She Writes Press is awarding two traditional publishing contracts!

Why we have a contest for writers of color, and help us spread the word (submissions close on September 10)

For the past 9 years, She Writes Press has been hosting our STEP (She Writes Press Toward Equality in Publishing) contest to elevate writers of color—and submissions are now open through September 10!

This contest started with a recognition—that the book publishing industry at large is very white, that the majority of authors getting publishing deals were white, and that our own list needed a good dose of diversity. We launched STEP in 2018, before George Floyd’s murder and before the social justice movement that followed. In those COVID years (2020-2023), there were real gains for writers of color. Publishers had mandates to diversify their lists, and writers of color experienced a few seasons of parity. The backlash started to ramp up, unfortunately and predictably, well before Trump ran for president for a third time. The far right made books part of the culture wars, with attacks on librarians, campaigns against what kind of books kids should and could be reading, and attempts to frame antiracist content as somehow anti-American.

I watched all of this unfold with the same horror many Americans have felt. Trump’s second term has been catastrophic for people of color generally, but within the publishing industry (and other industries that had taken seriously the mandate to “do better”), with Trump’s policies there’s been permission (if not pressure) to back away from those meaningful efforts toward parity that had led to such positive real-world results for writers of color.

For She Writes, our STEP contest is more important than ever. We recognize it’s a small way for us to do our part to elevate voices that would otherwise not be heard. This year, we took our own efforts a step farther, though. I’m proud to share that in the past year She Writes Press has been working with a DEI consultant to find ways to bring more diversity of voice and lived experience to the She Writes Press list—and our efforts have been successful. In 2026, we acquired three times as many books by writers of color than in 2025, and we’ll look forward to repeating those efforts moving forward.

“Two steps forward, one step back,” we say about progressive movements and moments. In recent years it’s felt more like three steps back, and it can feel hard at times to imagine when we’ll even get back to our former baseline. Since I work in words and trade in books, however, I know how much story matters to progress. Publishing women’s stories—fiction, memoir, lived experience through prescriptive nonfiction—changes the lives of both writers and readers. Stories normalize experience and give voice to experience, and make space for those with less power to stand in the power of their words and their truth.

Politics and policies and misuse of power changes culture, of course, but so do books. Books are one way that the less powerful have to push back. In my recent writing to shine all the light possible on the silencing of Sarah Wynn Williams, author of Careless People (a book that details Facebook’s gross decision-making and growth-at-any-cost mentality), I shared something she said when accepting the Freedom to Publish Prize earlier this year:

We live in an age where web pages disappear, where a single politically aligned billionaire can spike a news story or delete a viral video. But once a book miraculously makes it out into the world — onto a shelf, into a library, into a home — it cannot be disappeared. With analogue tenacity a book endures.

This is true for a woman being silenced, and extends the countless women whose voices are simply not heard—because they’re marginalized, because they’re devalued (or even just not prioritized), or because someone in a position of power says: “It’s not your time,” or “nobody cares,” or “we already have enough of that kind of book now, thank you anyway.”

While I’m dismayed to find us two (or more) steps farther back than where we were in 2020 in the book industry, there is hope. There is always hope. Writers of color stepped into their power, and there’s since been an insistence to be seen and to be read. For white industry folks who took the messages and lessons to heart, there is no going back. I include myself among these people—those of us who will continue to find ways to elevate and recognize writers of color, and who do not feel relief to find ourselves in this moment of backlash. For me, the undergrounding of these important conversations makes them all the more pressing.

So, keep talking, even when it’s uncomfortable. A small ask from us at She Writes Press is to please share the information about this contest. Grab the meme below to share on social media. The link to the contest details is here. The upshot is this: two fully funded publishing contracts will be granted to women writers of color for publication in 2028.

You may remember the campaign, #BlackoutBestSellerList, organized in June 2020 by YA author L.L. McKinney to help Black writers make the bestseller list. This was a moment when we were talking loudly and excitedly about conscious reading decisions, and about elevating writers of color. We still want to do that, and we’d love to ask you to support our previous STEP winners, whose books you can find here.

Revelation, Bobi Gentry Goodwin
The Goddess Twins, by Yodessa Williams
Malcolm and Me, by Robin Farmer
The Fortune Teller’s Prophecy, by Lally Pia
Purple Lotus, by Veena Rao
The Garden of Second Chances, by Mona Alvarado Frazier
Love in the Age of Dragons, by Fatima R. Henson
All Our Wars, by Stephanie Vasquez
Far Away from Here, by Ambata Kazi
Aftermath, edited by Elizabeth G. Hines
Kinda Korean, by Joan Sung
Winter of My Spring, by Fartumo Kusow
Slums of Paradise, by Samiha Hoque
One Spark and the Desert Hums, by Caron Martinez (forthcoming on summer 2027)
Breaking Me Open, by Andrine Constant (forthcoming on fall 2027)

And, maybe you or a friend or a writer you know will be our next winner. Thanks for spreading the word!