Tag: mouthfeel press

Publishing the Future PANEL

Posted on by mariaminguezarias

One for the books as Hannah Moushabeck told Cynthia Leitich Smith! PUBLISHING THE FUTURE at the 2026 Bay Area Book Festival was pretty damn good. MC’d by poet Hanan Masri and opened with a song specially composed for the occasion by Tristan Marcelle from Bushwick Book Club Oakland, a musical book club where Bay Area artists perform original songs inspired by a book. Her singing “Where do I go to see my story told” was the perfect launch pad for our conversation.

Kate Gale from Red Hen Press, Cynthia Leitich Smith from Heartdrum, Phoebe Robinson from Tiny Reparation Books, and Hannah Moushabeck from Interlink Books spoke with me about the work towards representation and equity in the literary landscape, inspiring readers in such fucked up times, the AI disruption in the production of art, and working at the crossroads between publishing and authorship.

The Bay Area Book Festival organization was phenomenal, from Deputy Director of Programming Dora la Flora, who was there at all times; and the stage manager at The Freight; to Linda holding up the 1min left, time for Q&A signs and would not let me get lost in time!, and the two ASL interpreters who showed phenomenal stamina, specially keeping up with Phoebe Robinson’s fast, intelligent, and witty remarks on AI, a subject that managed to fire all of us 🔥

Signing my first copy of Naming the Body: A Queer Woman’s Restorative Mapping of the Self!

THE FREIGHT CHANGING ROOM IS BAD ASS!

PANEL Publishing the Future

Posted on by mariaminguezarias

This Aunt Luter will moderate a very much needed panel about the future (such an impossible word to concieve these days!) of publishing! A Publishing the Future panel seems so fitting for our times! How do we (indie presses) reconcile present and future while struggling to survive financially? How do we search for the next boundary pushing manuscript while freedom of speech is under threat? Is it possible to inspire readers through our collective sense of loss and fear? How do these indie presses stand apart from big publishers and from each other?

Headliner event at this year’s Bay Area Book Festival in Berkeley, CA

Publishing the Future will be one of the headliner events at this year’s Bay Area Book Festival in Berkeley, CA. It is a ticketed event. Get your $20 ticket here before they run out! Join us to see how indie presses are raising to the ocassion.

From the Bay Area Book Festival site:

To write an inclusive future, we must publish diverse voices who represent our collective interests and stories. The publishers and imprints represented in this headliner panel will discuss the implications of the current political climate on the future of publishing and put forward creative solutions to the lack of opportunities for publishing underrepresented stories. 

Tiny Reparations Press, founded by standup comedian, bestselling author, producer, and actress Phoebe Robinson, is a highly curated imprint dedicated to fiction and nonfiction that pushes the conversation forward.

HeartDrum, an acclaimed imprint of HarperChildren’s featuring stories that emphasize the present and future of Native peoples and the strength of young Indigenous heroes, will be represented by its author-curator and award-winning writer Cynthia Leitich Smith.

Palestinian American author and book worker Hannah Moushabeck runs Interlink Publishing alongside her family, the only Palestinian-owned independent publishing house in the United States offering global perspectives to readers through works of literature-in-translation, history, activism, politics, art, cultural guides, award-winning cookbooks, and illustrated children’s books.

Through publishing talented writers whose works have been overlooked by large-scale publishers, co-founder Kate Gale of Red Hen Press fosters diversity, promotes literacy in local schools, and supports the Greater Los Angeles Area and international communities with arts-based events and literary advocacy.

Moderated by acting Co-CEO of the intersectional, feminist press Aunt Lute, María Mínguez Arias, this inspiring panel is a celebration of the innovative and diverse members of the publishing industry dedicated to creatively curating and publishing the voices of our future.

Introductory live music performance by Bushwick Book Club Oakland!

Honored and looking forward to conversing with these publishing trailblazers

Naming the Body COVER REVEAL!

Posted on by mariaminguezarias

And what a cover! I am incredibly grateful for the work of the poet and cover designer Cloud Delfina Cardona. I loved her idea of picking an anatomy study for the cover which, by the way, are not easy find in the form of a pregnant body! Visit her site to see more of her impactful work. You can also follow her on Instagram where she posts regularly.

And I am equally grateful and in awe with the work of my fellow writers Anne Raeff, Kianny N. Antigua, Mariana Graciano and Kadiri Vaquer Fernández, and for taking the time to read the manuscript and comment on their first impressions. Their words give me so much hope for this litte book!

PUBLICATION Essay in Women’s Studies Quaterly

Posted on by mariaminguezarias

The Rotten Department, included in my memoir and essay collection Naming the Body: A Queer Woman’s Restorative Mapping fo the Self (Mouthfeel Press, 2026) was just published in the Fall/Winter issue of Women’s Studies Quaterly BODY MATTERS, as translated by National Book Award winner for Translated Literature, Robin Myers.

Project Muse gives access to the entire text. For those interested it can be found here.

Thank you so much to the editors Sherren Inayatulla and Andie Silva for including my exploration through memory and language of institutional (in this case, university) violence toward women’s bodies in my native country. By mirroring academic language and formatting, it confronts the very institution on its own turf. And yet the blank space becomes the negative space or the void that refuses to share the space or to put the spotlight on that same institutionalized violence.