Printer's Fist

Melissa Range's Printer's Fist, awarded the 2025 Vanderbilt University Literary Prize, is a collection that tells the story of a political movement--its strides and setbacks, its unity and fractures--with a particular emphasis on print culture. Drawing upon more than a decade's worth of archival research into nineteenth-century antislavery newspapers, pamphlets, broadsides, and more, Range highlights the expansiveness of the movement by focusing not on one, but a chorus of abolitionist voices. Her investment in celebrating Black and women's histories, in particular, offers an inclusive account of American history, informed not only by thorough research but through a formal, poetic engagement with the past. In exploring how enslaved people's self-emancipation was a form of resistance that preceded, operated alongside, and intertwined with organized networks of antislavery activists, Printer's Fist will help facilitate discussions surrounding race, gender, and activism that are grounded in historical fact and emotional truth.