Amazon announced this morning that Transparent creator Jill Soloway will be editor-at-large for its newest imprint. TOPPLE Books, according to a press release, will primarily publish narrative non-fiction and fiction from writers who identify as women of color, gender non-conforming, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or queer.
TOPPLE is also the name of Soloway’s production company, and the release frames the publishing imprint as an extension of that project. “We live in a complicated, messy world where every day we have to proactively re-center our own experiences by challenging privilege. With TOPPLE Books, we’re looking for those undeniably compelling essential voices so often not heard,” Soloway said in a statement. “I can’t think of a more perfect collaborator than Amazon Publishing to make our dream of a revolutionary publishing imprint come true.”
“We live in a complicated, messy world where every day we have to proactively re-center our own experiences”
Soloway is best known for co-writing several seasons of HBO’s Six Feet Under, creating Amazon’s Transparent, and directing the pilot of Amazon’s briefly-lived adaptation of Chris Kraus’ landmark feminist text I Love Dick. They also wrote an erotic novella called Jodi K., published as part of an anthology in 2005, and a memoir titled Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants, published the same year.
Launched in 2009, Amazon Publishing is currently made up of 15 imprints — the most recent addition being Amazon Originals, which exclusively publishes 5,000-to-20,000-word works of short fiction and non-fiction.