Jodie Lea Martire

Jodie Lea Martire is an editor, writer and translator who is also completing a Master of Communication for Social Change at The University of Queensland. She has worked as a freelance writer and editor, in small and mainstream publishing houses, and with cartonero (cardboard) community presses in Mexico. Jodie’s areas of research interest are small presses, social change and social justice. She completed her master’s thesis on the strategies used by two Australian small presses to publish and promote silenced or under-represented voices, and how the presses’ authors respond to the strategies used. Versions of this work are forthcoming in Publishing Research Quarterly and through the Small Press Network.

Her website is jodiemartire.net.

Editing and publishing silenced and under-represented voices

In 2020 I completed my master’s thesis on the strategies used by Australian small and micro-presses to publish authors from neglected and minoritised backgrounds - literally, editing writers whose voices are currently left at the edges of public discourse. In two case studies, of Spinifex and Wild Dingo presses, I interviewed the publishers to understand the tactics and techniques used at each stage of the book publishing process, and two authors per press to learn their responses to those strategies. My interviewees were generous and analytical in their contributions, and my presentation would share information on the role of small presses in disseminating these voices, the techniques used by small presses and their rationale for using them, how they compare to mainstream publishing methods, and the responses of the two presses' writers of difference to those techniques and to their presses' work.

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