, thanks to you for listening.