Krista Lyons-Gould is the VP of Editorial for Avalon Publishing 

Group and works in APG’s California division, in Emeryville, 

overseeing editorial and production for the travel reference 

imprint, Avalon Travel Publishing, and for the trade imprint, 

Seal Press. Most of her time is focused on Seal Press, which is 

dedicated to publishing important books by and for women for the 

last 25 years, from “Getting Free,” the first book to announce 

domestic violence as an issue, and women’s travel anthologies, 

such as “France, A Love Story: Women Write About the French 

Experience,” edited by Camille Cusumano, to “The F-Word: Feminism 

in Jeopardy” by Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner 

 

According to KLG, Seal Press is publishing books that reflect the 

issues women and girls are really dealing with and talk about 

those issues honestly and with an edge, whether that edge is 

humor or a finger pointed at the sociological or political 

environments that create and foster the issues. 

 

For the last few years, Seal has focused on issues central to 

third-wave feminists. Now, they are going back to Seal’s original 

core reader. She is a boomer, a second-waver perhaps. She is 

interested in other topics, like aging, caretaking parents, 

parenting teenagers, politics and how they impact her, and sex. 

Seal Press is also publishing for teenage girls and young women 

with a reissue of a completely revised Real Girl, Real World (Our 

Bodies Ourselves for teens. New titles to watch for: The Truth 

Behind the Mommy Wars, Invisible Girls, Job Hopper by Ayun 

Halliday, Above Us Only Sky by Marion Winik; I Wanna Be Sedated, 

writers on parenting teenagers. 

 

Prior to working at Avalon, Lyons-Gould worked for the 

independent publishing house John Muir Publications in Santa Fe, 

NM, as an editor and editorial manager, and moved west to 

California when Avalon acquired JMP in 2000. Originally from 

California, and a graduate of UC Santa Barbara (B.A.) and Humbolt 

State University (M.A.), Lyons-Gould is thankful to have found 

the work she loves making books in the Bay Area. She lives in 

Berkeley, CA, with her husband and two sons, ages 8 and 10.