Mapping Feminist Book Fortnight: Regional Activism and the Feminist Book Trade in 1980s Britain

Feminist Book Fortnight was a signal event in the history of feminist publishing, but its has not yet been written. Throughout latter half 1980s, promoted literature UK and Ireland helped to sustain power revolution publishing. Drawing on archives Spare Rib magazine, this article analyses often fierce tension between Fortnight’s activist aims commercial imperatives, maps out distinctive regionalism annual book trade promotion. Books were vital importance women’s movement supported expansion literary marketplace outside London. As I will show, navigated only margins mainstream, isolated outposts metropolitan centres. Combining digital geography with oral histories analysis, concentrates women readers or authors workings industry which mediated production consumption at time. argue that complex renegotiation extant publishing practices (Murray (2017): 814), both regional, constituted most significant contribution larger movement.