​​Complementing the archival project Publishing the Present: An Archive of Mutual Care and Action (2020-2021), the second volume of PEER REVIEW explores community-oriented publishing practices and their responses to our ongoing moment of multifaceted crises. Through conversations with publishers Small Tune Press (Hong Kong), Queer.Archive.Work (Providence, RI), Homie House Press (Los Angeles, CA), Thick Press (Washington D.C./Los Angeles, CA), Co-Conspirator Press (Los Angeles, CA), and Antenna Aire (Houston, TX), PEER REVIEW: Publishing the Present provides a framework to consider creative and critical publishing practices as porous and fluid, moving within or outside of traditional institutions to respond to the world with care and action.

Considering public health and justice in the broadest sense, this volume highlights creative engagements with movements for social transformation, and invites us to wonder: what are the futures we want to move towards, and how can creative and critical publishing practices aid us in bringing about those futures? This publication doesn’t claim to have all of the answers, but rather strives to make space for careful and nuanced considerations of the role of the independent publisher within ongoing struggles for social and political justice.

—Wendy’s Subway