Kate began as a printer in 1981, working and developing her offset printing skills in many printshops, while learning the letterpress on her own. In 1993, she formed her own business, Many Names Press, as a commercial printery and a print studio. She printed and published her first fine press editions on her own press, including "Sam Hergo, Circus Strongman" by her uncle, Bill Stipe, in 1996, and then produced fine press editions on the offset press and letterpress. The press evolved with the times, so she became a graphic designer using Photoshop, Illustrator and QuarkXpress to send digital files to book printers. She last printed an offset press book in 1999, and gave up the large format letterpresses. She still prints letterpress using lead type found in an abandoned gold rush town in Oregon on a eighteen-sixties Craftsman platen pilot press.

Many Names Press provides excellent writers, poets and artists with affordable services big name publishers and self-publishing businesses will not. Special emphasis is on feminist, historical, social, economic and environmental justice, the press produces limited edition letterpress books, chapbooks and broadsides of fine art and poetry as well.

  Collaborating with authors about content, look relevance, quantity, marketing, publicity, booksignings and other aspects is encouraged. This effort of the press, and the authors' full participation, guarantee its success once the book is printed.

Publishing a book or two a year by accepting work with complete galleys and credible marketing plans by way of mouth, through friends, acquaintances and fellow poets, Kate wholeheartedly maintain support for her authors and indie booksellers by actively engage in local commerce and culture, and by working with locals and some women friends and poets like the amazing Louise Grassi Whitney of Napa, and as Becky Taylor who lives directly above Bookshop Santa Cruz: Can't get more local than that!