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Working: Writer Barbara Wilson on the Origins of Feminist Publisher Seal Press

Slate Daily Feed

Slate

Business, News, Society & Culture

3.91.1K Ratings

🗓️ 19 June 2022

⏱️ 54 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week, host June Thomas talks to Barbara Wilson, author of multiple mystery novels and co-founder of the feminist publishing house Seal Press, which launched in 1976. In the interview, Barbara starts by discussing her mystery novels and her decision to revive the character Cassandra Reilly. Then she talks about her experience co-founding Seal Press and the challenges that she and her colleagues faced as indie publishers.  After the interview, June and co-hose Isaac Butler chat about the use of formulas in fiction. In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, Barbara explains why she changed her name to Barbara Sjoholm and started publishing certain books under that name.  Send your questions about creativity and any other feedback to working@slate.com or give us a call at (304) 933-9675. Podcast production by Cameron Drews.  If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Big Mood, Little Mood—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on Working. Sign up now at slate.com/workingplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:43.0

We small presses, most of which started in the 70s, did a lot of the work ourselves. The whole structure that was being built of lesbian culture outside the mainstream, that's what made it possible.

1:06.0

And individually it would have been difficult for any of us to have the success we had.

1:13.0

Welcome back to Working. I'm your host Isaac Butler.

1:16.0

And I'm your other host, June Thomas.

1:19.0

Hey June, whose voice was that that we heard right at the top of the show and why did you want to speak to her this week?

1:25.0

So that was Barbara Wilson, also known as Barbara Shea Home. And I've known Barbara for a very long time back in 1990 or thereabouts she hired me to work at Seal Press.

1:38.0

The feminist publisher that is now after changing owners a few times, part of the Hashtag Group, they're actually going to publish my book in a couple of years.

1:48.0

But Barbara was one of the co-founders back in the 70s in Seattle.

1:53.0

And I wanted to speak with her because still another thing that she pioneered was the feminist mystery genre. She wrote six or seven of them back in the 80s and 90s before she made a pivot in her writing career.

2:08.0

But in the last couple of years, she has returned to Sandra Riley, who is one of her investigators.

2:16.0

She's a globe trotting translator investigator. And Barbara has written two new books, not the real Jupiter and loved ice twice.

2:26.0

And I really enjoyed those books, but it was the circling back to a character that she had invented decades ago.

2:35.0

That was what really interested me. And also, it's Pride Month. And in Pride Month, my mind always turns to queer history. And I really wanted to talk with Barbara about the early years of Seal Press and the women in print movement that it was part of.

2:53.0

You know, I got to say, big Seal Press fan. They published one of the funniest books I've ever read and Halliday's travel memoir No Touch Monkey. And I was wondering, what are some of your favorite Seal Press titles?

3:05.0

Well, so from recent years, I really love sometimes you have to lie. That was Leslie Brodie's biography of Louise Fitzhugh, who wrote the Harriet the Spy books.

3:14.0

I would got that tip from our, I have to say, dear departed as if he's deceased, but our former co-host, I guess, Ruman Alon, fantastic book.

3:24.0

And from the original Seal Press titles, Barbara's books are great. There was one called The Diakin the Dibbuk by Ellen Galford that was fantastic.

...

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