🦁 Roar Like A Lady #5 Dr. Kate Gale, Leading A Community That Seeks Diversity
In Conversation with the Managing Editor Of Red Hen Press On Diversity, Inclusivity and Resilient Literature
Dr. Kate Gale is co-founder and Managing Editor of Red Hen Press, Editor of the Los Angeles Review, and she teaches in the Low Residency MFA program at the University of Nebraska in Poetry, Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction and in the Ashland, Ohio MFA Program.
I was supremely nervous (more than I usually am) when I got in touch with her, and I was surprised that she agreed to have a small conversation with me. Just putting it out there, that I share Kate’s love of The Mad Woman In The Attic and that has been one of my treasured highlights of this whole year.
In 1994, Dr. Kate Gale and Mark E. Cull co-founded the press from their San Fernando Valley home, selling nearly all they owned to begin publishing talented writers whose works had been overlooked by large-scale publishers. Red Hen Press has since transformed into a thriving organization that supports the Greater Los Angeles Area and international communities with arts-based events and literary advocacy.
Red Hen Press not only publishes literature independently, but they have also been instrumental in the building of a community of readers. The press cultivates nearly thirty readings annually, at a variety of venues in the Greater Los Angeles Area, New York City, and internationally.
Writing In The Schools is yet another laudable initiative by the press, this literary education program has served over 4,000 underserved students by placing published authors into fourth through twelfth-grade classrooms.
Without further ado and not without moist eyes, I present to you my conversation with Dr. Kate Gale.
Nidhi Ajay: What was at the crux of your decision to founding the Red Hen Press?
Dr. Gale: We wanted to create change in the literary landscape by featuring underrepresented stories and by turning Los Angeles into a literary city.
Nidhi Ajay: How has the industry evolved ever since you began the journey 27 years ago?
Dr. Gale: There are fewer bookstores but also more passionate readers who are seeking underrepresented stories by independent book publishers. While technology has advanced and major distributors have merged, we continue to work in a relationship-based industry and send handwritten thank-you notes!
Nidhi Ajay: Red Hen has developed a literary community around it through exquisitely curated events and the involvement of people outside the Press.
What role has this particular element played in Red Hen's success?
Dr. Gale: Red Hen's partnerships have helped us build successful events and amazing long-term reading series. We have relationships with many people outside the press who advise us and those relationships have allowed us to make better decisions. One of the most important things we did as a new organization was to get out and ask questions from people outside our organization and learn from our mistakes. Everything about running a nonprofit is difficult; it's a struggle. And many people don't believe you’ll survive, so you have to work hard and often alone. We use our experience to teach others all that we can, including teaching webinars for other organizations to learn how to affordably host virtual events and offering panels for up-and-coming authors, editors, and publishers to learn how to get into the publishing industry and how to get published. We hope that these efforts will contribute to the greater LA literary community and help cultivate a “community, not competition” mindset for indie change makers.
Nidhi Ajay: Tell us about your proudest moment in the journey so far. If our readers could read one book from Red Hen, where would you have them begin?
Dr. Gale: My proudest moment might have been publishing Lily Hoang's Underneath. It's a new book, coming out this fall, and I love it. It’s a heart-wrenching take on the psychological effects of bullying and fatphobia. In the book, a woman murders her children one by one by suffocating them with her body. Throughout the story, we’re taken into her psyche and shown how and why she falls to moral depravity underneath society’s expectations of acceptable domesticity. It’s different from what Red Hen has published in the past and I’m excited for the conversations it will start.
If you were going to read one book, and you enjoyed reading novels, maybe starting with Underneath, or with Glorious Boy by Aimee Liu, a historical fiction novel about a woman separated from her family by war, and her fight to return back to them. We also publish poetry, short story collections, and creative nonfiction.
Nidhi Ajay: Tell us about upcoming projects you are most excited about.
Dr. Gale: I am very excited about Yuvi Zalkow's book, I Only Cry with Emoticons, a quirky comedy that reveals the cost of being disconnected—even when we’re using a dozen apps on our devices to communicate—and an awkward man’s search for real connections, on and offline. This one comes out June 7, 2022. I’m also excited for Ra Malika Imhotep’s gossypiin, a debut poetry collection from a Black feminist writer, scholar, and performance artist from Atlanta. The collection performs an interruption of the narrative silence around sexual harm and the mark it makes on Black femme subjectivity. It’s definitely one to watch out for, and it comes out April 12, 2022. We also just acquired Afaa Michael Weaver's next poetry collection, A Fire in the Hills, which will be coming out in 2023.
This has been exhilarating, I am so excited for all the new titles that are coming out at Red Hen Press. It is our duty to support and help the sustenance of non-profit organizations that are keeping our community alive with the insurmountable amount of effort they are taking.
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