Soulmaker Press
Books are not products.
They are doorways.
Soulmaker Press publishes writing that restores Eros to its place as a force of intelligence, connection, creativity, and freedom.
One
What We Mean by Eros
Eros is more than sexuality. It is the force that draws life toward deeper contact: with the body, with desire, with other people, with nature, and with the truth of who we are.
Read the Age of Eros ManifestoTwo
What We Believe
- 01
Desire carries intelligence.
Desire is not merely an appetite to satisfy or control. Attended to deeply, it reveals where life is asking us to grow.
- 02
Nothing human should be exiled.
Shadow, hunger, shame, and contradiction belong inside the work of transformation.
- 03
Freedom is a practice.
Freedom is not only a condition granted by the world. It can be cultivated—even inside confinement.
- 04
The body knows.
The body is not an obstacle to spiritual life. It is one of its deepest instruments.
- 05
Connection is a form of power.
The highest use of power is not domination, but the capacity to bring more life into contact.
- 06
A book should change how we live.
We publish books to be practiced, argued with, carried, written in, and returned to.
Three
Why We Publish the Writers We Publish
We look for writers who have entered the material themselves. Writers with lived stakes. Writers willing to go where the language is not yet polite or settled. Writers whose work does not merely describe transformation but comes from inside it.
Four
Where the Work Is Written
Our books have been written in prisons, kitchens, monasteries, treatment rooms, and other places where life stops being theoretical.
Jailbirds in Flight: Everything You've Wanted to Know about Enlightenment in Prison but Were Afraid to Ask
Written from inside federal prison
In Yer's Kitchen: Memoir of a Hmong Daughter
Written from a family kitchen
The Eros Sutras, Volume 1: Principles
Written as philosophy
The Art of Soulmaking: A Path to Unconditional Freedom
Written as practice
Five
About the Press
Soulmaker Press is an independent publisher devoted to Eros, soulmaking, feminine spirituality, liberation, justice, and the creative process. The idea of soulmaking comes from James Hillman's work on the connection between life and soul.
We publish books, pamphlets and chapbooks, audiobooks, a newspaper, and other occasional material — work that brings difficult human material into deeper contact rather than keeping it at arm's length. There is a particular interest in the shadow, the unconscious, and a feminine, nonrational system of order.