Who Are We?
Essential Dreams Press is a genre-leaning press with a passion for exploration, experimentation, and social equity. The press falls under the leadership of publisher and editor in chief Julie C. Day, but it is very much in partnership with both the authors and publishing professionals who help bring our books into the world.
One of the powers of fiction is that it forces us to experience truth rather than analyzing it from a safe distance. Amplifying voices. Bringing disparate people together. Providing a creative lens that breaks down walls and obliterates assumptions. That is our focus. And we’ve only gotten started.
The Dreams Anthology Series
Each book in our Dreams anthology series brings together some of the strongest voices in contemporary fiction while also providing practical help to the vulnerable and disenfranchised. Gorgeous and cutting prose. Beautiful cover illustrations. Each anthology in the series is a creative powerhouse. More than that: all proceeds from each book go to a charity whose work is tied in some way to the anthology’s core inspiration.
Our Origins
Essential Dreams Press started in 2019 as an independent publishing project run by a small group of writers and a large group of friends. The Post-Apocalyptic Writers Society (PAWS) is a peer critique group that has been meeting for years. Early in 2019 the group decided to take another step together and publish a charity anthology 1) to raise money for RAICES and 2) to make a statement as authors in the genre community concerning migrants and the currently devolving situation at the Mexican-US border. Julie C. Day took up the mantle of organizational dervish, otherwise known as Editor-in-Chief and de facto publisher. Other members of the group contributed in a variety of ways: story contributors, copy editors, newsletter writers–enthusiastic participants, one and all. It was an Autobahn of a learning curve. And then came the necessary planning needed to manage the proceeds.
In the beginning, Reckoning Press was there when we needed a hand. Reckoning Press not only publishes some of the best genre-leaning environmental justice fiction out there. Agreeing to publish the Weird Dream Society under the Reckoning Press umbrella until we were ready to spread our wings was an act of generosity on Reckoning’s part. As it turns out, the process of creating books includes numerous reminders that people can be and often are both generous and wonderful.