Blue Cactus Press

An independent publishing house crafting books that serve as community resources, by collaborators from historically marginalized groups. We create books and open dialogue that move us toward liberation. Our catalog includes poetry, fiction, self-help, business, sociology, memoir, and anti-racism genres.

membership

Join our community of readers, writers, bookmakers, and bibliophiles seeking liberation through literature and community engagement! You’ll get books, ephemera, swag, early access to events, and letters from authors and staff. Membership ensures our publishing practices remain sustainable as we grow.

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books

Browse our books below, as well as some from like-minded presses and authors of the Pacific Northwest. Your purchase allows our collaborators — including authors, artists, designers, editors, marketers, and printers — to thrive.

Anatomy of My Mixed Body

Mainstream American culture asks us to label and define ourselves in clearly marked, rigid boxes. But definitions, meaning, and identity are always shifting. The only thing that lingers in their wake is the impact we, the meaning makers, have on the people and places we encounter. Anatomy of My Mixed Body is an eco-poetic conversation led by Katharine Threat, in which she addresses lived experiences of displacement and homecoming, and imagines a world in which seemingly disparate pieces of land and identity converge into one body. Threat’s poems demonstrate the possibility of reconciliation of the mixed body that is all…

$20.00

The Illuminated Space: A Personal Theory & Contemplative Practice of Media Art

by Marilyn Freeman Published by The 3rd Thing In this fragmentary and fluent little gem, writer and time-based artist Marilyn Freeman offers up their own contemplative practice of dowsing for and creating “opportune moments” of insight and healing. With humor and humility, Freeman reveals their innovative approach to making video essays, a process developed over years of art-making, study and personal searching—a process of waking up again and again to the extraordinary possibilities hidden in everyday existence.

$28.00

The High Alive: An Epic Hoodoo Diptych

A Speculative Lyric by Carlos Sirah Published by The 3rd Thing The High Alive: An Epic Hoodoo Diptych, published tête-bêche (head to toe), is made up of The Light Body and The Utterances. Together, they take up excess and extinction in speculative lyric. Page is transformed into space for a performative prose in this mythopoesis of blackness and queerness, of return and foray.

$28.00

Fugitive Assemblage

A Novel by Jennifer Calkins Published by The 3rd Thing Fugitive Assemblage is lyric noir. It takes place in California in 1983. A woman pulls an IV out of her arm, walks out of the hospital and starts driving north. She is bleeding and nauseous and ever aware that there is something in the trunk of her car that is rotting. It is only after she makes her way through Big Sur and Monterey, over the mountains and into the Central Valley, that she discovers where to bury the body, so to speak.

$24.00

Where Rivers Change Direction

For nearly thirty years, Tana McCabe has been trapped in suspended animation, just like the beetle encased in resin she wears around her neck. But one warm, summer night, on a remote stretch of highway in Montana, Tana unexpectedly breaks free from the expectations draped over her by her swiftly unraveling family and conservative hometown politics. Tana, a white woman, falls in love with Colette Little Crow. Her coming out as a late-blooming Gay woman is messy, painful, and full of fumbles only surpassed by those of her evolving family. Set on the slopes of the continental divide, in a…

$15.00 – $20.00

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Tote Bag

Carry your books with a Blue Cactus Press tote bag! This bag was designed by creative partner and designer Knic Pfost, using the BCP logo, which was created by Zach Curtis. Snag this limited edition, navy blue, 100% cotton tote bag while they last!

$20.00

Respect the Struggle

Respect the Struggle by William F. Collins There is a cadence to everything we do in life, including struggles and setbacks we face every day. Yet, we have lost our ability to quiet the noise around us and unearth the solutions to our struggles, whether internal or external. Respect the Struggle invites readers to recognize and understand the cadence to any challenge by utilizing tools already at our disposal: the power of the mind, faith beyond understanding, high-end accountability, and acquiring financial freedom. By doing so, we can overcome struggles which at first seem insurmountable. Publication date: June 2022.

$25.00

Directions for Companion Print

From the page to the wall. “Directions for Companion,” a poem written by Blue Cactus Press publisher and poet Christina Vega, is now available as a handmade letterpress print, created in collaboration between Frontera literary magazine and letterpress printer Daniela del Mara .

$25.00