and seal just keeps on . . .

As 2007 comes to a close it's pretty crazy to look back at everything that Seal has been through this year. I'll leave it to Krista to do a year-end State of Seal post later this month, but suffice it to say that this has been a year of change.

We are moving this week. This isn't the first time I've packed up an office space. It's a pain in the ass, but it's also pretty amazing, the things you come across. Packing up files and recycling old book folders is a little window into Seal's history. Official letterhead declares Seal: "THE SEAL PRESS: A NORTHWEST FEMINIST PUBLISHER." I love that. This is such an amazing place, a publisher that's managed to hold onto its small press roots and sensibility even though it keeps getting absorbed into larger and larger parent companies. Seal continues to shift and morph and move and transform. Reading through old emails, looking at the production files, seeing proofs for books that put Seal on the map---like Getting Free and Cunt; old novels that played a role in solidifying Seal's role as a publisher of cutting-edge lesbian fiction, like Out of Time, The Dyke and the Dybbuk (both Lambda Award winners), and Sarah Schulman's Girls, Visions, and Everything---is just very cool.

So Seal is moving to Berkeley. From its humble small beginnings in Seattle to a short detour to New York to landing in Emeryville and now onto Berkeley, Seal has just kept on keeping on. I know Berkeley will be a good home for Seal. Seal has a distinctly West Coast aesthetic, and Berkeley is as quintessentially Left Coast as you can get. So off to bright new pastures. Thank you to our wonderful interns Brittany and Tina for being such awesome packers, who complain way less than I do, and to Tina for delighting so much in old crap that no one wants anymore.

---Brooke