On September 13, 1980, the Midwest Latina Writers’ Workshop was held in Chicago as part of the Chicago Women Writers’ Conference.
A group of writers, artists, and dreamers—a truly talented group of Latinas in the Midwest—congregated there. These women met in the Chicago Public Library, knowing that their voices (as well as the voices of Third World women in general) needed to resonate, sit, pose, and be heard further than just the room in which they were meeting. Thus, the idea for Third Woman Press was born.
Understanding the great indifference and apathy women of color artists in the United States had been met with, and knowing that their greatest tool was their own creativity, these women took it upon themselves to create a venue in which they and other artists could invent themselves, and find pieces of each other reflected in their art.
Cover photo for the first ever journal published by Third Woman, “Of Latinas in the Midwest,” 1981.