Aunt Lute Books is an American multicultural feminist press based in San Francisco, California. The publisher also seeks to work with and support first-time authors.

Publishing history

In 1982, Aunt Lute Book Company was founded by Barb Wieser and Joan Pinkvoss in Iowa. Aunt Lute merged with Spinsters Ink, another feminist publisher, in 1986, and the two organizations published jointly for several years in San Francisco under the name Spinsters/Aunt Lute. In 1990 the Aunt Lute Foundation was established as a non-profit publishing program. In 1992, Spinsters Ink was purchased by lesbian feminist philanthropist Joan Drury and moved to Minneapolis. Aunt Lute continues to operate independently as a nonprofit to the present day.

Titles

Aunt Lute has published a number of high-profile feminist and lesbian authors, including Audre Lorde (The Cancer Journals), Gloria Anzaldúa (Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza), Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, LeAnne Howe (Shell Shaker, winner of the 2002 Before Columbus American Book Award, and Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story), Alice Walker, and Paula Gunn Allen. Call Me Woman, the autobiography of South African activist Ellen Kuzwayo, Radmila Manojlovic Zarkovic's anthology, I Remember: Writings by Bosnian Women Refugees, and Cherry Muhanji's Lambda Award-winning novel Her have also been published by Aunt Lute. Other Aunt Lute titles include the first U.S. collection of Filipina/Filipina American women writers and the first collection of Southeast Asian women writers, as well as a number of translated texts. Other titles are listed below:

Anthologies and collections

Awards

Aunt Lute Books won the 2004-2005 and the 2005-2006 Best of the Small Presses Award, granted by Standards, an international cultural studies magazine.