[Editor’s Note: Return to Mago E-Magazine (RTME) introduces Sister Organizations under the banner of the Nine Sister Networks as a way of consolidating Matriversal Feminism previously known as Goddess Feminist Activist Spirituality. If you are interested in interviewing or being interviewed for this project, please see here.]
Mary Saracino: I met Peg Elam in 2006 when she published my novel, The Singing of Swans, through Pearlsong Press, her independent, woman-owned business. In 2014, she also published my novel, Heretics: A Love Story. I know Peg to be a woman of integrity who “walks her talk”, as they say. As an editor and publisher, she is an author’s dream come true. Whether one has written a novel, a memoir, or poems, she is respectful and supportive, and a joy to work with. Pearlsong’s motto is: Healing The World One Book At A Time. That encapsulates Peg’s vision and her commitment to publishing work that is often overlooked by mainstream presses, mine included. Pearlsong offers a wide range of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry books. To learn more, visit: http://pearlsong.com.
Mary Saracino: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background?
Peg Elam: I am a clinical psychologist and publisher, and former journalist. Feminist, certainly. I grew up in Mississippi and Alabama, an avid bookworm/reader and writer (poetry and prose). I worked on my high schools’ newspapers and decided to major in journalism as an undergraduate at Mississippi University for Women. (At the time I attended it was an all-female university; several years after I graduated it became co-ed.) I added English as a major and graduated with a double major in journalism and English. After graduation I started working at The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, MS, the state’s largest newspaper. I was hired by Rea Hederman, whose family owned the newspaper until it was sold to Gannett. Rea was a champion of literary journalism and arranged for the writers Richard Ford and Geoffrey Wolff to speak with some of the paper’s writers, including me. It was a wonderful opportunity. I worked as a reporter, editor, and then columnist. I left the newspaper after about five years, intending to write fiction but instead just enjoying some time off after having gone through undergrad in 3 years and then going straight to work. I found my own psychotherapy helpful and was fascinated by issues and research I read about in some early anti-diet work, such as William Bennett and Joel Gurin’s The Dieter’s Dilemma and Susie Orbach’s Fat is a Feminist Issue, and I decided to become a psychologist. I took some undergrad courses in psychology at Millsaps College in Jackson, MS, where I met my husband. I eventually earned an MS and PhD from Vanderbilt University in their psychology and human development program. Fun fact: Rea Hederman bought the New York Review of Books in 1984 and is still its publisher.
Mary: When did you launch Pearlsong Press? What inspired you to do so, that is, why did you decide to become a publisher?
Peg: I founded Pearlsong Press in 2003, combining my interests and expertise in writing/journalism and psychology/healing. As a psychotherapist I had specialties in eating disorders and trauma/dissociative disorders, and I wanted to provide the public with fat-positive literature as well as nonfiction supporting the weight-neutral Health at Every Size® (HAES) approach to well-being. I heard that a major traditional publisher had held off on signing a contract for exercise physiologist Glenn A. Gaesser, Ph.D.’s book Big Fat Lies: The Truth About Your Weight and Your Health until they met with him and saw he wasn’t fat. The publisher also insisted that Gaesser add a weight loss plan as the last third of the book; Gaesser reportedly agreed in order to get the first two-thirds of the book, which outline the harms of weight-loss foci, published. I wanted my press to be a publishing outlet not only for fiction featuring fat protagonists but for HAES-supportive nonfiction, including by fat authors.
I write more about this in my chapter in the book Weight and Wisdom: Reflections on Decades of Fighting for Body Liberation (edited by Nancy Ellis-Ordway and Tigress Osborn, Pearlsong Press 2025), “Healing the World One Book at a Time.”
There was also a more personal motivation in my starting a publishing company. My husband also grew up in MS, and for years longed to move back there. He wanted to live in the sandstone house in the tiny town of New Hebron, MS that had been designed and built by his paternal grandmother in the 1920s. Thanks to modern technology including the internet, I thought I could run a publishing company from rural southern MS even if having a clinical practice there was impractical. (This was before telehealth became commonplace.) Eventually, however, we stayed in Nashville.
Mary: What is the mission/vision of Pearlsong Press?
Peg: Pearlsong Press is an independent publishing company dedicated to providing books and other resources that promote liberation of body, mind, and spirit and support Health At Every Size® (HAES), a size-inclusive approach to health and wellbeing. (See https://asdah.org/haes/.) We promise that every book and product we publish or offer for sale is either fat-positive or at least NOT fat-negative. A list of our fat-friendly and fat-studies-related books can be found at https://pearlsong.com/fatstudies/. We’ve also published books that are age-positive and spirituality positive.
I chose the name “Pearlsong” because pearls are formed when an irritating substance enters an oyster or clam or mussel and triggers its protective response. The irritant is coated with shimmering, opalescent nacre (“mother of pearl”), the coats eventually building up to produce a beautiful gem. The self-healing response of the oyster transforms suffering into a thing of beauty. I think that’s something to sing about! The pearl-creating process reflects my desire both as a psychologist/psychotherapist and writer/editor/publisher to move outside a pathological or “disease” based model of “mental health” and “mental illness” and into a more integrative and transcendent perspective of life, health, and well-being. Out of suffering into joy.
And—the Pearl River runs through Jackson, MS, where I was born in the month of June. There are three birthstones associated with June, the most common being pearl.
Mary: I fully support your commitment to health at every size and body-positivity. Can you say a bit more about why this is a feminist issue?
Peg: Gauging bodies against external weight/size standards fuels stigma, oppression, and disordered eating and disordered exercise, all of which can constrict people psychologically and physically, crushing their ability to live fully. How much mental and physical energy do women, especially (but not exclusively—all genders can develop disordered eating and exercise patterns), expend trying to make or keep themselves smaller? What else could they (we!) do with that energy? There is evidence (ignored by the multi-billion-dollar weight loss industry, which includes portions of the medical community*) that weight-loss dieting is not only not sustainable long-term for most people—almost all people who lose weight intentionally will gain it back, and often more—but actually physically harmful. It’s healthier to maintain a stable “over” weight than to repeatedly lose and regain weight, a pattern known as weight cycling. I think of dieting/intentional weight loss as a kind of bodily exorcism, an attempt to reject parts of the body (especially adipose tissue) that are deemed “other” and demonized. This binding of the body constricts the spirit as well.
As Naomi Wolf said, “Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.”
Mary: How do you see Pearlsong Press contributing to feminist activist spirituality, directly or indirectly?
Peg: In addition to recognizing and celebrating body, mind, and spirit, Pearlsong Press supports natural diversity in people—especially, but not exclusively, in body size and composition. While weight stigma and size-related oppression can and do affect everyone along the gender spectrum, and feminism applies to everyone, I think weight stigma has disproportionately affected women and girls. Trying to meet or maintain oppressive weight standards, as women and girls are especially encouraged to do, is a kind of body-binding that restricts the spirit as well. What could women and girls—what could anyone—do with all the energy they expend on meeting oppressive standards of all kinds? How might the spirit—and mind and body—bloom if all bodies were fully nourished and respected in their free expression?
Mary: Do you think feminist activist spirituality is necessary for women, children, our plant/animal kin, and the planet? If so, why? If not, why not?
Peg: I think feminist activist spirituality can help correct the imbalances in the world that have been negatively affecting our planet and every being on it. I am not a religious scholar, but it seems to me that the predominant religious attitudes of the past and current millennia have promoted masculine/patriarchal rather than feminine/matriarchal perspectives of divinity, emphasizing control and power rather than nourishment and love, pillaging the planet rather than caring for it/Her. I should acknowledge that I was raised as a protestant Christian in the Deep South of the US, where fundamentalist denominations have relegated women to subsidiary roles in church and culture. Unlike Catholicism, which I understand honors Mary, and thus the divine feminine in some ways, the Protestant denominations I grew up in (Presbyterian and Southern Baptist) exclusively focused on the divine masculine. Even the Trinity was Father, Son and Holy Ghost, rather than Father, Mother, and son/child.
For true harmony, for equity, for balance, we need the divine feminine as well as masculine. As I write this, I wonder if I’m unnecessarily limiting spirituality to a binary gender identity, or perhaps tertiary if the Holy Ghost is considered nonbinary. I have heard that the Talmud recognizes eight genders, which fascinates me. I prefer a holistic spirituality that comprises all aspects of being and gender, while acknowledging that it’s necessary to infuse more feminine energy/divinity into the current world to bring it back into balance.
Mary: As a woman-owned, independent press what challenges have you faced in the industry?
Peg: There are challenges that any small press might have experienced: Pearlsong Press published its first books in 2004, using print-on-demand technology and online sales venues that helped decrease the costs of publishing books and made them available for purchase around the world. I didn’t have to pay up front to have thousands of copies printed and then have to pay for storage of those copies and try to get brick-and-mortar bookstores to carry them—which in the traditional publishing model the stores would essentially do on consignment, returning unsold books within months. With fewer upfront costs, I could choose to publish books because I thought they needed to be published, instead of only publishing books I thought would make money. (Yeah, publishing has been my passion and my calling rather than my astute business model.) But the same technology that made publishing more affordable for Pearlsong also made it feasible for lots of other small presses and authors to publish/self-publish, and the number of books being published in the past couple of decades has skyrocketed, which makes it harder for potential readers to find/discover books like Pearlsong’s. And of course the economy crashed in 2008, which affected sales and returns.
One way my being a woman has affected Pearlsong Press is that much of my time and energy has been spent on caregiving, which has traditionally been done by women. My mother lived with me the last four years of her life, and my husband is cognitively disabled from two head injuries. I don’t have children, so I haven’t had that aspect of caregiving, but I also haven’t had the assistance that now-adult children could provide. My husband has always needed a lot of support because of the way his adolescent traumatic brain injury affected his frontal lobes, but as he became increasingly disabled and challenged by working, and experienced a second TBI in his 50s, I became the primary breadwinner. For several years I was working fulltime as a clinical psychologist while caring for my mother and my husband and trying to keep Pearlsong Press alive. I wasn’t able to devote as much time to Pearlsong projects—and promotion of them—as I would have liked. We haven’t sold enough for me to pay for help with the publishing company. It was exhausting, and it impacted my health. I’m now semi-retired as a psychologist and focusing on self-care as well as my husband’s care, and appreciating having more time to devote to Pearlsong Press again.
Mary: Do you think it’s important for women and women-owned businesses and organizations to support one another?
Peg: I absolutely believe women and women-owned businesses and organizations—and professionals—should support one another. So many of us have had to navigate gender-based obstacles, from discriminatory hiring practices to glass ceilings to earning on average less than men to having to work “second shifts” of unpaid domestic labor (per Arlie Hochschild) and “third shifts” of aesthetic labor (per Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth). We can use all the support from each other we can get!
Mary: What are your aspirations for the future of Pearlsong Press?
Peg: I would like to continue to publish and support books and authors that can help heal rifts in body, mind, and spirit.
Mary: How would you like the Nine Sister Networking project to help and/or connect with Pearlsong Press?
Peg: In today’s publishing world, discoverability is key. New—and old—books can become lost among the millions of books in print, and only a few new books by the handful of major publishers get heavily promoted. That’s why publishers are most interested in authors who have a large social media presence and fan base. I have paid for advertising and other promotional opportunities in the past, including a booth at Nashville’s wonderful annual Southern Festival of Books, but I didn’t get much return on those investments in terms of sales. And in the two decades since I established the publishing company the costs of printing books has risen and foreign currency exchange rates have decreased (that is, the value of the American dollar has decreased in comparison to the value of foreign currency, so we’re earning less per book sold, especially in foreign markets). I’ve been reluctant to raise prices out of concern that doing so might make it more difficult for economically disadvantaged readers to purchase our books. Anything the Nine Sister Networking project can do to help spread awareness of Pearlsong Press books and authors can help. Write reviews of Pearlsong books. Spread word of the press, and our books and authors. Ask your libraries to acquire Pearlsong books. (I’ve created Library Book Request fact sheets for each Pearlsong book that people can download and use if they wish, for reference in filling out library acquisition requests online or to print and fill out to hand to librarians in person. Those can be accessed at https://pearlsong.com/about-pearlsong-press/library-book-request-forms/.)
Mary: Which of the many books that Pearlsong Press has published are most strongly related to and/or supportive of Goddess Feminist Activist Spirituality?
Peg: Your novels, The Singing of Swans and Heretics: A Love Story, are deeply spiritual and feminine-spirituality-oriented. Anne Richardson Williams’s memoir Unconventional Means: The Dream Down Under chronicles her spiritual connection with Aboriginal Australian elder Lorraine Mafi-Williams and Lorraine’s guidance to share sacred Aboriginal traditional stories with Anne so the stories could be documented. Anne and Lorraine also visited Australian sacred sites together.
The last half of the Fat Poets’ Society’s Fat Poets Speak 3: FatDance Flying, edited by Frannie Zellman, is the poem cycle “The Days of Fat Lilith.” As Zellman writes, Lilith is “First wife of Adam, according to Jewish-Talmudic legend, but before and after, a flying spirit goddess or demon, a spirit of the wind: lilitu (Sumerian), wind spirit. Spirit daughter of Inanna, Spirit Mother of Astarte.” In the poems, Zellman says, “Lilith is fat and thin and fat again, flies free, happy in all shapes.” The first four lines of the first poem in the cycle succinctly communicate the connection between fatphobia/fatmisia and feminism and spirituality:
“So frightened they were
of women—or spirits—
with the power to fly
or at least summon the wind
that they called me fat.
Notice that when they meet
woman-spirit with pride,
cleverness or ease,
it becomes fat.
Their own fright grows you.
Then it grows in you
that fat shapes of mind
body heart soul spirit
beyond
must be good
because the frightened
grew you
and their fright
flies with you
and makes you strong.”
Mary: Is there anything else you would like to add about yourself or your publishing enterprise before we close?
Peg: I publish books that I feel need to be available not only now, but for posterity, for history. By registering copyright and/or providing mandatory copies to the Library of Congress, I hope to preserve voices and accounts of often-marginalized populations, and facts that counteract stigma and discrimination.
NOTE: *In 2013 the American Medical Association officially voted to call “obesity” a disease—against the advice of its own scientific advisory board, which had conducted an extensive review of medical literature and found insufficient evidence to classify it as a disease. The AMA defined “obesity” as having a Body Mass Index (BMI) above 30, but the report by the AMA’s Council on Science and Public Health pointed out the limitations of using BMI for such diagnosis. Declaring “obesity” a disease made it easier to develop and promote and sell treatments (drugs, surgeries, diets) for it. In 2025 Morgan Stanley estimated that the global market for weight-loss medications alone could reach $150 billion by 2035.
Meet Mago Contributor, Mary Saracino – Return to Mago E*Magazine
Love this! thank you!! sharing on this mornings #Goddess101Texts <3