July 2024 News

This July 2nd, we celebrate the 60th anniversary of passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, or national origin. Provisions of this act aimed to end segregation and unfair practices in public places, public education, and the workplace. However, as Charlotte Burrows, chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission points out, the act did not immediately end discrimination in the United States. To this day, countless organizations and activists continue working for its full realization, including our authors and those they write about.

Both our new June authors had a busy and stellar month of meaningful book launches. Among them, the Center for Women’s History at the New-York Historical Society hosted a party on June 18th to celebrate venerable feminist leader Muriel Fox and the release of her new memoir, The Women’s Revolution: How We Changed your Life.

Muriel Fox (right) with event hosts, Georgette Bennett and Marcie Syms.

Muriel inscribes a copy of her book for Dr. Valerie Paley, founding director of the Center for Women's History and Director of the Klingenstein Library.

Muriel signing copies of The Women's Revolution for 100 guests!

What a thrill to meet Dr. Eleanor Pam, President of Veteran Feminists of America, and Emily Friedan, daughter of the late, great Betty Friedan!

On Sunday, June 30th, co-discussant and descendant of Sotterley and Jesuit enslaved, Angela Wilson, describes her DC area event with author Merideth Taylor: "What an incredible evening it was at the Hyattsville Busboys and Poets introducing the book Making a Way Out of No Way: Lives of Labor, Love, and Resistance by Merideth Taylor. The atmosphere was filled with joy. One of the highlights was having Mary Beth Corrigan, PhD, Georgetown University's Curator of Collections on Slavery, Memory, & Reconciliation, join us. She was deeply moved by the book and found its themes profoundly relevant. In fact, Mary Beth was so impressed that she plans to recommend it as essential reading to her colleagues. This endorsement speaks volumes about the book's impact and relevance."

Merideth Taylor signing her book (upper left), Angela Wilson cosigning (lower left), Dr. Mary Beth Corrigan with Angela (lower right).

The Women's Revolution

How We Changed Your Life

Muriel Fox

In her candid, compelling memoir about the second-wave feminist movement, Muriel Fox offers remarkable, firsthand stories of 30 people (29 women and one man) whom history should not forget! Among those profiled are Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, Pauli Murray, Heather Booth, and Mary Eastwood. Unlike books relying on secondary sources, Fox’s memoir is built mainly from her own feminism files. 

“Muriel Fox was there at the beginning of the modern wave of feminism, and her book, The Women’s Revolution, reveals how a small group of women started a worldwide transformation that continues. Anyone striving for a more equal future will be inspired by her experience.”

—Gloria Steinem, feminist activist, author, founding editor of Ms. Magazine

Hardcover, 320 pages, fully indexed, 6.00 x 9.00 in, 36 b/w images

Ms. Magazine: NOW Co-Founder Muriel Fox’s Memoir Is ‘Momentum for a New Revolution’

Carrie N. Baker interviews Muriel Fox for Ms. Magazine: “One reason we succeeded so quickly was because the media understood immediately that this was an important revolution.” Read the interview HERE. 

WHMP’s Bill Newman Interviews Muriel Fox 

Muriel Fox discusses her new book, feminist history, and the upcoming presidential election: “We have to support organizations that work door-to-door to inform people.” 

Listen to the interview HERE.

Muriel Fox cofounded the National Organization for Women (NOW) and its powerful Legal Defense and Education Fund (now Legal Momentum), pivotal forces in the second-wave feminist movement. Fox was also cofounder and president of the International Women’s Forum and chair of Veteran Feminists of America. As executive vice president of Carl Byoir & Associates, Fox became the world’s most preeminent woman in public relations. At age 96, she remains an influential voice in the feminist movement.

If you missed the Veteran Feminists of America (VFA) webinar on June 26th with Muriel Fox, would like to view it again, or want to send it on to friends, it has been recorded!

The video is a rare first-person account of the women’s movement from the people who made it happen. It features Muriel Fox with Dr. Eleanor Pam, President of VFA, and Christian F. Nunes, President of NOW.

Watch the recording HERE. 

Making a Way Out of No Way

Lives of Labor, Love, and Resistance

Merideth M. Taylor

Hardcover, 208 pages, 7.38 x 9.00 in, 91 images.

All author royalties will be donated to the Historic Sotterley Descendant's Project.

A richly imagined, illustrated narrative of 150 years of life in slavery on tobacco plantations in Southern Maryland.

The photographs and stories in this book grew out of the author’s quest to understand how these people, who were subjected to a system that made every attempt to brutalize and dehumanize them, were able not only to survive but to build families and meaningful lives.

"This remarkable book combines everyday reality with imagination, fired by a deep knowledge of history and humanity [...] Merideth Taylor tells us and thereby helps us to both look and think anew."–George McDaniel, author, Drayton Hall Stories

"There’s something about knowing your history and its ability to sometimes ‘rock your world’ to its core." –T. Darlene Yorkshire, descendant of slaves associated with Sotterley and the Georgetown Memory Project

Upcoming Merideth Taylor Events

Merideth M. Taylor is Professor Emerita of Theater and Dance at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and a founding member of the African and African Diaspora and Women Studies programs at the College. She is author of Listening in: Echoes and Artifacts from Maryland’s Mother County; co-editor of In Relentless Pursuit of an Education: African American Stories from a Century of Segregation; and award-winning documentary screenwriter/director.

Submit Nominations to The Ann Snitow Prize 

Deadline: July 15, 11:59 PM

The Ann Snitow Prize recognizes a feminist intellectual and activist living and working in the United States who exhibits the extraordinary vision, generosity, and originality of the late Ann Snitow, whose last book, Visitors: An American Feminist in East Central Europe, was published by New Village Press. The award is $12,500. 

Ann Snitow (1943–2019) was a longtime activist, feminist movement founder, academic, and writer. She was Professor Emerita of Literature and Gender Studies at Eugene Lang College, the New School, and co-founded numerous organizations, including The Network of East-West Women; No More Nice Girls; Feminist Anti-Censorship Taskforce “FACT”; Take Back the Future; and New York Radical Feminists. A frequent contributor of essays to The Village Voice, The Nation, and Dissent, Snitow also had several published titles. Her last book, a moving memoir with lessons for feminists now, was Visitors: An American Feminist in East Central Europe. 

American Society on Aging article:

"Bearing Witness to Someone Letting Go of Life"

The ASA pays tribute to Mark Dowie's book Judith Letting Go about his friendship with Judith Tannenbaum, a poet and teacher who, after being diagnosed with an incurable, painful disease, chooses to end life on her own terms. 

Read the article excerpting the book's introduction HERE.

Rain Taxi Review of Books

Mark Dillon interviews Mark Dowie about dying with dignity, his friendship with Judith Tannenbaum, and the process of writing his newest book, Judith Letting Go: “Writing from the heart was completely new to me, but Judith made it easy. Throughout the friendship I never thought of myself as a writer or a journalist, only a friend.”

Order Rain Taxi Issue #114 HERE.

Mark Dowie is a former publisher and editor of Mother Jones magazine. He recently retired from the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism where he taught science, environmental reporting, and foreign correspondence. Dowie’s works have won nineteen journalism awards, including four National Magazine Awards, a George Polk Award, a William Allen White Gold Medal, and a Media Alliance’s Meritorious Award for Lifetime Achievement. He is the author of eight previous books.

Ann Arbor Observer: "Remembering February in June"

“Running into the almost-noon sun just

the angle so my whole face squints

like I am smiling–which I am–

because to not on a sixty-degree Michigan winter morning

is a sin.” 

Read Leigh Sugar’s “The Huron River at Barton Dam” HERE. Leigh Sugar is the editor of That's a Pretty Thing to Call It.

 Photo by C. Finch

Discover Magazine: Happiness is a Green Thumb

Illène Pevec, author of Growing A Life: Teen Gardeners Harvest Food, Health, and Joy, responds to “The Science of Happiness" in the March/April 2024 issue of Discover Magazine:

“Your article misses this key element for happiness which has been researched all over the world: Time spent in nature is healing and necessary for our health emotionally and physically.”

Marin Independent Journal:

"There’s Still Plenty of Kindness Left in the World"

Jill Holmes reflects on “random acts of kindness” and the legacy of Anne Herbert, the journalist and author who coined the phrase. Read or listen to the article HERE. 

The 30th Anniversary Edition of Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty with memorable illustrations by Mayumi Oda celebrates Herbert’s legacy of kindness as well as the critical choices we make for life or violence.

See Me

Prison Theater Workshops and Love 

Jan Cohen-Cruz

with Finn K, Ausettua Amor Amenkum, Alexander Anderson, John Bergman, Kevin Bott, Reginold Daniels, George Ferguson, Rand Hazou, Saul Hewish, Kathy Randels, Jess Thorpe, and Gloria “Mama Glo” Williams 

September, 2024

A collection of intimate dialogues about shared experiences in prison theater workshops

“A compelling insight into the different ways that prison theater has affected the lives of all those involved in it. The picture is of a world where the injustices of mass incarceration are multiple, but the relations fostered by theater provide a rare bulwark against their worst aspects.”—James Thompson, Co-Editor, RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance

Portraits of Peacemakers 

Americans Who Tell the Truth

Robert Shetterly



October, 2024

Essays, portraits, and profiles of over 50 peace activists who resist violence and act with love 

"The essays in this book offer diverse perspectives and strategies from some of the most important peacemakers of our time, providing us with necessary guidance for moving through this time of deep upheaval and transition. Additionally, the portraits of peacemakers across time calmly remind us that peace is not something to be achieved, it is a state of being that travels alongside us.”

—Sherri Mitchell, Weh'na Ha'mu Kwasset, author of Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change

Creative Instigation

The Art and Strategy of Authentic Community Engagement 

Fern Tiger

October, 2024

Case stories in effective community engagement with democratic policy-making 



“Fern Tiger’s concept of creative instigation opens doors for effective community engagement that honors the voices of those often omitted from public policy conversations. Through case studies, she provides principles and lessons while simultaneously recognizing the importance of specific contexts.”

—Theresa Cordova, Director Great Cities Institute, University of Illinois Chicago

Inspired and Outraged

The Making of a Feminist Physician

Alice Rothchild 

November, 2024 

A remarkable autobiography—written entirely in free verse—of Alice Rothchild's journey from 1950's good girl to irreverent, feisty, feminist obstetrician-gynecologist forging her own direction in the contradictory, sexist world of medicine 

"Written in free form poetry, this very accessible and powerful memoir of her coming of age into feminism, medicine, and justice should be read by everyone. It will help you make sense of our world as it moves you to tears."

—Susan M. Reverby, Professor Emerita in the History of Ideas and Women and Gender Studies, Wellesley College