Meat Locker Editions is a new indie publishing house and arts organization with an affinity for social activism. Established by designer/publisher Sarah Beaudin and Quattro Books assistant publisher Maddy Curry, the Toronto not-for-profit has a mandate to “provide opportunities for under-represented voices in the literary arts.”

MLE boasts an advisory board that includes Association for Art and Social Change president and Quattro publisher John Calabro, Cytopoetics founder Greg Frankson, and Steel Bananas Collective executive director Karen Correia Da Silva.

Beaudin and Curry spoke to Q&Q about MLE’s ethos and plans for the future.

What is Meat Locker Editions? We’re a not-for-profit arts organization and book publisher. In addition to creating books, we run a lot of community programming including a mobile lending library; a reading series called The Underdog Poets Academy; and various panels, workshops, and events. The idea of Meat Locker Editions followed from some seminars at BookCampTO in 2012. We started in November 2012 and officially launched in February 2013.

What was your inspiration? We met while working together at a small press, where we found that we shared a lot of the same motivations and frustrations as young women working in the book industry. We felt that emerging artists of our generation ““ “millennials” facing social, educational, and economic challenges unique to them ““ were not being given the opportunity to share their stories.

Why do you feel that younger (particularly female) writers are at a disadvantage? Within this under-represented group, young women are even less represented in their creative endeavours. We wonder if an additional barrier to these writers is the persistent idea that “young people” have yet to experience the world in ways that could elicit meaningful writing and story. MLE wants to increase the visibility of emerging artists and make their stories accessible to as wide and varied an audience as possible. We are community builders first, and a business second.

What kind of submissions are you looking for? We’re interested in a broad spectrum of publishing projects. We’re primarily looking for short fiction and creative non-fiction from writers who fall within the “New Generation” demographic (18­”“35). We are especially interested in content that allows us to play with design and format and that lends itself well to adaptation in other forms.

How are you funded? We are self-funded (each of us works three jobs in addition to this). Our programming is funded by the goodwill of our incredibly supportive community through fundraisers. We’ll be reaching out to government funding sources in 2014 but needed to see just what we could accomplish on our own.

Where are your books available? Our first book, Gross by Dave Proctor, is currently available at our events and by direct order on our website. It will also soon be available in local bookstores and non-conventional retail outlets. As we are small, we handle distribution on our own, which allows us to approach various stores. The book is also available through the public library.

What are your plans for the future? We have so many big ideas and dreams ranging from collaborative books to a monthly lecture, seminar, and talking series known as Butcher’s Block, aimed at young artists and professionals; to working with groups dedicated to women’s rights and causes; to visiting schools; to turning the Book Bike into a whole fleet. As Meat Locker Editions has yet to become our full-time gig, we know that it will take time to get all our ideas up and running.

This interview has been edited and condensed.