Desert Rose Press

I first became interested in type and printing when I was in college, working at a summer job for a small local newspaper. A working print shop is those days (1962), with its antique equipment and fascinating denizens, was still so much like one of the ancient craft guilds that being introduced to the "mysteries" as a youngster made a powerful lasting impression. I can still remember that funky small-town shop and the training I got there in vivid detail.

That training outlined a path; subsequent opportunities seemed always to veer toward printing. I found myself in the early Sixties smack in the middle of the political and literary upheavals of Berkeley and San Francisco and so the craft of printing and political activism and literary bookmaking all came together in an "underground" print shop called Cranium Press.

Through the following years of writing, environmentalism, community work and raising kids, bits and pieces of the old Cranium Press stayed with me until finally, through the discovery of a book I had produced called Printing Poetry, Virginia and I met and eventually combined our lives and resources into the printing studio and publishing venture that became Desert Rose Press.

Late in 1985 I decided I wanted to make books. In previous years I had been involved in politics, education, catering, owning a restaurant, and a lot of biking. This making books idea emerged after the wonderful and completely fulfilling experience of writing and publishing my own story of biking across the United States with another woman in 1978.

So as I cast around in November 1985 for my next life move, I was delighted and amazed to learn that I could actually make a whole and finished book myself. I could write it, set the text by hand in lead type, make the paper and even the binding all by hand, myself. In an age of factory-made everything, this was an astonishing and exciting revelation. I enrolled in the Book Arts program at Mills College in Oakland, California in 1987 to begin to learn my new craft. Following a year's study, I apprenticed with a leading Bay Area printer, and then a bookbinder before setting off with a moving van full of printing presses and equipment and other print shop necessities.

The flurry of production of cards for Earth Day 1990 ("Earth Celebrations") marked the beginning of Desert Rose Press. For more than ten years the printed works of the press in books, broadsides, and cards have expressed our passion for the craft of printing and bookmaking, and our greater vision of a healthy, peaceful Earth united in Spirit.

As world social and ecological crises escalated, we wanted to express our passions and concern for the Earth to a broader community. We expanded the work of the press to public media and the internet with the creation of Raventalk in 1997. www.raventalk.com

Thank you for visiting our site.


May the gifts of the Earth touch our hearts.
May we be filled with kindness for ourselves,
for our planet and for all beings.
May we have the courage to change.