Milli mála - 2020, Blaðsíða 199

Milli mála 12/2020 199
ANGELA RAWLINGS, LARA W. HOFFMANN, RANDI W. STEBBINS

10.33112/millimala.12.7
mogenous prevails in the popular imagination and marketing strate-
gies. This leads us to ask how an initiative such as Ós Pressan and its
multilingual publishing concept, can contribute to shifting the land-
scape of what is considered to be Icelandic literature.
3. Context: Short History of Ós
As Sara Ahmed wrote, “[w]hen you expose a problem you pose a
problem. It might then be assumed that the problem would go away
if you would just stop talking about it or if you went away.”36 Expos-
ing the problem with publishing in Iceland is exactly what Ós
started out to do and continues doing. The nine women, all immi-
grants to Iceland but one, who started Ós in 2015 met in literary
workshops facilitated by angela rawlings, herself an immigrant, in
2014 and 2015. During those workshops, they and several others
began to talk about who has the right to be called a writer in Iceland
and who is represented in the publishing industry. As Angela tried
to find a publisher for a book showcasing the writers of the workshop,
the barriers to publishing in Iceland became more than just rumors.
Her book proposal came from work with multilingual writing in
Reykjavík, but it was turned down by Icelandic publishers. This mir-
rored the experiences of other, non-Icelandic authors trying to get
published in the country. At one point, the participants joked that it
would be easier to have the book published abroad, translated, and
imported to Iceland. In the spring of 2015, as the workshop drew to
a close, a few participants switched from joking to seriously consider-
ing the possibility of creating printed, online, and physical spaces for
marginalized authors.
The workshop had been supported by Reykjavík UNESCO City
of Literature, as was the budding writing and publishing collective.
Ós members’ first performances were at Reykjavík Culture Night in
August 2015 under the banner of UNESCO and the first exhibit
welcoming the new nonprofit was in October 2015 at the downtown
branch of the Reykjavík City Library. By December 2015, Ós had put
out its first call for submissions for the first edition of its literary
36 Ahmed, Sarah, Living a Feminist Life, Durham: Duke University Press, 2017, here p. 37.