Nancy K. Bereano is the former editor and publisher of the groundbreaking, award-winning lesbian and feminist press, Firebrand Books. Firebrand has garnered twelve Lambda Literary Awards (including the Publisher’s Service Award) and four American Library Association Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual Book Awards. Nancy K. Bereano retired from Firebrand Books in 1994. While in her late thirties, Bereano knew she wanted to create a lesbian press. Bereano said, "I couldn't bear not doing the work. Lesbians haven't published anything yet! Lesbians were not considered legitimate people who could produce literature. Many women were dying to read this type of stuff as it was a culturally flourishing time for the lesbian community.” She viewed the lesbian presses around the globe as a cultural liberation for lesbians. “The work was very politically and culturally exciting." Bereano says "It was the greatest 15 years of my life! Every piece pushed my abilities and talents and it demanded a great deal for me. It really tested me, taught me an enormous amount about the growth of the lesbian movement. It was a very intellectually fertile environment." Bereano was recognized by the Lambda Literary Awards with their Publisher’s Service Award in 1996. During its fifteen-year existence (1985-2000), Firebrand Books published exceptional literary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry on lesbian and feminist themes. Publisher Nancy Bereano won the Publisher’s Service Award at the 1996 Lambda Literary Awards. She took the first risk on author Dorothy Allison, publishing the double-Lammy winning Trash, a collection of short stories that focused on themes of working class people, sexuality, violence, and hope, in 1988. (It won awards in the categories of Lesbian Fiction and Small Press). Keeping more than 80 titles in print, including the entire "Dykes to Watch Out For" series, poetry by Audre Lorde, Minnie Bruce Pratt, and Cheryl Clarke, and short stories, novels, and nonfiction from the likes of Ruthann Robson, Lesléa Newman, Mab Segrest, Leslie Feinberg and Judith Katz, (and more than a few Lammy winners and finalists),, Bereano was at the forefront of lesbian and small press publishing for 16 years. The fact that her prose was published exclusively by small independently owned women’s presses was both a result of the major houses’ narrow perspective and the fact that Audre Lorde’s prose, particularly her myth-shattering essays, was instrumental in framing a changing reality for many women, primarily lesbian women (a readership long dismissed by the mainstream publishing world).   N.K. Bereano

click here