February 19, 2026
Hello, folx! Sampaguita Press here!
We hope you’re taking care of yourselves and each other during this time of great change and resistance.
As the year begins to pick up, we wanted to share some updates regarding Sampaguita Press.
Sampaguita Press began as an idea—it began with a conversation between creatives, creatives who were experiencing a lack of understanding from white editors and publishers with their work and manuscripts. They saw the microaggressions of having to explain their stories and experiences with their art. They thought, what was a way to serve their community of authors who were experiencing this? After browsing other small, indie presses, there was a severe lack of BIPOC-led presses, let alone presses with BIPOC editors on their masthead, and from there sprang an idea—what if these budding writers start a press? And thus, Sampaguita Press was born—a small, independent publishing house dedicated to solely publishing titles created only by BIPOC authors (and the intersection of LGBTQIA+ authors).
After 5 years and 9 full-length titles, Sampaguita Press is entering a restructuring. When we first started in 2021, we set up the press to emulate the model of the Big 5, publishers like HarperCollins or Penguin Random House. We continue to exist as a labor of love, and a labor we wanted to do for our fellow poets and writers, who we were seeking to publish.
As we continued, and as our catalogue grew, we began to realize the processes we originally set into place were unsustainable due to our limited budget and daily time constraints juxtaposed with our day jobs. Unlike the Big 5 that operates on a multi-scale budget with paid specialized staff, we are a small press, with limited funds and an all-volunteer staff. One facet we want to continue to uphold is an anti-capitalist model despite also understanding the reality that our press is still measured by some sort of financial success in order to survive in the publishing industry. While “big” money or “big” accolades may be the desired outcome for some presses and authors, our first and foremost goal is to continue to uplift and share stories from underrepresented and marginalized communities.
For us to continue this mission and to sustain the press, we are shifting away from our old processes. What you have seen in our pictures and posts before will not be the case moving forward. Before, because we were attempting to emulate the Big 5, our staff took on the bulk of marketing, communication, and social media. For staff, this meant that they were planning event programming, sometimes even traveling and using their own financial means to visit Authors, and emceeing events on behalf of Authors. While we do not regret this labor of love, this output has caused burnout in our staff and takes away from the efforts needed towards tending to forthcoming titles in different stages of production. Sampaguita Press can no longer be the publicist or promoters for our Authors.
In order to continue the press’ vision to our commitment in uplifting underrepresented voices and communities who may not have access to traditional publishing spaces, and at the same time, to support the needs of our current volunteer staff, we have amended our past contracts to support the current capacity and bandwidth necessary to ensure the press’ growth and sustainability. To be transparent, it has been extremely difficult to operate an all-volunteer staff given each and every staff member’s daily work schedule. If we did not make this change, Sampaguita Press would have needed to close. We understand the need and want for a BIPOC-run press to publish solely BIPOC published work. It is our utmost goal to keep the press afloat and functioning to the best of our capacity. Thus, we amended our contracts to ensure the sustainability of the press going forward.
We’ve added a copy of the contract onto the FAQs of our website for all to see, in the spirit of radical, decolonized transparency.
We thank all the Authors who worked with us during our learning and growing foundational stage to be like the Big 5. It was a wild ride, and we thank you for the experience and for the joy of your book’s birth. While we are so proud to have provided such services in the past and have enjoyed advocating for each and every Author in the way that we did, we realize that the financial constraints as well as the emotional and mental bandwidth of our volunteer staff are significant if we are to survive and thrive as a press for hopefully many years to come.
We want to continue publishing books, and we want Sampaguita Press to be a labor of love. Sampaguita Press is something beautiful to us. Please note that our volunteer staff is dynamic, and consists of fellow writers and poets (emerging and established) with their own publication experiences and journeys. Because of this, we respect the whirlwind and bustle that is life, and this change is to ensure that our volunteer staff know their personal lives are important.
We each know how arduous and stressful it can be to get published, and we do not ever believe in competing with the Authors of our catalogue, but that we exist as colleagues and supporters of each other’s work. While we understand that we do not live in a vacuum, that we exist and operate in a capitalist market, we strive to be flexible and adaptable, and to continue making strides toward discovering what a decolonized press can do. We want to continue doing the work that we envision can be the whole of the publishing industry in the future: uplifting and publishing historically underrepresented stories.
Thank you for your love and support over the years. We are excited for you to “meet” the new us and to read all the work that is yet to come from us.
With love,
Keana Aguila Labra, Kelly Ritter, & Maria Bolaños
Sampaguita Press Directorial Staff
