There’s no better time for reading than when you’re curled up in your home. Books offer a retreat from the chaos of the world—something we could all use at the moment. As the coronavirus pandemic spreads and the economy feels its effects, small businesses, including small publishers, are struggling.
These 13 Texas-based independent presses and publishers have diligently offered diverse, boundary-pushing literature for years, even decades. Dedicated to supporting marginalized, underappreciated voices in publishing, they’ve sought to make American books better reflect American demographics. The U.S. publishing industry’s workforce is still 79 percent white, and in 2018, a greater number of children’s books featured an animal main character than featured a Black, Latinx, Native American, or Asian child—combined. And despite the fact that publishing is a female-driven field, with 78 percent of the workforce made up of women, and the fact that two-thirds of MFA earners are women, women writers are still less likely to have their books reviewed or translated. The same is true for writers of color and LGBTQ+ writers.
Order a book from one of these homegrown publishers who support diverse writers of all sorts, and move the industry forward from home.
