Hagfish Doesn’t Forget About ‘Forgotten’ Female Authors
They’re Cheerleaders for the Best Books You’ve Never Heard Of
Hagfish is a small press focused on out-of-print and obscure books by women. But it’s flexible on all of those things.
By Quinn Moreland
Ms. Huffman and Julia Ringo started the project in 2022 as a studio offering developmental support and freelance editing services and began acquiring books the next year. Their debut title arrived in May: “To Smithereens,” the 1972 novel by Rosalyn Drexler set between the worlds of art criticism and women’s wrestling. Ms. Drexler died last month at 98, not long after her book received a new wave of recognition...
Hagfish is far from the first publisher to focus on backlist titles; the co-founders cited New York Review Books, McNally Editions and Persephone Books as inspirations. Ms. Huffman and Ms. Ringo’s idea of “overlooked,” however, also includes contemporary writers they believe deserve more attention. Ms. Baal’s “Man Hating Psycho,” for instance, which will be released in the United States this month, was first published just a few years ago in Britain. Hagfish’s spring title will be “In the City,” the 1987 novel by the award-winning author Joan Silber...
Ms. Huffman and Ms. Ringo both began working as editors at Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2017. Ms. Huffman had relocated from Chicago, where she ran a small press out of her apartment.
“We bonded really quickly, we had similar taste in books and ideas about what we wanted to do in our careers,” Ms. Ringo said, recalling an early lunch at Westville.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/style/hagfish-books-reissues-fsg.html