Founded in 1995 in rural Ashfield, Massachusetts, Paris Press publishes one to three books per year. Our mission is to publish groundbreaking literature by women that has been overlooked by the commercial and independent publishing worlds, and to educate the public about our authors and their books. To experience our recent launch of On Being Ill with Notes from Sick Rooms by Virginia Woolf and her mother, Julia Stephen, go to this address: http://media.law.columbia.edu/CGSL/f12/Virginia_Woolf_121114_raw.html.

Our tag line is "daring and beautiful books," and we value beautiful design as well as essential and innovative content. Paris Press is entirely funded through grants from public and private foundations, and by individual donations. A small percentage of our income is from book sales to individuals, libraries, reading groups, and universities and secondary schools for course adoptions. People interested in additional information about the challenging economics of book sales for small independent presses should contact Jan Freeman.

The Press publishes books on subjects that have been undervalued: socially provocative and healing books, such as Virginia Woolf's On Being Ill with Notes from Sick Rooms by Julia Stephen; Sisters: An Anthology; The Bosnia Elegies by Adrian Oktenberg; Tell Me Another Morning by Zdena Berger, as well as stylistically original and neglected work including Houdini: A Musical by Muriel Rukeyser, Visa for Avalon and The Player's Boy by Bryher, Solitude of Self by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Ruth Stone’sSimplicity, the NBCC Award-winning Ordinary Words, and the CD Look to the Future: Ruth Stone Reading from Simplicity and Ordinary Words, with an introduction by her granddaughter, poet Bianca Stone.

Paris Press books, authors, and the Press itself have received over 200 reviews and features in national and regional media, including The New York Times Book Review, "Fresh Air" (NPR), People Magazine, The New Yorker, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal, The Dallas Morning News, The Boston Globe, The Springfield Republican, The Daily Hampshire Gazette, The Greenfield Recorder, and The Ashfield News.

The Press sponsors readings and educational outreach programs for students and adults locally and throughout the United States. These events take place in libraries, colleges and universities, secondary schools, community centers, museums, senior centers, bookstores, and at conferences. Program audiences are diverse in age, gender, economic level, ethnicity, sexual preference, and education.

Our books are taught locally and throughout the U.S., at institutions such as Bennington College, Deerfield Academy, Princeton University, Stanford University, the University of North Carolina, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas-San Antonio, and the University of Virginia, and the University of Alaska.