Demeter Press

Demeter Press was launched in 2004 in Toronto, Canada, by founder Dr. Andrea O'Reilly, and is the first-ever academic and feminist press to specifically focus on the topic of mothering and motherhood. The press is named in honor of the goddess Demeter, the Greek goddess of agriculture and fertility who unleashed her power when her beloved daughter Persephone was abducted and taken to the underworld by the god Hades. As history's most celebrated, empowered, and outraged mother, whose love and power were so great they undid rape and brought her child back from death, Demeter's triumphant resistance serves as model for the possibility—and power—of feminist mothering.

As a division of the Association for Research on Mothering (ARM), housed at York University in Toronto, Canada, Demeter Press supports ARM's mandate to promote feminist scholarship and to build a sustaining community of researchers by offering an array of writing on mothering and motherhood. The intention of Demeter Press is to contribute widely to and disseminate a range of theoretical and empirically oriented works and writings from poets, community activists, and feminist scholars regarding various aspects of motherhood and mothering. Demeter Press fills a void in feminist scholarship and writing on motherhood and mothering. It aims to contribute widely to the discussion and distribution of feminist, academic, and community grassroots research, theory, and praxis on mothering and motherhood. In its first four years of operation, Demeter Press published volumes on maternal theory, motherhood discourse, empowered mothering, aboriginal mothering, and poetry on mothers and motherhood.