The University Library's Regional History Project announces the publication of Irene Reti and HerBooks Feminist Press, the last in a trio of oral histories documenting archives on deposit in Special Collections, which are a part of the UC/Stanford Women's Studies Consortium California Feminist Presses Project. UCSC Women's Studies Librarian emerita Jacquelyn Marie interviewed Reti, and UCSC Regional History Project director Randall Jarrell edited the manuscript.
Reti, a UCSC graduate, founded HerBooks in 1984, a small, all-volunteer press, running on low overhead and publishing pioneering radical feminist and lesbian titles.
In her narrative, Reti discusses the network of feminist publishers and writers with whom she has been involved, the genesis of the titles she has published over the years, her intuitive philosophy of why she publishes what she does, and her overview of the economics of small press publishing during the last two decades. She also gives an overview of Santa Cruz's literary community.
HerBooks publications include an eclectic variety of subjects ranging from serious feminist, lesbian political, and cultural volumes (Childless by Choice: A Feminist Anthology, to The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Other Plays, as well as more whimsical books, such as Garden Variety Dykes: Lesbian Traditions in Gardening and Cats (and Their Dykes).
Copies of the volume are on deposit in McHenry Library's Special Collections and at UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library.
