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"A new critical edition of Joanna Russ's 1980 feminist novella On Strike Against God, supplemented with additional materials from Russ's archive. An introduction by Russ scholar Alec Pollak opens the edition, essays by contemporary writers Jeanne Thornton and Mary Anne Mohanraj grapple with Russ's enduring influence on feminist authors today, and an interview with Samuel R. Delany reflects on Delany's decades-long correspondence with Russ"--
About the author
JOANNA RUSS (February 22, 1937 – April 29, 2011) was an American writer, academic, and feminist. She is the author of a number of works of science fiction, fantasy and feminist literary criticism such as
How to Suppress Women's Writing, as well as a contemporary novel,
On Strike Against God. She is best known for
The Female Man, a novel combining utopian fiction and satire.
Summary
A lost feminist masterwork by feminist and speculative fiction icon Joanna Russ about a young lesbian’s coming-to-consciousness during the social upheaval of the 1970s.
When Esther, a recently divorced professor, has her first lesbian love affair, the fallout brings her everyday miseries into focus and precipitates a personal crisis. She flees her small, upstate New York college town, grapples with gender confusion and the ghosts of therapists past, and fumbles her way through comedic sexual self-discovery, oscillating all the while between visionary confidence and debilitating self-doubt. Confronted with the homophobia of straight feminists and the misogyny of gay men, Esther is left to forge a language for her feminism and her burgeoning lesbian desire. On Strike Against God is quintessentially Russ: experimental but accessible, alternately wry and earnest, poignantly didactic, playful, and emotionally charged.
This new critical edition of On Strike Against God includes additional materials from Russ’s archive. An introduction by Russ scholar Alec Pollak opens the edition, and essays and interviews by contemporary writers Jeanne Thornton and Mary Anne Mohanraj grapple with Russ’s enduring influence on feminist authors today.
Foreword
Print and digital ARCs available in January
Galleys to sales reps, as well as select indie bookseller mailing
National print, radio, and online campaign
Announcement about reissue to academic marketing and bookseller contacts
Promotion on Feminist Press e-newsletter, website, and social media channels
Blurbs sought from Torrey Peters, Carmen Maria Machado, Alison Bechdel, Samuel Delany, Sandra Gilbert, Marge Piercy, Gwyneth Jones, Marilyn Hacker, Susan Koppelman
New York City bookstore launch event, featuring writers and scholars speaking on the legacy of Joanna Russ and her legacy, along with other bookstore events in New Haven and elsewhere
Talks and panels at gender studies conferences such as NWSA and speculative fiction events such as the Nebula Awards Conference and ReaderCon
