The small queer press is a continuous 2025 book club at The Pond aiming to uplift queer published works from smaller -mostly indie- presses focusing on diverse stories of LGBTQIA+ life and people.
The book club will run in 2-3 month cycles, each quarter focusing on a different press.
August through October we are exploring the works from Amethyst Editions. For October we are reading “We Were Witches” by Ariel Gore:
Buying into the dream that education is the road out of poverty, a teen mom takes a chance on bettering herself and talks her way into college. But once she’s there, phallocratic narratives permeate every subject. Wryly riffing on feminist literary tropes, We Were Witches documents the survival of a demonized single lesbian mother as she’s beset by custody disputes, homophobia, and America’s ever-present obsession with shaming unconventional women into passive citizenship. But even as the narrator struggles to graduate, a question uncomfortably If you’re dealing with precarious parenthood, queer identity, and debt, what is the true narrative shape of your experience?
The Amethyst Editions imprint champions emerging queer writers who employ genre-bending narratives and experimental writing styles, and works that complicate the conversation around LGBTQ+ experiences beyond a coming out story.
Amethyst Editions was founded by artist and author Michelle Tea, and is an imprint under The Feminist Press. Read more about them here: https://www.feministpress.org/amethyst-editions-info
*no reader commitment!*
- read the book, or start reading it
- show up to the discussion
- no sign ups needed
- you can go to one, or some, or all
- book club is held monthly
- 2-3 month cycles highlighting a different queer press
- facebook events will be available
- the books are available at The Pond at a -10% discount
- the books are in english, mostly fiction
If you want to join the bookclub remotely, or track your reading for these books, you can joining the Storygraph challenge for funsies.