[1] Its founders were Frédérique Delacoste, Felice Newman and Mary Winfrey Trautmann,[2] who collectively financed, wrote and published the press's first book Fight Back: Feminist Resistance to Male Violence in 1981.
[3] Over the years, Cleis Press has published nonfiction books by Susie Bright, Annie Sprinkle, Edmund White, Essex Hemphill, Gore Vidal, Christine Jorgensen, Matthue Roth, Patrick Califia, Violet Blue, Mark A. Michaels and Patricia Johnson and Tristan Taormino, among others.
Fiction published by Cleis Press includes works by Achy Obejas, Stephen Elliott, Erastes (author), reissues of classic lesbian pulp fiction (including Ann Bannon's historic Beebo Brinker series), the Nancy Clue series by Mabel Maney, Virginia Woolf's first completed novel, Melymbrosia, and an English-language novel set in North Korea, Jia by Hyejin Kim.
Cleis Press' erotic anthologies have included work from well known story writers Sacchi Green, Shanna Germain, Jeremy Edwards, Michelle Augello-Page, Charlotte Stein, ADR Forte, and Teresa Noelle Roberts.
In 2000, Cleis Press founded Midnight Editions, a human rights imprint that aims to present fiction, nonfiction, and photojournalism from regions where repression and censorship are endangering creative expression.