Ritu Menon, founder of publishers Women Unlimited, a stalwart of women’s publishing, has been writing a diary during the lockdown from Delh...
Ritu Menon, founder of publishers Women Unlimited, a stalwart of women’s publishing, has been writing a diary during the lockdown from Delhi, an insightful and moving account peppered with anecdotes and cameos of publishing professionals and writers across the world. Address Book was born when she was flipping through her addresses of publishers and writers one day. The diary entries are effectively a memoir of Menon’s decades in feminist publishing, and a record of the world she sees around her. In this excerpt, she talks about the founding of an alliance of international independent publishers, offers a delightful anecdote about Qurratulain Haider’s meeting with her Italian translator, talks about the experience of co-publishing with the oldest feminist press in the world, publishing a book by an anonymous Iraqi blogger, and more.
June 5, 2020
Paris is the headquarters of the International Alliance of Independent Publishers, of which Women Unlimited is a member. It was set up by a group of French Jewish intellectuals in the early 2000s as a counter to the rapid corporatisation of the publishing industry, worldwide. The Alliance has a clear left-of-centre orientation, and an equally clear bias in favour of independent presses – independent of government, corporate, or institutional control and affiliation....
