An interview with Luciana Ricciutelli, editor-in-chief of Inanna Publications, the oldest feminist literary press in Canada

An interview with Luciana Ricciutelli, editor-in-chief of Inanna Publications, the oldest feminist literary press in Canada.

Interview by Jocelyn Cullity / Truman State University

Luciana Ricciutelli has been the editor-in-chief at Inanna Publications in Toronto since 1992. 

Founded in 1978 with the goal of making current writing on a wide variety of feminist topics accessible to the largest possible community of readers, Inanna is the proud publisher of one of Canada’s oldest feminist scholarly journals, Canadian Woman Studies/les cahiers de la femme. 

Luciana spearheaded the development of Inanna’s book publishing program in 1996 with educational titles, and then the launch of the Inanna Poetry and Fiction Series in 2004, committed to publishing books that reflect the depth, breadth and diversity of women’s lives across Canada and around the world. The press has been growing steadily ever since and has also launched a memoir series and a young feminist series. 

Luciana holds a Masters of Arts degree in English from the University of Toronto and is a published writer as well as a voracious reader, who loves nothing more than diving into a good book with her four small dogs snuggled in beside her.

Do you only publish Canadian women writers? 

Our priorities are to publish the work of Canadian citizens or citizens living in Canada today as we get invaluable support from our government to do so. But we do also publish the work (fiction and non-fiction) of non-Canadian writers from all around the world whose work we feel is vital, and whose voices need to be heard.

What gets the attention of your editorial team? 

Our aim is to conserve a publishing space dedicated to feminist voices that provoke discussion, advance feminist thought, and speak to diverse lives of women. We have always been particularly interested in ensuring that the voices of disenfranchised and marginalized women are heard and we are committed to working closely with talented, emerging writers, as well as established writers. 

Our priorities are to publish literary books, in particular by fresh, new voices, that are intellectually rigorous, speak to women’s hearts, and tell truths about the lives of the broad diversity of women—smart books for people who want to read and think about real women’s lives.

What kind of response do you get to your books at international book fairs? 

We regularly attend the Frankfurt Book Fair, the London Book Fair and the Guadalajara Book Fair as well as a number of important annual conferences, such as the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, and the National Women’s Studies Association conference, which in particular gathers thousands of feminist scholars and social justice activists.

As a feminist press, committed to publishing diverse women’s voices, we always receive a lot of great attention at these book fairs and conferences as our press has a unique focus … We are one of the very few feminist presses that continue to exist in North America, and one that is exclusively run by women. 

What excites you about the writing by women authors that you are reading today? 

We are always blown away by the increasing numbers of talented women writers who live in Canada, and we are thrilled to welcome the voices of this wide diversity of women who are shaping, amplifying, and making exciting new and significant contributions to Canadian cultural production. 

We are also excited by the number of women authors from countries around the world who submit their work to us because they are delighted to have discovered a feminist press that welcomes their voices. Though our primary aim is to publish the work of women, feminists, living in Canada, we do also publish a significant number of women from the U.S. and around the world and we are always open to reading the work of feminists everywhere who are working to make a difference and are advocating for change.

What sort of advice would you give women writers today?

I believe that women all over the world are a force of change — the force of change that our planet needs right now to survive, and to thrive , and more and more , we need to hear women’s voices as we work towards the healing and the revisioning that is so desperately needed right now … 

I would tell women writers to never give up — write every single day  — and know that their voice is not just important, but indispensable in our struggle for a better world for all …  at Inanna, our hashtag is: #femlitcan change the world. 

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Inanna publishes roughly 25 titles a year. For submission guidelines, see www.inanna.ca. 

Inanna is committed to publishing visionary fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction by and about women that bring new, innovative and diverse perspectives with the potential to change and enhance women’s lives everywhere.

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Bio: Jocelyn Cullity’s work includes the award-winning historical novel, Amah & the Silk-Winged Pigeons, and The Envy of Paradise, published in 2019. Both novels focus on Begam Hazrat Mahal, a woman who fought the English take-over of India in the 1850s.

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Publishing, On Writing