Libraries

CALYX Press and Oregon State University Libraries and Press have been awarded a grant of $96,437 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to digitize at-risk literature published through CALYX Press, a local feminist press founded in 1976.

This grant enables important literary works from the last 50 years of the feminist movement to be transformed into openly licensed e-book formats. The project’s goal is to foster wider readership and a renewed interest in the impact of the small independent press on national and international feminist movements. Taking advantage of contemporary e-book technology, the project will digitize and distribute out-of-print texts by authors now central to contemporary feminist literature.

“Feminist presses of the last 50 years, including CALYX Press, have been a fundamental part of the cultural discourse,” says Alicia Bublitz, managing editor of CALYX Press, “and we are dedicated to preserving those voices in a digital world. The work of these presses is disappearing, and maintaining their foundational texts is essential for scholarship, history and art. This project is an acknowledgment of our great debt to these often controversial, always passionate, and incredibly powerful leaders.” 

Dr. Korey Jackson, Gray Family Chair for Innovative Library Services, and Jane Nichols, instruction and emerging technologies librarian, both of OSU Libraries and Press, offered this statement: “We combine CALYX’s independent lens and feminist literary connections with our dedicated infrastructure, forward-thinking personnel, and support for open access. Our hope is to inspire new audiences and foster new readers of feminist literature by making these texts openly available.”

About CALYX Press: CALYX, Inc. of Corvallis, Oregon was founded to publish art and literature by women. As one of the nation's oldest feminist presses, it has published diverse authors including Julia Alvarez, Chitra Divakaruni, Barbara Kingsolver, Sharon Olds, Linda Hogan, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. CALYX publishes the award-winning CALYX Journal twice a year.