It’s been a good year at Turnaround when it comes to feminist reads, events, and inspirations. We’re lucky to distribute lots of the most progressive, lovely leftie publishers who consistently give the voices of women across the world a platform, in lots of different ways and places – which means we on the marketing team get lots of opportunities to blog about incredible women and the art they make.
This time last year, we were writing about publishing taking a long-overdue look at itself and its lack of diversity, talking about why we need diverse books, our best books with kick-ass female leads, and some of the queer books from the Turnaround shelves you should pick up.
We spent the guts of 2015 in the throes of Ferrante Fever, with the whole marketing team writing about each Neapolitan novel in the run-up to the September publication of the epic tome of womanhood, The Story of the Lost Child.
August saw the publication of the amazing Miriam Elia’s We Go to the Gallery, which contains my favourite line from the year in books: “Big vaginas are feminist.” We also took a moment to stick it to the man and champion Miriam as an independent artist.
September saw me attend my first Let’s Talk Intersectionality event at Gosh! Comics, a haven of intersectional feminism in which a group of comics’ loveliest folk get down to the business of busting myths through discussion and planning how to make the industry a better place. I ended up going back with Clara just a couple weeks later, and we both jumped at the chance to head along to the third edition this March.
The team celebrated a whopping five years of For Books’ Sake championing writing by women at their birthday party in September, selling lots of great feminist reads – make sure to check out the essential reading list at the end of the event write-up.
In October we distributed the fourth and final Rookie Yearbook to the UK market. We gush about these books whenever we can, because the support young women offer each other is the planet’s vital lifesource.
Ms. Marvel reached the conclusion of its first volume in December, which featured the awesome intergenerational feminist moment when Kamala Khan met Carol Danvers. The series never stops kicking ass and reaping rewards for representing a new voice in comics.
Unfortunately January wasn’t so hot, with the whole Angoulême debacle really taking the biscuit when it came to stupid, stupid, moronic sexism. However, the comics world shook its head and turned to House of Illustration’s Comix Creatrix: 100 Women Making Comics exhibition which opened in February. We prepped by pondering our favourite women comics creators, and interviewing three of the leading ladies of Myriad Editions: Corinne Pearlman, creative director of Myriad; Una, creator of Becoming Unbecoming; and Nicola Streeten, creator of Billy, Me & You.
Now, we’re all basking in the glorious honesty of 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, with our own Sarah writing about what the book meant to her. Our biggest intersectional feminist read coming up is undoubtedly The Argonauts – Jenn tells you why in our Jan-June preview, in which you’ll find lots of other brilliant books with feminism at their core (especially exciting is The Complete Wimmen’s Comix, out now).
Some books to look out for over the coming weeks: the mythical If Women Rose Rooted; long-distance sisterhood in Keep Me Posted; lesbian girl-gangs of Manchester in We Go Around in the Night and Are Consumed by Fire; the economic role immigrants working as caregivers have in Disposable Domestics; and the punk rock herstory of The Spitboy Rule.
Post by Heather
Find more diverse reads here