Established in 2015, Gantala Press is the first feminist press in the Philippines since the 1990s after groups like the Babaylan Women’s Publishing Collective, WOMEN (Women in the Media Now), and WICCA (Women Involved in Creating Cultural Alternatives). Gantala Press is the only known dedicated feminist small press currently in operation in the country today. Its present editorial team is composed of five writers, teachers, and activists, and a revolving roster of interns and volunteers.
Initially, Gantala Press aimed to merely respond to what was seen as a lack of women’s representation in literary production, publishing, and bookmaking. Then, inevitably having to confront President Rodrigo Duterte’s repressive and misogynistic administration (2016-2022), Gantala Press began producing publications that support and document the larger Filipino people’s movement against imperialism, and fighting for genuine land reform and national sovereignty.
Since its first publication in 2017, Gantala Press has been democratizing the practice of writing, providing a platform mainly for “marginalized women” to write and tell their own stories. To date, it has published 40+ books of poems, anecdotes, prose, recipes, comics, memoirs, and fiction by and about women farmers, political prisoners, activists, journalists, Muslim women, indigenous women, former “comfort women,” youth and students, lesbian and trans women, and activist organizations. Gantala Press has facilitated writing workshops with plantation workers, urban poor women, widows of the drug war, and former migrant workers in producing zines, chapbooks, and books about exploitation, injustice, and resistance. In doing so, the act of writing becomes a safe space to articulate and represent marginalized women’s experiences under repressive state administrations.
A significant part of the sales of Gantala Press books are given to campaigns for food security, land rights, and human rights protection. In 2019 for instance, proceeds from its plant-based cookbook Makisawsaw were donated to help raise bail for food factory workers who were arrested for picketing. Kumusta Kayo?, an e-zine on the condition of peasant women, was circulated as part of a fundraising drive for aiding food security frontliners during the pandemic.
Gantala Press is also actively involved in para-publishing women’s activities such as hosting a podcast, installing exhibitions, and organizing and participating in discussions on women, culture, and literature on invitation of schools, universities and organizations in the country and abroad. It facilitates poetry writing and zine making workshops in partnership with mass organizations and artist collectives. It also hosts discussions about cultural work and women’s literature. Gantala is the lead organizer of the annual Gandang-Ganda sa Sariling Gawa (GGSG!), an all-women art fair involving women at the grassroots level.
Gantala Press is an active member of Publishers for Palestine and the International Association of Independent Publishers, with whom it has repeatedly spoken on censorship and freedom to publish. With its line of all-women publications and pro-women events, Gantala Press is a National Coordinator of the Southeast Asia Feminist Action Movement, a network of grassroots women’s organizations in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines advocating human rights, democracy, and solidarity.
Gantala Press has consistently and courageously published despite the increasingly oppressive climate in the Philippines especially against rights defenders and activists. In 2020, amid the pandemic, the Duterte government railroaded the Anti-Terrorism Act as part of its massive counter-insurgency program. Activist individuals and organizations were labeled “terrorists”, arrested on trumped-up charges, and imprisoned. Peasant leaders, unionists, and activists were killed by state forces and falsely depicted in the media to be New People’s Army (NPA) soldiers engaging in a military encounter. Red-tagging became rampant, and individuals accused of terrorism were harassed and threatened by state forces and isolated from their communities. The state’s attacks on the people continue to this day under the resurgence of the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos, Jr, son of plunderer Ferdinand Marcos, Sr., and whose presidential campaign was marked by disinformation, fake news and historical revisionism.
Gantala Press continues to publish works by activists, and to contribute its publications to information and fundraising campaigns for the defense of human rights. These publications include Saloobin, an anthology of writing by women political prisoners; Let the River Flow Free, a comics on the indigenous women’s victorious struggle against the building of the Chico River dam in the 1970s; and Panaglagip, memoirs of former activists and political prisoners during Ferdinand Marcos Sr’s Martial Law. It continues to strive for a literary production aimed at truth-telling to counter Marcos, Jr.’s continuing maneuvers for historical revisionism aimed to sustainably rebrand the Marcoses and elite politics in the country.
In 2021 and 2022, Gantala published the poetry collection of Kerima Tariman, an NPA fighter martyred in an armed encounter in Central Philippines; as well as the poems and prose of Amanda Echanis, a writer and peasant women organizer who was arrested on trumped-up charges in 2020. As a convenor of the Free Amanda Echanis Movement, Gantala Press actively promoted and represented Echanis’ works and plight in the international front. Echanis was finally acquitted in January 2026 after five years of detention. Gantala Press has also published the writing of Frenchie Mae Cumpio, a student journalist and political prisoner for seven years now. Recently, the court denied Cumpio’s bail plea due to “the potential for [Cumpio’s] continued involvement in such activities” as alleged support of “terrorist organizations.” Gantala Press is at the forefront of campaigns for the immediate release of women writers-political prisoners like Cumpio and Echanis, and in distributing their works.
Gantala Press is an active partner of Amihan National Federation of Peasant Women, an organization falsely accused of “terrorism financing” in 2021. With Amihan, Gantala Press has published a poetry anthology, a collection of life stories, and a cookbook written by peasant women and advocates. These publications call for production subsidy for farmers, land to the tillers, and justice for peasant victims of state repression. Gantala Press’ most recent publication, a poetry collection in Filipino written by a peasant woman, was also published with Amihan. A first in the country’s literary history, it was written by a vegetable farmer in a highly-militarized community whose leaders are constantly under military threat, harassment, and surveillance. Gantala Press is a convenor of Amihan’s Defend Peasant Women campaign against state attacks and militarization, and co-organizes talks in schools and writing workshops for the campaign.
By working with women from the basic sectors who are often not necessarily writers, Gantala Press hopes to popularize the practice of writing so that communities are empowered to express and document their own histories of struggle and resistance and counter dominant false narratives by the state. Gantala Press also hopes to facilitate access to reading and art through its projects. In 2024-2025, it facilitated the opening of mini-libraries in three female detention facilities across the country to help foster the psychosocial well-being of detainees.
Recently with artist collaborators, Gantala Press opened a space in Quezon City where its books are sold and where activities such as forums and workshops are organized. This space has proven to be valuable to activist organizations that usually find it challenging to look for platforms for their activities. On International Humanitarian Law Month in 2025, Gantala Press’ space hosted farmers from the Central Philippines who wanted to share their experiences of militarization and suppression. Gantala also brought to the space the traveling exhibit HeART of Gaza: Children’s Art from the Genocide for the first time in Asia.
In 2025, Gantala Press was an active proponent of the call to Boycott the Frankfurt Book for its perceived complicity in Israel and the United States’ genocide in Gaza. Gantala circulated statements, spoke in various local and international panels, and published ‘Pagkat Tayo Man ay May Sampaga: New Philippine Writing and Translation for a Free Palestine, a collection of poetry by Filipino and Filipina poets, and translations of Palestine poems in Filipino as a response to the BDS movement (Boycott, Divest, Sanction), and timely launched before the opening of the Frankfurt Book Fair where the Philippines was Guest of Honor.
Gantala Press not only publishes but uses publishing and books as cornerstones for creating a safe space for organizing and promoting a comprehensive publication programme, including corollary vital activities aimed at utilizing women’s activities such as writing, reading, storytelling, performance, cooking, planting and farming, among others, to promote wellness, welfare and rights of women and the basic sectors.
Gantala Press also links Philippine women and national issues and concerns with the alternative international women and publishing networks, and inversely, promotes the issues and concerns of alternative international women and publishing networks to the Philippine women and national network. ✦
February 2026