A Home For Writers Who Change The World
ABOUT US
Tehom Center Publishing is a nonprofit press publishing feminist and queer authors, with a commitment to elevate BIPOC writers.
We're more than a press — we're a movement.
WHO WE ARE
Tehom Center Publishing is a nonprofit press publishing feminist and queer authors, with a commitment to elevate BIPOC writers.
More than merely a publishing company committed to elevating authors typically marginalized in the publishing industry, Tehom Center transforms manuscripts into movements for social change through coaching programs aimed at empowering authors in book writing, book marketing, and authorpreneurship.
Tehom Center was founded by Rev. Dr. Angela Yarber as a nonprofit in 2017 and incorporated a press into its wider vision of uplifting marginalized voices in 2023.
Meet the Founder
Rev. Dr. Angela Yarber is the award-winning author of ten books, with five featured on QSpirit’s Top LGBTQ+ Religion List. She holds a Ph.D. in Art and Religion and her work has been featured in Forbes, HuffPo, NPR, The Independent, Ms Magazine, and the television show Tiny House Nation.
Over a decade ago, after protests from Westboro Baptist Church, a thick stack of hate mail, and even a few death threats, she decided two institutions had become too toxic for her as a queer woman. The first was the church. Interestingly, she was its pastor. The second was the academy where she was a professor.
In the ten intervening years, she published 8 award-winning books with 4 different publishing companies. She realized, however, that most independent publishing companies don’t understand the nuances of what it means to be a feminist or queer writer; they certainly don’t know how to market us.
Around this same time, two dear friends and colleagues—who are both smart, savvy business women—each spent over $40,000 (yes, you read that correctly) on a hybrid publishing company promising to help them write and publish a book, leveraging said book to build a million-dollar business. Both friends are now over $40,000 in debt and those businesses don’t even exist anymore because they never made enough to cover their initial investment.
That’s because they signed with what she believes was a predatory publishing company. And what makes that publishing company so egregious is that they prey upon marginalized women with the promise of riches.
One of her favorite writers is Gloria Anzaldúa, a queer Chicana feminist who claimed: “The world I create in my writing compensates for what the real world does not give me.”
The “real world” has given us an old-school, white, male, predatory publishing industry that, at best, doesn’t understand the nuances of queer and feminist writing, and at worst, preys upon us for capital gain. She created Tehom Center Publishing to compensate for what the real world has not given us.
Meet the Team
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Rev. Dr. Angela Yarber
CEO & Founder
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Dr. Elizabeth Lee
Publishing Director
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Rev. Bethany Meier-Evans
Social Media Manager and Coach
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Dr. Mark Gardett
TCP Certified Book Coach
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Rev. Delois Prince
TCP Certified Book Coach
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Sarah Greenman
TCP Certified Book Coach
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Rev. Diana McLean:
Copy Editor
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Rev. Kathleen Henrion
Graphic Designer
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Kelsee Meier-Evans
Graphic Designer
Tehom Center Publishing’s Non-Profit Board Members
Rev. Dr. Angela Yarber
President
Dra. Wendy Arce
Co-Vice President
Dr. Melissa James
Co-Vice President
Dr. A. Elizabeth Lee
Secretary
The Deep.
The Beginning.
What does Tehom mean?
Tehom is the Hebrew word for deep or watery depths. Deepening justice. Deepening creativity. Deepening spirituality. That’s what we do at the Tehom Center. But tehom is so much more…
Like us, tehom has roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition because it’s found in the Genesis creation narrative. Also like us, it is not bound by this tradition. In fact, the Hebrew tehom is a lingusitic cognate for the Ugaritic t-h-m, which is equated with the earlier Tiamat, a Babylonian goddess of creation. Syncretism? Interfaith dialogue embedded in ancient letters? Pluralism? Perhaps.
Like us, tehom is queer. In the Babylonian myth, Tiamat’s birth of the world is co-opted by patriarchy, much like the re-tellings of the Genesis creation narrative. The Hebrew, however, is clear that the feminine ruah—spirit, wind, breath—stirs over the face of the deep (tehom) in order to bring about creation. So, the world comes into existence by a goddess (Tiamat) and a feminine spirit (ruah) stirring together.
Like us, tehom dwells in the watery depths of chaos. Tehom Center was founded four blocks from Maku’u Point, a Hawaiian burial ground known as the “jumping off place to the light,” where the deep Pacific crashes into lava rock. You can feel the spirit stirring over the waters.
Like us, tehom is about creation and creativity. What is more creative than the artistic dance of creation? Painting, dancing, new life. That’s revolutionary.
Tehom is about deepening what we are called to create and become.
Our Values
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Social Justice
Every manuscript we publish moves the needle on a real-world struggle. Books are tools for liberation.
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Intersectional Feminism
We center the voices of women, nonbinary, and femme writers across race, class, sexuality, ability, and faith.
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Queer
Hella queer by lived experience, by editorial vision, by the writers we publish and the team that publishes them.
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Antiracism
BIPOC writers are not a category we publish. They are central to who we are and what we exist to do.
Stay in Touch
The Weekly Revolutionary
A weekly love letter to writers, readers, and movement builders. Cohort openings, new releases, free resources, and the occasional rage against white supremacist cisheteropatriarchy.