Earth's Daughters is a feminist literary and arts periodical published in Buffalo, N.Y. We believe E.D. to be the oldest extant feminist arts periodical, having been published continuously since 1971.

    Although E.D. does publish work by men, our focus is the experience and creative expression of women, and from all contributors we require technical skill and artistic intensity, as evidenced in the work we have published by Denise Levertov, Lyn Lifshin, Marge Piercy, Diane diPrima, Janine Pommy Vega, Susan Fantl Spivack, and the list goes on. We also publish many "unknown" poets, writers and artists, and therefore welcome submissions from new writers.

    Earth's Daughters has lived long enough to have developed a mythos. Part of that mythos is that if Earth's Daughters has a mother, that mother is Judith Kerman. Kerman gave the magazine its name, inspired by Emma Goldman's "Mother Earth." This is the root of E.D.'s name hence the tree logo, designed by co-founder Judith Treible. (Among ourselves the mag is really E.D. - Ee Dee, not Ed.) Both the name and the logo have been problematic from the beginning. E.D. has gotten hate mail from people who thought we were pagans, and love mail from pagans. We got reports on the status of pigs in Iowa and a lot of bad nature poetry, bad drawings of trees and drawings of women that looked like trees.

    In the beginning there were three; these three editors changed, but stayed three until after issue #5-6. At that point, Judy Kerman, Lillian Robinson, and Elaine Rollwagen had each reached personal crossroads. The magazine was in stasis; none of the three wanted E.D. to die, but none could maintain it alone. Judy Kerman called a meeting of the female minds: past contributors, women involved in other publications, faculty women, women artists. She proposed that they take over E.D., and run it as a collective. They did, and we have maintained our identity as a collective ever since. Although individuals in the collective have changed as much as the magazine's format, four of the current editors were present at that original meeting. It's a miracle that a collective has survived this long, and that it functions so beautifully and audaciously. We do not allow our quality or our chutzpah to be dictated by the collective process.

    Maybe it's because we're women, but it seems to us that the writing - and the clichés - cycle. Every few years, there's a flood of manuscripts pertaining to some theme, regardless of the assigned topic. We were buried in thousands of women's Houses, most of which had dust motes dancing in the air. Mothers and Daughters brought hordes of "strong thighs"; for the Political Issue, we had lots of "viable candidates" and even more "second-rate wannabes." Eye of the Beholder delivered so many nature poems - and corrupt-nature poems - that we decided to do an "Ecology" issue called Lost in the Woods, for which we received too many "my-love-is-like-a flower" poems, which was not what we meant at all.

    The wonderful thing is, we got great stuff, too. Many of E.D.'s unknowns have become known. Many of our glorious writers have not, but deserve fame. This collection celebrates them all, and celebrates our collective efforts to keep it going.

---

EARTH'S DAUGHTERS
P.O.BOX 41
CENTRAL PARK STATION
BUFFALO, NY 14215