The Feminist Press at CUNY – förlag

This collection of narrative essays by sex workers presents a crystal-clear rejoinder: there''s never been a better time to fight for justice. Responding to the resurgence of the #MeToo movement in 2017, sex workers from across the industry—hookers and prostitutes, strippers and dancers, porn stars, cam models, Dommes and subs alike—complicate narratives of sexual harassment and violence, and expand conversations often limited to normative workplaces.

Writing across topics such as homelessness, motherhood, and toxic masculinity, We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival gives voice to the fight for agency and accountability across sex industries. With contributions by leading voices in the movement such as Melissa Gira Grant, Ceyenne Doroshow, Audacia Ray, femi babylon, April Flores, and Yin Q, this anthology explores sex work as work, and sex workers as laboring subjects in need of respect—not rescue.

A portion of this book''s net proceeds will be donated to SWOP Behind Bars (SBB).

Sixteen weeks into her second pregnancy, psychologist Jessica Zucker miscarried at home, alone. Suddenly, her career, spent specializing in reproductive and maternal mental health, was rendered corporeal, no longer just theoretical. She now had a changed perspective on her life’s work, her patients’ pain, and the crucial need for a zeitgeist shift. Navigating this nascent transition amid her own grief became a catalyst for Jessica to bring voice to this ubiquitous experience. She embarked on a mission to upend the strident trifecta of silence, shame, and stigma that surrounds reproductive loss—and the result is her striking memoir meets manifesto.

Drawing from her psychological expertise and her work as the creator of the #IHadaMiscarriage campaign, I Had a Miscarriage is a heart-wrenching, thought-provoking, and validating book about navigating these liminal spaces and the vitality of truth telling—an urgent reminder of the power of speaking openly and unapologetically about the complexities of our lives.

Jessica Zucker weaves her own experience and other women''s stories into a compassionate and compelling exploration of grief as a necessary, nuanced personal and communal process. She inspires her readers to speak their truth and, in turn, to ignite transformative change within themselves and in our culture.

A haunting, bizarre short story collection about violence, mental illness, and the warped contradictions of the twentieth-century female experience.

A close friend and protégé of Marguerite Duras, Barbara Molinard (1921–1986) wrote and wrote feverishly, but only managed to publish one book in her lifetime: the surreal, nightmarish collection Panics.

These thirteen stories beat with a frantic, off-kilter rhythm as Molinard obsesses over sickness, death, and control. A woman becomes transfixed by a boa constrictor at her local zoo, mysterious surgeons dismember their patient, and the author narrates to Duras how she was stopped from sleeping in a cemetery vault, only to be haunted by the pain of sleeping on its stone floor.

In the unsettling tradition of Franz Kafka, Djuna Barnes, Leonara Carrington, and more, Panics recovers the work of a tormented writer who often destroyed her writing as soon as she produced it, and whose insights into violence, mental illness, and bodily autonomy are simultaneously absurdist and razor-sharp.

Whether for entertainment, under the guise of medicine, or to propel consumerism, heinous acts are perpetrated daily on women’s bodies. In Body Horror: Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes, award-winning journalist Anne Elizabeth Moore catalogs the global toll of capitalism on our physical autonomy. Weaving together unflinching research and surprising humor, these essays range from investigative—probing the Cambodian garment industry, the history of menstrual products, or the gender biases of patent law—to uncomfortably intimate. Moore, who suffers from several autoimmune disorders, examines what it takes to seek care and community in the increasingly complicated, problematic, and disinterested US healthcare system.

A Lambda Literary Award finalist and a Chicago Review of Books Nonfiction Award shortlist title, Body Horror is “sharp, shocking, and darkly funny. . . . Brainy and historically informed, this collection is less a rallying cry or a bitter diatribe than a series of irreverent and ruthlessly accurate jabs at a culture that is slowly devouring us” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Featuring an updated introduction and new essays, as well as illustrations by Xander Marro, this new edition of Body Horror is a fascinating, insightful portrait of the gore that encapsulates contemporary American politics.

A groundbreaking voice in contemporary Latin American literature, María Fernanda Ampuero’s writing is “raw and savage” as she confronts machismo, inequity, and violence in this acclaimed short story collection (Vistazo).

An undocumented woman answers a job posting only to find herself held hostage, a group of outcasts obsess over boys drowned while surfing, and an unhappy couple finds themselves trapped in a terrifying maze. With scalpel-like precision, Ampuero considers the price paid by those on the margins so that the elite might lounge comfortably, considering themselves safe in their homes.

Simultaneously terrifying and exquisite, Human Sacrifices is “tropical gothic” at its finest—decay and oppression underlie our humid and hostile world, where working-class women and children are consistently the weakest links in a capitalist economy. Against this backdrop of corrosion and rot, these twelve stories contemplate the nature of exploitation and abuse, illuminating the realities of those society consumes for its own pitiless ends.

Collecting the best of the underground blog Weird Sister, these unapologetic and insightful essays link contemporary feminism to literature and pop culture.

Launched in 2014, Weird Sister proudly staked out a corner of the internet where feminist writers could engage with the literary and popular culture that excited or enraged them. The blog made space amid book websites dominated by white male editors and contributors, and also committed to covering literary topics in-depth when larger feminist outlets rarely could. Throughout its decade-long run, Weird Sister served as an early platform for some of contemporary literature’s most striking voices, naming itself a website that “speaks its mind and snaps its gum and doesn’t apologize.”

Edited by founder Marisa Crawford, The Weird Sister Collection brings together the work of longtime contributors such as Morgan Parker, Christopher Soto, Soleil Ho, Julián Delgado Lopera, Virgie Tovar, Jennif(f)er Tamayo, and more, alongside new original essays. Offering nuanced insight into contemporary and historical literature, in conversation with real-life and timely social issues, these pieces mark a transitional and transformative moment in online and feminist writing.

A “humane and heart-rending” memoir exploring what it means to live outside the normative boundaries imposed by society, from an award-winning trans writer and performer (The Guardian).

In None of the Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary, Travis Alabanza considers seven phrases people have directed at them throughout their life. These phrases—some deceptively innocuous, some deliberately loaded or violent, some celebratory—have fundamentally shaped Alabanza, both for better and for worse. But these phrases also illuminate broader issues about a world that insists on gender as a fixed identity.

Alabanza considers the meaning of gender, and the role it plays in a world that rigidly and aggressively enforces the binary. Drawing from their experiences as a racialized queer person, Alabanza deftly interrogates our current frameworks around identity with nuance, openness, and humor. The result is a meditation on doubt and language that turns a mirror back on society, and on ourselves. By heralding transformative futures, None of the Above questions what we think we know—and shares new ways that we might live.

Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Fiction

Irish novelist Soula Emmanuel’s debut novel is an intimate sprawl of memory, migration, and queer desire—charting the messy layers of love and loss that constitute a life.

Phoebe Forde has a new home, a new name, and is newly thirty. An Irish transplant and PhD candidate, she’s overeducated and underpaid, but finally settling into her new life in Copenhagen. Almost three years into her gender transition, Phoebe has learned to move through the world carefully, savoring small moments of joy. After all, a woman without a past can be anyone she wants. But an unexpected visit from her ex-girlfriend Grace brings back memories of Dublin and the life she thought she’d left behind. Over the course of a weekend, their romance rekindles into something sweet and radically unfamiliar as Grace helps Phoebe navigate the jagged edges of nostalgia and hope.

Written with wit and warmth, Wild Geese is a tale of dislocations and relocations, encounters, and accidents: a novel of past lives, messy feelings, and the desire to start afresh.

For porn stars, “coming out” is a process that never ends.

To the uninitiated, the idea of a career in the adult film industry may come with stigma that porn performers and sex workers have long fought to shake off. For many, that fight begins with one awkward conversation. 

When Coming Out Like a Porn Star was first published in 2015, it garnered cult status as an anthology of candidly intimate essays by diverse adult industry professionals and icons, relating the pain, pride, and surprises that accompanied their experiences coming out about their work. This updated edition includes new essays that explore issues transforming the modern porn field: deepfakes, AI, and OnlyFans; the inequity and fetishization faced by Black, Muslim, queer, disabled, and other marginalized performers; and the everyday, ever-evolving legal injustices compromising sex workers’ rights to live, earn, and bank.

Edited by veteran industry professional Jiz Lee, and featuring a new foreword by Samantha Cole, the second edition of Coming Out Like a Porn Star continues to celebrate the rich and varied voices of the adult industry, offering a panoramic view of the world of sex work that has been described in recent years by Melissa Febos, Margo Steines, Charlotte Shane, and Michelle Tea. Contributors include Joanna Angel, Siri Dahl, Sinnamon Love, Andre Shakti, Nikki Silver, Jessica Stoya, Kitty Stryker, Bella Vendetta, Denali Winter, and more.

Finalist for the 2025 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection

A shimmering debut story collection intimately exploring race, identity, and the pursuit of the American Dream.

The vibrant stories in I’ll Give You a Reason explore race, identity, connection, and belonging in the Ironbound, an immigrant neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey. A young widow goes on her first date since her husband’s death and finds herself hunting a bear in the woods with a near stranger. An unhappy wife compares her mother’s love spells and rituals to her own efforts to repair her strained marriage. A self-conscious college student discovers a porn star who shares her name and becomes obsessed with her doppelgänger’s freedom and comfort with her own body.

Annell López’s indelible characters tread the waters of political unrest, sexuality, religion, body image, Blackness, colorism, and gentrification—searching for their identities and a sliver of joy and intimacy. Through each story, a nuanced portrait of the “American Dream” emerges, uplifting the voices of those on its margins.

A trans woman sets out to exploit a group of wealthy roommates, only to fall under the spell of their glamorous, hedonistic lifestyle in tech-bubble San Francisco.

Years after fleeing San Francisco and getting sober, Jhanvi has made a life for herself working at a grocery co-op and saving for her surgeries. But when her friend (and sometimes more) Henry mentions that he and his techie festival-goer friends spent $100,000 to transform a warehouse basement into a sex dungeon, Jhanvi starts wondering if there’s a way to exploit these gullible idiots. She returns to San Francisco, hatching a plan to marry Henry for his company’s generous healthcare benefits.

Jhanvi enters a world of beautiful, decadent fire eaters and their lavish sex parties. But as her pretensions to cynicism and control start to fade, she develops a Gatsbyesque attraction to these happy young people and their bold claims of unconditional love. But do any of her privileged new friends really like or accept her? Her financial needs expose the limits of a community built on limitless self-expression, and soon she has to choose between doing what’s right, and doing what’s right for her.

This darkly funny novel skewers privileged leftist millennial tech culture, and asks whether "found family" is just another of the 21st-century''s broken promises.

Merging waves of feminist thought from established and emerging Mexican women writers, Tsunami arrives with seismic, groundbreaking force.

Featuring personal essay, manifesto, creative nonfiction, and poetry, Tsunami gathers the multiplicity of voices being raised in Mexico today against patriarchy and its buried structures. Tackling gender violence, community building, #MeToo, Indigenous rights, and more, these writings rock the core of what we know feminism to be, dismantling its Eurocentric roots and directing its critical thrust towards current affairs in Mexico today. Asserting plurality as a political priority, Tsunami includes trans voices, Indigenous voices, Afro-Latinx voices, voices from within and outside academic institutions, and voices spanning generations. Tsunami is the combined force and critique of the three feminist waves, the marea verde (“green wave”) of protests that have swept through Latin America in recent years, and the tides turned by insurgent feminisms at the margins of public discourse.

Contributors include Marina Azahua, Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil, Dahlia de la Cerda, Lia García, Margo Glantz, Jimena González, Fernanda Latani M. Bravo, Valeria Luiselli, Ytzel Maya, Brenda Navarro, Jumko Ogata, Daniela Rea, Cristina Rivera Garza, Diana J. Torres, Sara Uribe, and the Zapatista Army for National Liberation.

Merging memoir, poetry, and criticism, this radical literary revue traces a first-generation Nigerian American’s search for home and belonging on her own terms.

In three parts, The Gloomy Girl Variety Show traces the joys and despairs of an imaginary house hunt. Author Freda Epum takes the real-life housing inequity she encounters and spins it into a sprawling meditation on the larger cost of living and enduring as a Black disabled woman in America. Brick by brick, and despite the difficulties she faces, Epum creates space for women, people of color, people with disabilities, children of immigrants, and anyone else who has felt “in-between.”

In this formally inventive memoir woven with essays, poems, and images, Epum explores the opposing forces of her “no-place, no-where” identity. As a Nigerian American daughter who spent years in and out of institutions while she sought treatment for life-threatening mental illness, Epum examines her journey through healthcare and housing systems via a pop cultural lens: our collective obsession with HGTV’s home buying and makeover shows.

With raw honesty and a wry sense of humor, The Gloomy Girl Variety Show explores the complexity of coming of age under intersecting forms of oppression, and reveals what it takes to come back from the brink of despair and arrive somewhere safe, beautiful, and empowering. 

In partnership with Dutton Books, Amazon Literary Partnership, and Feminist Press, Girls Write Now On the Other Side of Everything: 2023 Anthology is a multi-genre showcase of the best writing from today’s next-gen voices and leaders.

Do you know what it’s like to communicate with your family across a salty ocean’s divide? Do you want the sun and moon to enter your home with stories written in embers? Do you seek voices that will shatter expectations? Welcome to the other side of everything. It’s the other side of silence, the other side of childhood, the other side of hate, the other side of indifference, it’s the other side of sides, where the binary breaks down. It’s a new paradigm, a destination, a different perspective, a mindset, a state of openness, the space between the endless folds in your forehead, hopes for tomorrow, and reflections on the past. This anthology of diverse voices is an everything bagel of literary genres and love songs, secrets whispered in the dark of night, conversations held with ancestors under the sea.

In the gripping first novel in the Daughters of the Empty Throne trilogy, author Margaret Killjoy spins a tale of earth magic, power struggle, and self-invention in an own-voices story of trans witchcraft.

Lorel has always dreamed of becoming a witch: learning magic, fighting monsters, and exploring the world beyond the small town where she and her mother run the stables. Even though a strange plague is killing the trees in the Kingdom of Cekon and witches are being blamed for it, Lorel wants nothing more than to join them. There’s only one problem: all witches are women, and she was born a boy.

When the coven comes to claim her best friend, Lorel disguises herself in a dress and joins in her friend’s place, leaving home and her old self behind. She soon discovers the dark powers threatening the kingdom: a magical blight scars the land, and the power-mad Duchess Helte is crushing everything between her and the crown. In spite of these dangers, Lorel makes friends and begins learning magic from the powerful witches in her coven. However, she fears that her new friends and mentors will find out her secret and kick her out of the coven, or worse.

An expansive, darkly funny, and deeply personal reflection on the reality of living with—and dying from—metastatic breast cancer.

Deena stepped out of the shower and opened her towel in the steam. “Does my breast look weird?” These words irrevocably change the lives of writer Ariel Gore and her wife. As they descend into a world of doctors and tests, medications and insurance, sickness and treatments and hope and pain and more, they discover just how little they truly knew—despite the awareness campaigns and hyper-visible pink ribbons—about the reality of breast cancer. Over the four years following Deena’s terminal diagnosis, Gore does what she always does, no matter how difficult or personal the subject: she writes about it. 

With keen insights, empathy, and humor, Ariel Gore braids together the story of Deena’s experience, her own role as a caretaker, narratives from others living with breast cancer, literary reflections on illness, and reportage on the history of breast cancer and the $200 billion industry that capitalizes on and profits from breast cancer screenings and treatments. Rehearsals for Dying investigates and challenges everything we think we know about breast cancer. It goes beyond awareness to knowledge, presenting a rich, nuanced, heartbreaking, and hopeful portrait of what it is to be diagnosed with, treat, and live with breast cancer in the twenty-first century.

A debut collection of surreal, skin-piercing stories about the boundless longing of queer Black women

In Sympathy for Wild Girls, young Black women yearn for intimacy and search for it on turbulent ground. Navigating a subtly warped version of our world, where social mores loom like shadows and bigotry shape-shifts, Demree McGhee’s characters track the prints of their desire and pain to the edges of reality, finding refuge in unlikely places. Can they survive the chasms lurking in our common notions of “girlhood”—considering their heightened peril as queer women of color?

A runaway seeks shelter from violence with a pack of wild coyotes. A young woman falls into a hypocritical crew of white Christian YouTube influencers. A mother witnesses her daughter’s prophecy about the end of the world come true. A group of shoplifters lose themselves in their quest for cheap lipstick and cheaper fame. Fighting self-loathing and societal abuse, McGhee’s characters chase abandon on their own terms—embracing their feral strength and ugliest truths, howling at the moon to be known.

A pioneering manifesto from Brazil about the centrality of sex workers to feminist struggle 

Putafeminista argues for a framework that Brazilian sex worker and activist Monique Prada calls “putafeminism”—a “movement born from the idea,” she writes, “that we, all people in sex work, can also constitute feminism.” Putafeminism, Prada argues, is also a chance to rethink the structure of sex work, to “identify and combat the existent oppression within.” Drawing on her firsthand experiences with sex work, movement building, and legal advocacy, Prada elucidates how sex workers’ voices are integral within larger feminist movements, and likewise, how feminist discourses can be vital to the everyday working lives of sex workers.

Published in Brazil in 2018, triggering a nationwide wave of discourse, Putafeminista combs through the major work and writing on sex work in the past century, including Virginie Despentes, Silvia Federici, and Melissa Gira Grant. Prada’s unwavering voice signals a new brand of feminist rebellion, one grounded in Brazilian sex workers’ historic tactics of advocacy and social critique—and destined to conjoin with and amplify feminist vindications worldwide. 

The fascinating story of how nineteenth-century circus women performed impossible feats and changed American culture.

Jumping Through Hoops reveals the hidden history of early female circus performers: boundary-breaking women like Lavinia Warren, known as The Queen of Beauty; Millie-Christine McKoy, the Two-Headed Nightingale; and Patty Astley, the mother of the modern circus. These astounding female and gender-nonconforming artists wrestled snakes, performed magic tricks with electricity, and walked across waterfalls on tightropes, shattering taboos by performing in public at a time when “respectable” women were mostly confined to their homes.

Betsy Golden Kellem deftly explores how major forces in the long nineteenth century combined to create the uniquely American spectacle of the traveling circus. During the transformation of the circus from scrappy “mud shows” to a major international business, these extraordinary circus women challenged contemporary ideas of femininity, creating new possibilities for women far beyond the big top.

A collection of reinvented queer pulp fiction by writers like Sarah Schulman and Lorraine Hansberry that’s so edgy it draws blood.

Lesbian pulp fiction thrived in the oppressive 1950s, telling subversive stories of lonely sapphic women who find connection, passion, and revenge. In The New Lesbian Pulp, editors Sarah Fonseca and Octavia Saenz revive the genre for today, layering nuance into classic tropes while dialing up the melodrama, romantic peril, and collateral damage.

In these pages—which pair revived classics from Lorraine Hansberry and Alice Dunbar Nelson with new stories from Sarah Schulman, Grace Byron, Shamim Sharif, and more—vigilante lesbians gather roadkill for revenge, a woman and her former high school bully hook up and commit murder, Brooklyn witches cruise kink parties for human sacrifice, and a sinister kidnapping goes horribly wrong (or horribly right). 

Here, gathered just for you, are some of today’s best lesbian pulp stories. Don’t be afraid. Pick them up.