Career
Shameless Hussy Press
Alta started Shameless Hussy Press in 1969. Alta used a printing press in her garage to publish books by authors such as Susan Griffin, Pat Parker, and Mitsuye Yamada. Yamada later described Alta as an "energetic feminist poet" who promoted Yamada"s first volume of poetry "at women's conferences, women's health centers, and lesbian bars." The press published the first edition of Foreign Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide, When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange, and Mary Mackey"s first novel, Immersion (1972).
They also published poetry by men: "Alta reasoned that since 6 percent of the books published in the United States. were by women, 6 percent of the books she published should be by mentor"
The press closed in 1989.
Its archive is held at University of California Santa Cruz. Poetry and prose
Personal life
She wrote a volume of "blatant lesbian poems", Letters to Women (1969).
After the press closed she started operating an art gallery in Berkeley, California.
