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Apropos of Press Gang
Pollak, Nancy
http://riseupfeministarchive.ca/apropos-of-press-gangDate Written: 2025-01-23 Year Published: 2025 Resource Type: Article Cx Number: CX25479 Nancy Pollak brings to life the history and legacy of Press Gang — Vancouver's pioneering feminist printer and publisher. Press Gang operated as a collective from 1974 until 1989 when it split into two branches: the printers (who folded in 1993) and the publishers (who continued until 2002). This article focuses on the unified printer-publisher phase. Abstract: - Excerpt: It bears saying that Press Gang was the only feminist printing and publishing collective, owned and operated by women, in English-speaking Canada. “Freedom of the press belongs to those who own the press” was a nail-on-the-head motto for the women of Press Gang in Vancouver, BC. The press could variously be described as a dogged collective, a funky printshop (offset lithography), a meticulous publisher of finely edited and designed books, and a model of feminist activism, collectivity, and flaws. Like all liberation movements, feminists in the 1970s and onward generated an explosive array of print media. Pamphlets, posters, flyers, chapbooks, stickers, broadsheets, manuals, books — Press Gang was unique in printing and publishing all such formats, for itself and for the progressive communities it served. And Press Gang was magnetic. Simply to walk into the building was to experience a tumult of radical images, ornery and intricate machines, women in ink-stained aprons (often harried, often helpful), and piled evidence of really making something, including a difference. Subject Headings |