Feminist Voices: The Best of Femspec's Creative Work, the First Ten Years

I'm pleased to announce the release of Feminist Voices: The Best of Femspec's Creative Work, edited by Batya Weinbaum, which collects the fiction and poetry that a jury judged the best published in each of the first ten years of the feminist speculative fiction journal Femspec. Here's an excerpt from Pamela Sargent's introduction:

[H]aving as many outlets as possible for feminist voices is as necessary as ever. I recall that some years after editing the Women of Wonder anthologies of science fiction by women for Vintage, in the 1970s, people would occasionally ask me if publishing such volumes was still necessary. The implied assumption underlying such a question was that this particular battle had already been won. I heard the same kinds of questions asked again after I had edited two new Women of Wonder volumes for Harcourt Brace during the 1990s. What we have, however, isn’t a battle with a decisive end but is instead an ongoing struggle, as recent political controversies have shown, with whatever gains being made often in danger of being rolled back. It often seems that as soon as you’re foolish enough to believe an issue has been settled, that issue once again emerges as a subject for heated debate….

What these dissimilar and individual writers have in common is an ability and willingness to illuminate feminist concerns in their poetry and fiction while viewing them through the lenses of speculative fiction.

Contributors include Marleen S. Barr, Lorraine Schein, Karen Alkalay-Gut, Finisia Fideli, Gina Wisker, K.A. Laity, Rebecca Lesses, Debra Jo Schleef, Doreen Russell, Barbara Minchinton, Glenis Redmond, Susan McLean, Tara Leonard, Phebe Beiser, and Jane Liddell-King.

Aqueduct has published the volume in both paperback and ebook editions.It can be purchased now through our website (www.aqueductpress.com), and will shortly be available in the usual venues selling our books.