Edgework Books

About a year ago some friends and I met to discuss the possibility of forming our own publishing collective. We discovered, at our first meeting, that we were all published writers, therapists and women over fifty. We also found that we had, in certain of our manuscripts, something we wanted to say to our readers as directly as possible, without first having to pass our work through the sensibility of commercial publishing. Since then, we have made arrangements to publish our work under the imprint EdgeWork books. We have served as an editorial board for one another, reading and commenting on one another's manuscripts, with the understanding that the writer is entirely free to accept or reject any editorial recommendations. It is our intention, in 2001, if not sooner, to publish the first series of books by our members, who are novelists, poets, playwrights and essayists.

For me personally the existence of this collective has made it possible to write a rather mysterious novel about two women who meet at three different times in their lives, but without being absolutely certain that they are the same women. Experimental in form, entirely uncensored in what it has to say about sex, spirituality, madness, previous lives, I would not have written it until I had found or created a way to publish it independently.

EdgeWork Collective is hoping to inspire other women writers to form similar collectives so that we can, together, create a grassroots publishing network as an alternative to commercial publishing.

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