Shameless Hussy Press Alta started Shameless Hussy Press in 1969. The first women-owned feminist press in
California, it opened during the time of
second-wave feminism. Alta used a printing press in her garage to publish books by authors such as
Susan Griffin,
Pat Parker, and
Mitsuye Yamada. Yamada later described Alta as an "energetic feminist poet" who promoted Yamada's first volume of poetry "at women’s conferences, women’s health centers, and lesbian bars." The press published the first edition of
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide, When the Rainbow is Enuf by
Ntozake Shange, and
Mary Mackey's first novel,
Immersion (1972). They also published poetry by men: "Alta reasoned that since 6 percent of the books published in the U.S. were by women, 6 percent of the books she published should be by men."
Poetry and prose Her first volume of
feminist poetry, ''Freedom's in Sight
, was published in 1969, and some of her poems were anthologized in such collections as From Feminism to Liberation
(Philip G. Altbach and Edith S. Hoshino, eds, 1971). Her 1980 collected works The Shameless Hussy'' (Crossing Press) won the
American Book Award in 1981.
Personal life Alta was born in
Reno, Nevada on May 22, 1942. She started the Shameless Hussy Press with her second husband. She wrote a volume of "blatant lesbian poems",
Letters to Women (1969). She died of
breast cancer on March 10, 2024, in
Oakland, California. ==Works==