Cleis Press is an inependent publisher of books in the areas of sexuality, erotica, feminism, gay and lesbian studies, gender studies, fiction, and human rights. The press was founded in 1980 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by Frédérique Delacoste and Felice Newman. They wrote and published the press's first book Fight Back: Feminist Resistance to Male Violence in 1981. Beginning with the groundbreaking Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival in Argentina, a 1986 memoir by former political prisoner and Amnesty International board member Alicia Partnoy, and followed by publisher Frédérique Delacoste’s Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry in 1987, Cleis Press earned a distinguished reputation for books that challenged popular assumptions about politics, gender, and sexuality.