LittlePuss Press was born on a winter day at a small gathering during the pandemic in editor Cat Fitzpatrick’s backyard. Fitzpatrick and future-publisher Casey Plett, were “getting extremely fucked up” and airing their grievances that Meanwhile, Elsewhere—an anthology of science fiction stories from trans writers the pair edited—had gone out of print when their former publishing house, Topside Press, shuttered.
In the midst of this conversation, the writer Jeanne Thornton pointed out they have the rights to Meanwhile, Elsewhere. Why not just reprint it?
“The next morning, I woke up with a raging hangover and began to research how to print books,” said Plett.
At Topside Press, which published Plett’s book A Safe Girl to Love, Fitzpatrick was a staff editor. Fitzpatrick described the press as having a “revolutionary presence of the trans literary scene.” It was for her and many of her peers, the first time they had encountered books being published by and for trans people.
Topside Press disbanded in 2017. “It was very dramatic. Everyone was very burnt out and very upset,” said Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick and Plett said they were just waiting for some other, younger people to come along and fill the gaping absence that Topside left.
In the years in between Topside’s implosion and their drunken COVID-era conversation, Plett got a job at a press in Ontario, Canada, where she learned how to manage logistics in publishing and distribution, and deal with big box chains, publicity, and back-end tasks. Combined with Fitzpatrick’s experience as a staff editor at Topside, there was no part of the publishing process they didn’t know how to do.
So LittlePuss came to be. Fitzpatrick and Plett first put out the anthology they had edited, Meanwhile, Elsewhere. Then came activist Cecilia Gentili’s memoir Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn’t My Rapist. They rescued Emily Zhou’s Girlfriends from the slush pile after opening submissions in 2021. The wonderfully lived-in collection of short stories about love and being young and trans went on to win Publishing Triangle’s Leslie Feinberg Award, and was nominated for a Lambda Award. Zhou became LittlePuss’ third employee, a contributing editor.
LittlePuss Press’ releases are surprising, exhilarating and anything but conventional. It fills a much-needed space with innovative and excellent writing that’s hard to imagine being put out by most mainstream publishing houses.
LittlePuss Press’ spring roster exemplifies the ethos of their former works: high-caliber pieces with distinctive voices from working-class trans writers. The poetry collection, Missed Connections with Tall Girls, by Gwen Aube (who described herself to Plett as half Miranda July and half William Burroughs) came out on April 7. Plastic, Prism, Void: Part One by Violet Allen, Fitzpatrick summarized as a “meta fictional romantasy about an Asian American trans guy Power Ranger and a Black trans lady Sailor Moon villain in parallel universes. But it’s written in the style of 1940 screwball comedies,” will be released on May 19.
“I am definitely not exempted from this, but most trans writing is by people from middle class or upper class backgrounds. And so it’s exciting that we’ve got a whole season of people who are from working class backgrounds,” said Fitzpatrick. “And they couldn’t be more different. … Gwen is like, ‘I’m working class and I’m proud and fuck you poshers.’ And Violet is like ‘I come from a poor, rural Black community, but I got into Princeton and I can speak Greek and Latin.’”
Once their books are printed and in the world, they don’t need any institutions or systems to depend upon—they simply exist.
LittlePuss Press’ is “a feminist press run by trans women. We believe in printing on paper, intensive editing, and throwing lots of parties.”
It’s a simple motto, but encodes LittlePuss’ ideological commitments. Fitzpatrick and Plett see each part as being equally in service of their purpose of contributing to their community through the production of literature.
“We are both very suspicious towards this idea that literature is important because it builds a better world and it helps you be a better human being,” Plett said. “That whole fucking David Foster Wallace thing.”
“Art can just be something for you to talk to your friends about,” agreed Fitzpatrick. “Part of what makes a community is having a shared kind of set of texts you go to and you think about, and you can say ‘Okay, we’ve all read these, we have opinions on them, we have something that we can talk to each other about’—having shared reference points.”
That’s also why Fitzpatrick and Plett insist that the throwing parties element of their motto matters too. When they first started LittlePuss, Plett remembers asking herself “Is it meaningful and important that we throw a bunch of parties and get everybody drunk in Cat’s house?”
The conclusion both women came to, apparently instantly, was “absolutely.”
“There have been so many number of times that someone has said to me at a party that we’ve thrown ‘this is the most trans people I’ve seen in one place ever,’” said Fitzpatrick.
Plett agrees, “Definitely our thing is books, but we like to do it in dark bars and houses with alcohol, and that’s that.”
As for printing on paper? “We exist as an independent press because we don’t actually trust the mainstream. We think you can’t necessarily trust that system insofar as it includes you. It often does so in an effort to discipline you towards normality. And there’s always going to be significant parts that it is not willing to include,” said Fitzpatrick.
They experienced this firsthand, when the New York Times profiled LittlePuss Press. While their experience with the reporter was positive, when the article was published online Fitzpatrick remembers seeing it placed side-by-side with one of the Times’ many stories on the so-called “transgender debate.” Plett and Fitzpatrick say they learned something from that experience.
“I don’t mind working with these institutions. I’m happy to. But I never, never, never want to depend on them. I want to build an infrastructure where we don’t necessarily need them,” said Plett.
That idea ties into the first principle of the motto: once their books are printed and in the world, they don’t need any institutions or systems to depend upon—they simply exist.
“The thing about print is that once a book’s printed, once it’s out there, it doesn’t depend on anything. It’s a physical object. You can give it to someone, you can sell it to someone, you can show it to someone. You can lend it to someone,” Plett explained.
Intensive editing simply means that LittlePuss Press falls into the school of thought that they believe in good writing, rather than the idea that belonging to marginalized identity alone will lead you to producing good literature.
“The concept of value in literature is itself a kind of hegemonic and oppressive discourse, and we don’t subscribe to that,” said Fitzpatrick. “We think that there is such a thing as good writing, and we think we should have some, too.”
Fitzpatrick continued: “The point of the intensive editing is not that any literature that trans people produce will necessarily have value, although, to some extent, yes, because it’s going to be interesting. But what we want is to make sure that we produce the best books we can, and the books that will be the most enjoyable to read, be the most intense expression of the kind of thing they’re trying to express be, the grodiest, the weirdest, the funniest, the most completely thought through.”
“We are really, really dedicated to making excellent, outstanding literature. And we are willing to give lots and lots of our time and our resources to making that happen,” said Plett.
