Press Gang Publishers

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Press Gang Publishing was a feminist printing collective located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It was active from 1970 to 2002. It was incorporated under the BC Companies Act as Press Gang Publishers Ltd. The organization initially included both women and men, and in 1974 it was reestablished as a women-only feminist and anti-capitalist collective[1].

Press Gang had a policy of rejecting sexist or racist material for publication. For clients, it drew largely from local feminist, radicalist, activist and community groups. The organization took financial chances, and often printed material that mainstream shops would not.

In 1974, the organization was located at 821 Hastings St., and it moved in 1978 to 603 Powell St. in the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood of Vancouver.

In 1989, the organization, which included both a printing and a publishing wing, formally split into two collectives, Press Gang Printers Ltd. and Press Gang Publishers Feminist Cooperative[2]. Throughout its herstory, Press Gang published books primarily but not exclusively by Canadian women authors and artists. Their titles addressed social issues like lesbian identity, lesbophobia, censorship, and women in conflict with the mental health and criminal justice systems.

In the later 1980s, facing changes in technology, the advent of the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the United States, and increasing competition from larger corporate printshops created insurmountable difficulties for the collective, and in 1993 Press Gang Printers was forced to cease operations.

Press Gang Publishers continued activity, until they were squeezed out of business by changes in the Canadian publishing industry and an increasing harsh economic climate for Canadian book publishers in the later 1990s. In 2000, Press Gang Publishers formed an alliance with Polestar Publishers of Victoria, British Columbia. Soon after this, Polestar was bought by Raincoast Books, and in 2002 Press Gang Publishers were pushed to declare bankruptcy. Most of their titles remain unavailable.