Keanrny Street Workshop Press

Kearny Street Workshop was one of several community arts workshops which formed in the wake of the 1968 Third World Liberation Strike for ethnic studies at SF State. KSW  grew into a multidisciplinary arts center with a gallery, a poetry workshop, and a diverse program of classes.  Legendary poets such as Janice Mirikitani and Jessica Hagedorn could be found at KSW during the early days and the organization even makes an appearance in Hagedorn’s novel, The Gangster of Love (Houghton Mifflin 1996).  

Pivotal Asian Pacific American poets such as Jeff Tagami, Jaime Jacinto, Truong Tran, Virginia Cerenio, and SF poet laureate, Genny Lim, published their first collections through  Kearny Street Workshop Press and KSW is also responsible for the publication of one of the earliest Filipino American poetry anthologies,  Without Names (KSW Press 1985), edited by Jacinto, Tagami, Shirley Ancheta and features poets such as Lou Syquia, Oscar Peñaranda, and Al Robles.

Read the primer on KSW’s publishing history Colin Choy Kimzey wrote for our 2023 exhibition, Dreaming People’s History at the San Francisco Public Library

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