Over the past few years, Naomi Huffman and Julia Ringo, cofounders of the Brooklyn-based editorial studio and small press Hagfish, have been building a spreadsheet of what they call “under-published women”—writers who have been unduly neglected by contemporary publishers. That list is now something of a lodestar for these literary entrepreneurs.

The pair first became interested in unearthing the works of overlooked women writers after they met in 2017, when they were both editors at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. There, Huffman acquired a never-before-published novel and short story collection by the late Katherine Dunn after a fateful expedition into Dunn’s archives. Huffman soon became interested in other opportunities for literary resuscitation.

“Knowing that there was just such an appetite for this work that no one had access to—it just really grabbed at me,” she said. Ringo, she recalled, stood out as a champion for Huffman’s archival endeavors. “I think we kind of bonded over that work.”

So when Huffman and Ringo left FSG in 2020 and 2022, respectively, it seemed a natural next step for the like-minded editors to go into business. They started Hagfish—which takes its name from the slimy sea creature, and cheekily nods to the duo’s focus on women—in 2022 as a freelance studio offering a range of editorial services to publishers, agents, and writers. Huffman says these services remain “the bread and butter of our business,” and past and current clients include A24 Publishing, the Feminist Press, and Penguin Random House. But they launched the studio in the hopes that, if it was successful, they’d be able to branch into publishing.

That’s just what happened. The pair started acquiring for Hagfish in 2023, and earlier this month published their inaugural title: Rosalyn Drexler’s 1972 novel To Smithereens, about a young woman in Manhattan who become a wrestler. “It’s very raunchy and funny and just an incredible trip,” Ringo said of the book, which is inspired by its nonagenarian author’s own pro wrestling career. The cover of the new edition, designed by Hagfish art director Claire Hungerford, is in keeping with Hagfish’s bold editorial and visual aesthetic, featuring a playful, foil-stamped font (“It’s used by Dunkin Donuts and Hooters,” Huffman noted) and a painting by Drexler herself.

Hagfish’s second book, slated for October, is Iphgenia Baal’s story collection Man Hating Psycho, originally published in 2021 by the U.K.-based Influx Press. Though the book is contemporary, Baal is a fairly unknown quantity for American readers, which Huffman and Ringo want to rectify. “We see this as a launch for her,” Ringo said, noting that the Hagfish edition is markedly revised and updated. Also on the docket is a reissue of Joan Silber’s 1987 novel In the City, which centers on a young woman drawn to the bohemian life in Greenwich Village in the 1920s. The books will be distributed by Consortium.

“We consider Hagfish a feminist project,” Ringo said. “Our angle is about drawing attention to work we feel has been overlooked or deserves another look from the world, and that we feel we can present in a new way.”

Huffman and Ringo’s interest in excavating the work of under-published women also led them down an unexpected avenue: agenting. Last year, the pair represented Nettie Jones in a deal with FSG to reissue her 1984 novel Fish Tales, originally acquired by Toni Morrison at Random House. Their interest in Jones stemmed from a conversation with Rick Simonson of Seattle’s Elliott Bay Book Company, who “said he thought it was insane that no one was reissuing everything that Toni Morrison had ever edited,” Ringo recalled. “So we decided to look into that list, and the name Nettie Jones was one that we didn’t recognize—which is generally something we’re looking for.” (Booksellers, Ringo added, “will be our great allies in this publishing endeavor.”)

The pair approached Jones, who is in her eighties, in the hopes of publishing Fish Tales themselves. But they quickly realized their nascent press wouldn’t be able to provide Jones with the financial backing she needed. So Huffman and Ringo became Jones’s agents to sell it to a bigger publisher with more resources. “I think Nettie felt sort of chewed up and spit out by the publishing industry,” Huffman said, noting that Morrison left Random House prior to the publication of Fish Tales; neither it nor Jones’s second novel, published a few years later, sold well.

Last spring, Huffman and Ringo took the book to auction, where it was acquired by FSG editor-in-chief Jenna Johnson. Fish Tales was published last month. “Maybe it didn’t get the support that it needed in the 1980s,” Huffman said, “but it’s getting that support now, and it’s getting that readership now.”

For the time being, Huffman and Ringo are prioritizing quality over quantity when it comes to both publishing and agenting. “We’re keeping everything very small out of an interest in being able to support ourselves and to devote the attention to that each book deserves to its publication,” Ringo said. Hagfish plans to publish two titles per year and sign authors on a case-by-case basis in order to grow slowly and deliberately as they figure out what exactly makes for a Hagfish book or a Hagfish client.

Luckily, Huffman and Ringo’s instincts have proven to be aligned in that regard. They want to publish books with what Ringo called a “cult quality,” which tend to favor “outsider perspectives” and their attendant risk-taking, brashness, and an often-dark sense of humor. “We know a Hagfish book when we read one,” Ringo said, “and we hope that sensibility becomes clearer and clearer to readers as more of our books come out.”