It is an honor and a privilege for me to e-interview Dr. Susan Hawthorne and Dr. Renate Klein, co-founders of Spinifex Press. Spinifex Press has published feminist books since 1991. I personally became aware of Spinifex Press or rather the book, Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed (Spinifex 1996) for the first time in 1996. Mary Daly, U.S. radical feminist thinker, recommended this book to me, when I was in Korea preparing for an admission to a graduate school in the U.S. It was the first feminist anthology written in the English Language, which I purchased through an international post service. I absorbed its articles like a clean sponge sucking water. And this was the book that I continued to read and cited in my term papers during my graduate courses for a long time. For the last decade, I grew to learn more about Spinifex Press through Susan Hawthorne who has been one of the substantive contributors to Mago Work projects (Return to Mago E-Magazine, Mago Academy, Mago Books, and the peer-review S/HE journal).
Helen Hwang: What is Spinifex Press about?
Susan Hawthorne: Spinifex Press is about making radical feminist ideas available. It is an independent Australian feminist press which publishes controversial and innovative feminist books with an optimistic edge. The optimistic edge is important because, although we publish books that are often difficult, such as books about violence against women, pornography, prostitution, as well as books that highlight racism, sexism, ableism, agism and the torture of lesbians, we still try to include seeds of hope. Our books also delve into the origins of patriarchy around the world. We have published books by Indigenous writers from Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, North America and Africa. Our list includes a significant number of lesbian writers, as well as writers living with a disability or coming from a migrant or working-class background. Diversity has become a fashionable word in recent years, but we at Spinifex have been publishing diverse voices since we began in 1991.
Hwang: When and how did it come about?
Hawthorne: In the Australian summer of 1990, Renate Klein and I had a holiday in Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory. A beautiful area with a long Indigenous history and a great deal of rock art. As we slowed down from a hectic year, we began to talk about whether we had enough knowledge to start a small feminist press. We decided that we did, with Renate having a long background in international non-fiction publishing (the Athene Series) and as an academic journal editor in Women’s Studies (Women’s Studies International Forum and Issues in Reproductive and Genetic Engineering). I had four years’ experience as an editor of mostly fiction and poetry at Penguin Australia as well as an organiser of a nine-day feminist writers festival. We therefore had good contacts in Australia and internationally. We decided to jump into this adventure and so I left my job as Acquisitions Editor at Penguin while Renate continued in her teaching position in Women’s Studies at Deakin University in order for us to have a regular income. In our first year, we published four books, an anthology, Angels of Power, a crime novel, Too Rich, a women’s health book and a quiz book. By the second year we published seven books including one by an international writer and a book of cartoons. We were off. Each year we have published books that reflect the concerns of feminists during that period. Because the mainstream is always well behind what feminist are talking about, we are always ahead of the cultural curve.
Hwang: Tell us about your feminist commitment.
Hawthorne: Our feminist commitment is very deep. For around 50 years we have each worked in different ways and in different parts of the Women’s Liberation Movement. I joined the Women’s Liberation Movement in 1973 and quickly became active in Melbourne’s first Rape Crisis Centre. I advocated for courses in Women’s Studies and Feminism and wrote about the Ibu women’s war in Nigeria, about the Australian writer Miles Franklin and in my final year in Philosophy wrote a thesis ‘In Defence of Separatism’ that was finally published in full in 2019. I travelled overseas and was especially taken by what I saw in Crete and was soon reading prehistory, myth and studying first Modern Greek then Ancient Greek. During this time, I wrote several long essays which were subsequently published, one on the Greek philosopher, Diotima and another on the Homeric Hymns to Aphrodite and Demeter. I was soon embarking on writing my novel. The Falling Woman, organising several writers’ festivals and then moving into publishing. Since beginning Spinifex, I have worked teaching Creative Writing at universities, I completed a PhD in Women’s Studies, Wild Politics, and I joined two women’s circuses and learnt to be an aerialist. I have also continued to write fiction, poetry and non-fiction and have been lucky enough to get three residencies in India, Italy and Turkey that allowed me time out to write. You can see many of my books here.
Renate Klein: After having worked as a neurobiologist at Zürich University, Switzerland, and a chemistry and zoology high school teacher for a few years, I desperately felt I needed a big change in my life. I started teaching biology in the Women’s Studies Program at Berkeley University, USA, and ended up studying for a BA (Hons) in Women’s Studies because I realised that, as a scientist, my world was very narrow-minded. I then went on to get my doctorate at London University on the Theory and Practice of Women’s Studies in an international context and began working as the European Editor of Women’s Studies International Forum and an editor of The Athene Series. I also got heavily involved in the radical feminist resistance to reproductive technologies and genetic engineering by editing books, a journal and being a co-founder of FINRRAGE (Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering). Eventually, I ended up in Australia doing research into the experiences of women undergoing IVF (in vitro fertilisation). I got a job at Deakin University where I became Associate Professor of Women’s Studies. The many international contacts I had made in these activities were a good starting point to begin Spinifex Press with Susan in 1991. You can see many of my books here.
Hwang: Tell us about Spinifex books that are published.
Hawthorne: Spinifex has published around 300 books, 250 of which remain in print. The innovative end of our books includes fiction and poetry that challenge readers. We try to expand the reading tastes of those who buy or borrow our books. Our subject matter is broad and includes radical feminist theory, the lives of Indigenous women, lesbians, working class women and women with a disability. We have published feminist writers from every continent and have strong lists in Asian and African writing. We have always been among the early adopters of new technologies including establishing a website, being one of the first three publishers in Australia to produce ebooks. In 1996, we created the Building Babel Site an interactive internet site based on Suniti Namjoshi’s novel, Building Babel. It is now archived at the National Library of Australia. In recent years we have produced audio books (just two for now) and have published three books under the Spinifex imprint in German. We have more than 100 translations of Spinifex titles in languages that include Korean, Tamil, Arabic, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Latvian, Portuguese, Chinese, Turkish, Dutch, Greek, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Slovenian, Czech, Hungary as well as English-language co-editions with publishers in India, Canada, Aotearoa/New Zealand, UK, USA, and Bangladesh.
Hwang: What does your feminism have to do with Spinifex Press?
Hawthorne: Spinifex would not exist without feminism. In our early years we joined with many feminist publishers and booksellers in Australia, New Zealand, North America and Europe when feminist publishers and bookstores were thriving. When superstores (especially in the USA), computers (especially the internet) and the backlash against feminism came in around the mid-1990s, many of the bookstores and publishing houses went out of existence. I write about this in my book, Bibliodiversity: A Manifesto for Independent Publishing. They were also years when Women’s Studies was widespread in universities and colleges, both of these things meant we had audiences we could reach face-to-face. Renate had been involved in the First International Feminist Book Fair in London, as had several of our early authors, and we attended these Fairs too (in 1988, Montreal, 1990 Barcelona, 1992 Amsterdam). In Amsterdam, we put in a bid to run the 6th International Feminist Book Fair in Melbourne in 1994. These were incredible events and while organising the 6th IFBF was exhausting, it was also exhilarating. We were always interested in new things happening and in 1995 set up a website, published Dale Spender’s Nattering on the Net and in 1996 organised a conference on cyberfeminism and published two works of fiction on cyber issues and an introductory book about the Internet. In 2006, we were the third publisher in Australia to produce ebooks and most of our titles are available as PDFs or ePubs.
Hwang: What are the future visions for Spinifex Press and your activism?
Hawthorne: We work on our publishing program from year to year and try to limit ourselves to publishing ten books each year. It is impossible to know what the future will bring, but as we have always been ahead of the cultural curve, we expect to remain there and take up new activist issues as they arise and publish mostly ahead of others. Activism is central to Spinifex, but so too is innovation. Regular subject areas that we publish in include ecology, prehistory, women’s health, reproductive technology, surrogacy, adoption, critical works on transgenderism, biography and autobiography, disability, history, politics, sexuality, violence against women and more.
Hwang: Thank you so much for your conversations, Susan and Renate. In the sense that feminism constitutes the root of The Mago Work, I am ever grateful for what you two have accomplished through Spinifex Press.
Susan Hawthorne is an award-winning writer of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. She is the author/editor of 29 books published in seven languages across 22 territories. Her non-fiction books include Vortex: The Crisis of Patriarchy (2020), In Defence of Separatism(2019), Bibliodiversity (2014), Wild Politics (2002/2022), and The Spinifex Quiz Book (1993). Her works include nine collections of poetry. Her collection Cow (2011) was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Poetry prize in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and was a Finalist in the Audre Lorde Lesbian Poetry Prize (USA). Earth’s Breath (2009) was shortlisted for the Judith Wright Poetry Prize. She is the author of three works of lesbian fiction, Dark Matters (2017), Limen (2013) and The Falling Woman (1992/2004). Susan has been the recipient on international residencies in Turkey, Italy and India. She has translated literary works from Sanskrit, Greek and Latin and her books have been translated into German, Spanish, Arabic, French, Czech, Tamil and Portuguese.
Susan Hawthorne has been active in the women’s liberation movement since 1973, was involved in Melbourne’s Rape Crisis Centre and performed as an aerialist in two women’s circuses. She has taught English to Arabic-speaking women, worked in Aboriginal education and has taught across a number of subject areas in universities. She is Adjunct Professor in the School of Humanities at James Cook University, Townsville. She was the winner of the 2017 Penguin Random House Best Achievement in Writing in the Inspire Awards for her work increasing people’s awareness of epilepsy and the politics of disability. She has won awards for her contribution to the gay and lesbian community and to publishing.
Dr Renate Klein is a long-term women’s health researcher and has written extensively on reproductive technologies and feminist theory over the last thirty years. A biologist and social scientist, she was Associate Professor in Women’s Studies at Deakin University in Melbourne. She is a co-founder of FINRRAGE (Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering) and an original signatory to Stop Surrogacy Now.