family reading - the Redstockings Abortion Speakout; Stumpwork reviewed

Here's Joy Press with a fascinating - and heroic - tale of the first Abortion Speakout convened in 1968 by Redstockings, an offshoot of pioneering feminist outfit New York Radical Women. For Vanity Fair.  

The first time this has happened  - father and son convergence as firstborn Kieran Press-Reynolds weighs in with the Official Pitchfork verdict on Dry Cleaning's Stumpwork. 

book news

Rip It Up and Start Again has been repackaged in a new virulently glowing pink edition as part of the series Faber Social Greatest Hits, alongside books by Viv Albertine, Barney Hoskyns,  Nick Kent, Rob Young, and Kim Gordon. 

The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion & Rock 'n' Roll is coming out in a German translation on Ventil Verlag in the early summer of 2019.  It contains a new foreword that reframes the book in the light of the current anti-feminist backlash, a bonus section of pieces by me and Joy Press on various female artists from the last 25 years since the book was first written, and the reincorporation of  a chapter cut out of the original text for space reasons that looks at rock criticism and its gender-political biases. 

That revamped and expanded version of The Sex Revolts is also coming out in a French translation at some point in 2020 through the publisher La Découverte. 

Finally, a collection of my electronic music writings is being published in Italian by minimum fax. Titled Futuromania, its contents range from rave to ragga, synthpop to musique concrete, EBM to trapedelia. Out sometime in 2020.

WHEN YOUR MATE MAKES A BOOK

A very special edition of "When Mates Make Books"!

Because it's my best mate, my life-mate in fact - Joy Press - who has made a book. 

       

A book that's out in a couple of weeks on Atria/Simon & Schuster in America, and on Faber & Faber in the U.K. 

                                                   
It's a bloody good book too. 

But don't take my admittedly biased word for it. 

Here's some advance reviews for Stealing the Show: How Women Are Revolutionizing Television from the American trade press - where Joy has pulled off the book-writing equivalent of a Grand Slam with three starred reviews.

"Women have run successful TV shows for decades, but they still routinely face bias and unreasonable obstacles in the industry, as Press details in this powerful narrative that expertly weaves reporting, analysis, and anecdotes. ...Press’s chronicle of a pop-culture movement should inspire a new generation of women creators"  
- Publishers Weekly, starred review. 

"Press draws from decades of interviews, research, and reporting to create a vibrant behind-the-scenes look at the some of the most prominent women creatives in the industry and the role they played in bringing women-focused narratives to the forefront of modern TV and culture... An urgent and entertaining history of the transformative powers of women in TV" 
- Kirkus, starred review. 

"The book is well-organized chronologically and is an absorbing read with some politics thrown in. There are fascinating interviews with female showrunners such as Roseanne Barr, Amy Sherman-Palladino (Gilmore Girls), Jenji Kohan (Weeds/Orange Is the New Black), and Shonda Rhimes (Scandal). ...Highly recommended for those who enjoy reading about the entertainment industry, how their favorite TV shows are created, and women" - Library Journal, starred review

Joy has also received ringing endorsements from leading members of the punditocracy:

"Please read this book immediately. It is sharp, funny, and gorgeously researched, a satisfying blend of inside dirt and critical illumination. It also places female creativity on television exactly where it belongs: dead center in the cultural conversation." 
- Emily Nussbaum, television critic  at The New Yorker

"A roaring tour of women's professional, artistic and political impact on television and on popular culture. By turns invigorating and sobering, Stealing the Show maps the progress of the expanded voice, vision and reach of women on television and behind its scenes."
- Rebecca Traister, author of All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of An Independent Nation

"Stealing the Show is essential reading for anyone interested in women gaining power, in how edgy storytelling comes to screens, and in brilliantly talented females taking the reins of a once-derided-as-secondary-to-movies medium.... I relished their stories--and was inspired by them, too." 
- Sheila Weller, author of The News Sorority and Girls Like Us

For further information about Stealing the Show, head over to Joy's website - where you can find details of book events in New York and Los Angeles and details about the book's scope and content.

To buy the US edition go here. 
To buy the UK edition go here.

                                 

"Eloquent Rage"

A fascinating oral history convened by Joy Press of New York Radical Women: the Sixties feminist thought-cell and guerrilla theater unit, born in flames of rage 50 years ago, who pioneered consciousness raising, who coined concepts and slogans like "the Personal is Political" and "Sisterhood is Powerful," and who launched absurdist-satiric attacks on the Miss America pageant and Wall Street. Featuring the voices of Robin Morgan, Ellen Willis, Susan Brownmiller, Alix Kate Shulman, Shulamith Firestone, Kathie Sarachild, and more, this is an exhilarating memorial to a group whose ideas + spirit are more timely + urgent than ever in this savagely polarized political-cultural moment.

  New York Radical Women hurl cosmetics and feminine 

    accoutrements into the Freedom Trash Can at the 1968 Miss 

America pageant. Pic by Bev Grant. 

Protesting Miss America again, 1969. 

Hexing Wall Street, 1969. Pic by Bev Grant.