After spending time at the Woman’s Building in Los Angeles, Deborah Costello and Lisa Kellman met through a mutual friend and started Black Oyster Press. The press’ first book, From Shadows Emerging: An Anthology of Bay Area Women Writers (1981), showcased their determination to highlight women actively making changes in their lives. Book production was highly collaborative, although Costello primarily worked on the manuscript while Kellman handled printing.
On the formation of Black Oyster Press
LK: Forming Black Oyster Press represented a merging of two strands of my life’s interests and viewpoints at a particular time of my life. One was an interest in design and the beauty of handcrafted objects, that took me from studying calligraphy to hand bookbinding to letterpress printing. The other was partially a result of being a child of the 60’s, with an awareness of the injustices of the world and a strong desire to work against them. In my time in LA, I majored in women’s history at UCLA and participated in an activist group that fought against images of violence against women. Both led me to the Woman’s Building in LA, where I learned how to print on letterpress and printed my first book, Beluga & Bluebirds by Lorie Dechar.
The opportunity to meld these interests by working with Debbie to print a book of women’s writing brought these two worlds together in an exciting process.
On soliciting content for From Shadows Emerging
DC: Difficult—when we decided to do the project, we were looking at the whole project, the book. We had never done any of it before: soliciting manuscripts, editing, designing, printing, publishing, marketing. We also hardly knew each other but must have trusted we could collaborate and pull this off. We reached out to small press journals, feminist literature professors, women’s bookstores, and bulletin boards in women’s coffee houses for manuscripts. We were very focused on looking for writers who had strong, inspiring work that showed women making changes in their lives. We looked for both well-known writers and new writers, young and old writers, writers from different classes and races. In reaching out to feminist writing teachers, we got pieces from teachers as well as from their students. There were several instances where we rejected a well-known writer because their work did not fit the theme. We agonized over each choice, and we were determined to stick to our theme.
