We were lucky to catch up with Kate Gale recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kate, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

The most meaningful project I have worked on was the building of WITS HQ. We have had the Writing in the Schools Program for a long time, and one year, we realized we could expand it and bring students to the press and teach them how to make books.

As a teenager, I had no job skills, STEM skills or interview skills, and I love the idea that in one or two summers, we could teach these kids how to work in an office, design a book, make a podcast and do a job an interview, and at the end, they get a book with their published work.

It’s the kind of thing I would have loved as a young person and it would have helped to prepare me for all kinds of experiences from job interviews to office jobs and later for working in publishing. I’m excited for all the opportunities this creates. Opening doors is my favorite part of the job.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I wanted to build a publishing house in Los Angeles. Publishing lives in New York. In LA there is no infrastructure for books. For the first ten years, no one noticed we were here. We kept publishing books. Diverse voices. Voices of the West. Chris Abani. Camille Dungy. Douglas Kearney. We kept publishing. Ten books a year. Then twenty.

People in New York started to notice. To send us manuscripts. Agents sent us work. We went to the London Book Fair. Frankfurt. We started developing relationships. Selling foreign rights.

Then thirty years passed. It is still a struggle in Los Angeles. But in New York, we are celebrated. We are part of the literary world.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

If you wait until you are celebrated, you will wait forever. Celebrate every book you publish. Celebrate your tiny successes. Celebrate large successes. Celebrate book reviews. Don’t wait to be noticed. Notice your own work.

The men from the East Coast with the big educations get the attention. Don’t worry about it. We are a team of women, mostly BIPOC and queer. We keep working. We don’t worry about whether we are visible or invisible. We keep building culture.

If you think about all the ways that you are ignored, you feel small, if you think about the fact that you get to make books, you feel grand.

I’d rather feel grand any day.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I planned to build a literary family, and I thought having a literary family would be amazing.
Families can also be so fraught. But also magical and wild, and complicated.

I wish I had known to just start traveling to Minneapolis and New York and getting help there. I go to Minneapolis and visit those presses, and I go to New York, and improve our game.

Chicago and San Francisco have great presses as well. When I want to improve our game, I get on a plane and find out what we can do better.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.redhen.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drkategale/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drkategale/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-gale-66a3b544/

Image Credits

Alfred Haymond