The pathology of patriarchy, the idea that one group of people should control another—even own them, own even life itself—is at the core of today’s crises.

The End of Patriarchy asks one key question: What do we need to create and maintain stable, decent human communities that can remain in a sustainable relationship with the larger living world?

Robert Jensen’s answer is feminism and a critique of patriarchy.

The most openly misogynist presidential candidate in modern history has won the election that many thought - or desperately hoped - he could not win, precisely because of his longstanding open contempt for the idea that women are fully human.— Robert Jensen, Religion and Ethics

The End of Patriarchy is available NOW in Australia and New Zealand

For USA and UK release in January 2017

Book Reviews

My Sister Chaos

Lara Fergus is an Australian writer with long and varied experiences writing, dancing, and working for human rights organizations as a researcher and writer. She now is involved in projects to prevent violence against women. Her novel reveals just how deeply she understands the impact of trauma on women. Her writing has a fluid and universal quality that pulls readers into her character’s struggle to find order and safety. This is another example of the wonderfully radical publications from Spinifex Press —Marilyn D Brady, Me, You, and Books

Spinifex Books in the Media

Alice, a contributor to Prostitution Narratives spoke to Belinda Grant Geary at the Daily Mail revealing how her life in the sex trade profession slowly stripped her of her humanity. 'I lost count of the number of clients that told me they came to me because they wanted to molest or have sex with a child that they knew but didn't want to go to jail,' she said.

Follow this link to hear Alice speaking out against trafficking and the sex industry in Australia on ABC's Religion and Ethics Report

Adoption Deception: A personal and professional journey

Australia is still behind the times when it comes to accurately recording the details of someone’s birth, writes Penny Mackieson, the author of Adoption Deception in New Matilda.com

In Adoption Deception the author presents a compelling argument for Permanent Care instead of adoption for vulnerable children unable to be raised by their families in the light of continuing issues of exploitation, identity loss and the priority given to adults’ wishes over children’s rights.

Spinifex News

Multi-award winning author Merlinda Bobis has won a Philippine National Award for Best Novel in English for Locust Girl: A Lovesong

Merlinda is also on the shortlist for the 2016 ACT Book of the Year Award.

Emma Ashmere's lovely novel The Floating Garden was shortlisted for the Most Underrated Book Award MUBA

This is what the judges had to say about The Floating Garden:

The Floating Garden by Emma Ashmere is a evocative story that gives insight into the pressures and freedoms of creative, bohemian women in 1920s Sydney. It’s set during the construction of the great modernist undertaking of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. While it will connect different parts of Sydney, it’s construction will leave the poor Milson’s Point community without their homes and without compensation. The novel alternates between the lives of middle aged gardening writer Ellis Gilbey who ran a boarding house in Milson’s Point and painter Rennie Howarth, a well-to-do English woman who escapes her abusive Australian husband. The two stories eventually intersect but the story is really Ellis Gilbey’s as she learns to love again and to come to terms with her painful past.

Jane Sullivan in The Age

In Celebration of Feminist Publishing

Photo: Clare O'Shannessy

Two groups of women are celebrating 25 years of getting women's books out to readers. One is Spinifex Press, which started when publishers Susan Hawthorne and Renate Klein were on holiday in Kakadu, lamenting that the bookstores were stocking obscure postmodern texts instead of the feisty feminist books with an activist edge they wanted to see. So they did some calculations on a scrap of paper and thought they might run Spinifex for a year or so.

Their baby has just put out an anniversary catalogue of 205 titles, covering fiction and non-fiction, personal and political writing. And they have gone international, with books selling in the US, Canada, Britain, and New Zealand; about a third of Spinifex titles have editions in translation or available through other English language publishers.

Spinifex prides itself on being ahead of the curve, and now the curve is catching up. It was publishing books on subjects such as domestic violence long before anybody else was interested. Its fiction is trailblazing too, with books by Merlinda Bobis winning Australian and international awards.

Kathy Barry, author and Professor Emerita Pennsylvania State University has written 2016 - The Twenty - Fifth Anniversary of Spinifex Press  published in Dignity: A Journal on Sexual Exploitation and Violence

I asked Renate Klein about the name of the press, "A weed?" "Spinifex isn't it a weed"?

She responded: "Spinifex: It is an important native desert grass that holds the earth together. It is beautiful to look at but very prickly when you touch it."

How is that for a description of radical feminists and a radical feminist press?

Authors in the Media

Melinda Tankard Reist, editor of Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls was interviewed by 3AW's Neil Mitchell about sexist advertising soon to be banned in Victoria. Melinda Tankard Reist is also a co-founder of Collective Shout and has been campaigning against the slogans on Wicked Campers for some time.

Read more about our wonderful collection of books in our latest 2016 Anniversary Catalogue

Available Online or in Print

Feel free to drop into the office and collect a catalogue

504 Queensberry St

North Melbourne

Office Hours: Monday-Thursday 8-4PM