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Well, I looked of course for well of loneliness.

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The well of loneliness. The well of loneliness.

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The well of loneliness. The well of loneliness.

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The

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Well of loneliness.

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The Redcliffe Hall. Well, of loneliness,

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Which everybody reads the well of loneliness,

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was kind of the entree to lesbian literature for so many people,

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because it was the best known novel throughout the 1950s.

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It\'s never very sexual. Uh, clearly Steven is,

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is madly in love first with a married woman. Then she forms a, uh,

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domestic relationship with a woman who had been straight. Uh,

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it\'s clearly a sexual relationship in both cases,

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except that Hull never tackles that specifically.

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And what she writes about,

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the closest she comes to describing the sexuality of Steven

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and Mary is one scene where she ends it saying,

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and that night, they were not divided,

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even as tame as that line was.

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She did get into trouble with the sensors in England.

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The novel was banned.

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It came out in America the following year in 1929.

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And there were actually attempts to ban the well of loneliness in America using

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the Comstock Act, which had prohibited pornography.

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Where was the pornography? And, and that night, they were not divided,

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but just the fact that it mentioned love between two women

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and one woman who actually describes herself as a sexual

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invert. But the courts wouldn\'t go for it.

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And it was not censored in America,

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as it was in England in the 19th century,

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these sexologists emerged that wrote about

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congenital inversion and described women that we would

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call lesbians as men trapped in women\'s bodies,

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and they were born that way.

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Radcliffe Hall really emphasized that theory in the well of loneliness,

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that from the beginning,

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Stephen Gordon is a congenital invert,

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can\'t help who she is nowadays. Of course, I I think that, uh,

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we would probably describe Stephen Gordon not as a lesbian,

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but as a transgender person, even as a trans man.

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Significantly the same year that the well of Loneliness was

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published, Virginia Wolf published Orlando 1928,

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Orlando,

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Virginia Wolf\'s main character is sometimes a woman and sometimes a

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man, Virginia Wolf was writing about Vita Sgo West,

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a woman who had been her lover, a woman who often walked around,

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particularly when she visited Paris. And people would not know her there,

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walked around a male garb with her arms around another woman.

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Viole tr refuses. But it,

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it was clearly a lesbian novel for those of us who knew what she was

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really writing about.

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I think the height of freedom for women that we would call lesbian,

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although they might not have used that term themselves,

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was in the first women\'s movement,

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the first feminist movement with the rise of the new woman.

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The suffrage movement was very strong.

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And the fact is that so much of the leadership of the suffrage movement

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were women that we would call lesbian today.

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So many of them had long-term relationships with other women.

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In the 1930s.

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Many women felt guilty about taking jobs as a result of the Great

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Depression. And I think in many cases,

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employers would feel guilty about giving women a job when they should give the

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job to a man with a family to support.

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And so there was something of a retreat in terms of women\'s progress.

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On the other hand,

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I think that the Great Depression also gave lesbians some

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necessary cover because it,

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it was important if you were unmarried to find someone to share the expenses

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of the household. With

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We, tour Drifting was written in 1935,

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astonishingly popular.

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I think that Gail Wilhelm rode the crest of popularity of

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the Well, of loneliness. It\'s very Hemingway esque in its style.

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I think one reason it was as popular as it was because it wasn\'t

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very different from the well of loneliness.

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That too ends tragically. So it,

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it wasn\'t much a step forward in terms of the lesbian image.

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But I think that by then,

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lesbians had had learned to read in a certain kind of way to,

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to take the, the great stuff out of these lesbian novels.

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The fact that lesbians could fall in love with one another in these

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novels, could say lovely romantic things to one another,

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could kiss one another, could clearly go to bed together.

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I think lesbians read those novels for the sake of, of, uh,

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seeing in print an affirmation of their lesbianism,

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and they learned how to ignore the conclusion.

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Nightwood came out in 1936.

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Jah Barnes intended this for a wider audience, and she succeeded.

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She actually got the probably top American poet,

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TS Elliot, to write a little introduction to Nightwood,

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and one could see why he would, first of all, it\'s beautiful prose,

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really astonishing in its style,

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and also it says nothing positive about lesbian relationships.

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And so it\'s not terribly surprising that it would\'ve appealed to

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a large, straight audience.

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The Nancy Drew series was actually conceived of by a man,

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a publisher,

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and he hired different authors to write under the name Carolyn

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Keene.

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Nancy Drew became a lesbian icon in the 1970s and

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eighties and nineties. She was independent. She drove a car,

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she flew an airplane.

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She had these incredible adventures for lesbians.

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What Nancy did was a dream come true

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In World War ii. We were in that war for four years.

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I think America understood that men who were of draft age had to go

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fight, and who would do the office jobs connected with the military.

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It was realized that there was a huge population out there who could do those

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non-combat jobs in the military, and that was women.

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The Women\'s Army Corps was established in 1942.

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The Navy opened to hundreds of thousands of women,

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many of them lesbians who were thrilled to be in the military and help

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America. Throughout the 20th century,

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more and more people moved from rural areas to the big city.

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What increased that movement in the 1940s was the defense industry

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that was very often established in big cities,

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particularly in port cities all over America.

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And so people from rural areas came in droves to big cities like,

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uh, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York.

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There were a lot of people in big cities, and if there were a lot of people,

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there was a critical mass that could attend businesses such as

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gay bars.

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And so gay bars began to be established in greater numbers during World War ii,

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and they realized this is a place I wanna come back to.

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It\'s gonna be much easier to be lesbian or to be gay than it would be

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in a, a little town.

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The first novel that we would call a pulp was published in 1950

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by Toska Torres. It was called Women\'s Barracks.

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It was originally written in French.

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It was about women in the free French Army.

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I don\'t think Toska Torres was particularly sympathetic to lesbians

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and did not want that novel to be known as the first lesbian

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pulp. But what she actually said in interviews is I talk about,

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um, five main characters.

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Only one and a half of those characters is about lesbian relationships.

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Why do critics just point that one and a half out? L

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Dick Carroll was the new editor of a line of paperback originals called

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Gold Medal Books.

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I was one of Dick\'s secretaries who didn\'t know how to take shorthand.

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So I was assigned to read books,

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thought to have potential selected from the slush pile.

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A would be writer.

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I very often finished reading a new manuscript thinking I can do that.

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I did an outline of a story and I gave it to Dick to read.

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You might have a good story here, Dick said, but you\'d have to do two things.

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The girls would have to be in college,

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and you cannot make homosexuality attractive.

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No happy ending. You see paperbacks go through the mails.

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They have to pass inspection.

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If one book is considered sensible,

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the whole shipment is sent back to the publisher.

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If your book appears to processize for homosexuality,

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all the books sent with it to distributors are returned.

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You\'ll take all your colleagues with you.

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You have to understand that I don\'t care about anybody\'s sexual preference,

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but I do care about making this new line successful.

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After Dick read the final manuscript, he said,

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we have to jazz up the title and wrap it in a sexy cover.

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In 1952, when Spring Fire was published,

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it sold 1 million

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four hundred and sixty three, nine hundred and seventeen copies

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in its first printing.

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The price of salt was really an iconic novel for

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lesbians.

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It was before the huge proliferation of lesbian pulp

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novels, and it actually had a semi happy ending.

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Not entirely happy,

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but it\'s about two women who meet and fall in love.

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One woman is married,

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has a daughter in order to be with the woman she loves.

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She really has to risk giving up her daughter. And it\'s,

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it\'s fairly clear that she has lost her daughter to this, uh,

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terrible husband. Um, but nevertheless, the two women remain together.

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They don\'t commit suicide. They don\'t, uh,

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go to mental hospitals because they\'re lesbians,

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and they don\'t drown in a well of loneliness.

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There was this push that started right after the war,

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but really became huge in the 1950s.

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It was an attempt to send women back to the home.

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By the mid 1950s,

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I think it was the worst time to be a homosexual,

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certainly in the 20th century, maybe in in American history.

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Um, because if, if it was known that you were a homosexual,

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not only were you a sinner as far as the church was concerned,

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you were a criminal in every state of the union.

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Every single state in the 1950s had sodomy laws.

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And women too lesbians were, um, included.

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If you were a lesbian or a gay man, you were also considered crazy by the,

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so-called Mental health profession,

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which really proliferated in the 1950s with the attempts to cure

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homosexuality.

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America was so worried about the threat of the Soviet Union,

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the communist threat. It really became a witch hunt,

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first of communists, but then it spread, it spread to homosexuals.

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If you worked for the federal government in any capacity,

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you might be in the position to steal state secrets. And so,

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if you were a homosexual, because homosexuality was such a terrible thing,

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you could be blackmailed by the Soviets to give away state secrets.

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And so in 1953,

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almost as one of his first acts in office as president of the United States,

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Dwight d Eisenhower signed executive order ten four fifty.

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That said, if you were a threat to national security,

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you could not work for the federal government. And people who were threats were,

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um, dope addicts and alcoholics, and sexual perverts,

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meaning all homosexuals.

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You had all of that to deal with this, this sense that you were sick,

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the sense that there was no hope unless you lived with the facade

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of a normal life, the sense that you were a menace to little children.

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You were a child abuser just by living. You could lose your children.

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You could lose your job, your friends would turn against you. And I,

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I was in that boat. I had two little kids and a husband.

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It was an awkward time in my life because I had just married,

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but I was determined to be somebody in my own right.

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I had written a story in which there were two young women in the sorority who

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developed intense feelings for each other.

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And I was a little bit embarrassed to write about it,

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so I just delicately broached the subject.

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And then I sort of put the girls over in a corridor in a shadow,

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quite literally. After my husband and I moved to the East Coast,

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we were living near Philadelphia. And on a drugstore shelf,

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I found a book called Spring Fire.

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And that was about sorority girls in a big 10 university as

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I had been. And I thought, my gosh, you know, I can, I can do this too.

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So I wrote to Mary Jane Meer and of all things, I got a,

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a nice note back from her. She said,

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if you can get up to New York and bring whatever you\'ve written,

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I will take it over to my editor.

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I think I would\'ve crawled up there on my hands and knees if I\'d had to.

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My husband,

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after much cajoling and the assurance that I would be staying at a women\'s

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hotel, said, reluctantly, okay,

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you can go, but I, you know, one week I want you back.

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I did go to the hotel and I did rent a room,

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but then Mary Jane came over to pick me up the first night I was there and took

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me out to dinner. We hit it off.

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So Mary Jane Meeker took me in to meet Dick Carroll,

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who was the editor in chief,

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been called in from Hollywood to run this new project, pulp Paperback originals.

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I left the manuscript with him. I went home with my fingers crossed,

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and, and within a couple of days, I heard from him, he said,

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take those two girls that fell in love with each other,

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00:16:36.165 --> 00:16:37.605
because that\'s what happened,

243
00:16:38.105 --> 00:16:43.045
and take them out of the dark corners and tell their story. He said,

244
00:16:43.145 --> 00:16:44.085
that\'s your book.

245
00:16:44.825 --> 00:16:49.245
So I sat down full of spit and fire and rewrote the book.

246
00:16:49.475 --> 00:16:52.525
Then I went back up manuscript hand,

247
00:16:53.305 --> 00:16:56.365
and they accepted it. They never changed one word.

248
00:16:56.885 --> 00:17:00.925
I think Mary Jane and I were lucky that we had gold medal books behind us

249
00:17:01.315 --> 00:17:05.245
because they did a wonderful job of, um, promoting the books.

250
00:17:05.915 --> 00:17:08.725
They got them out there where people could easily find them.

251
00:17:09.185 --> 00:17:11.365
And the the old pulp paperbacks at,

252
00:17:11.425 --> 00:17:15.165
at this time were being distributed as if they were magazines.

253
00:17:15.315 --> 00:17:18.165
They were bundled up, and they were taken out,

254
00:17:18.185 --> 00:17:22.685
and they were distributed to newsstands and drug stores and,

255
00:17:23.185 --> 00:17:25.885
uh, train stations and airports.

256
00:17:26.385 --> 00:17:29.885
It was not a, a, a friendly time,

257
00:17:30.545 --> 00:17:34.965
and we all hid behind pseudonyms of one kind or another. Um,

258
00:17:35.625 --> 00:17:38.645
it was too dangerous really,

259
00:17:39.505 --> 00:17:43.205
to be out. Um, there,

260
00:17:43.205 --> 00:17:46.765
there was a lot of hostility and a minimum of understanding.

261
00:17:47.345 --> 00:17:51.845
But you could take a book home and under the covers at night with a

262
00:17:51.855 --> 00:17:56.285
flashlight or something, you could enter a world. You would be thinking,

263
00:17:56.285 --> 00:18:01.205
if I could just get to San Francisco or la if I could just get to Chicago,

264
00:18:01.625 --> 00:18:06.085
if I could just get to New York, there\'d be people there who would understand.

265
00:18:06.105 --> 00:18:08.885
And that was true. We were sort of writing the,

266
00:18:08.985 --> 00:18:13.725
the Cook\'s tour of what we, we knew. We didn\'t know that much ourselves,

267
00:18:14.345 --> 00:18:19.045
but about what was beginning to become the gay and lesbian

268
00:18:19.685 --> 00:18:20.518
movement.

269
00:18:20.665 --> 00:18:25.365
But I really didn\'t feel that I was the one with background

270
00:18:26.145 --> 00:18:31.045
and the personal experience. And I, and I was right after I met Mary Jane,

271
00:18:31.075 --> 00:18:33.045
that changed. But, uh,

272
00:18:33.465 --> 00:18:36.365
at the time that I was getting to know Mary Jane,

273
00:18:36.465 --> 00:18:38.725
she was falling in love with Patricia Highsmith.

274
00:18:39.785 --> 00:18:43.805
So that never worked out, but it, it was opening a door,

275
00:18:43.985 --> 00:18:47.965
and I didn\'t feel quite so dumb after that.

276
00:18:48.145 --> 00:18:52.885
So I have to say, I, I sort of took a plunge and hoped for the best,

277
00:18:53.385 --> 00:18:58.365
and it worked out. And then I, I had the good luck to invent Beebo. It was a,

278
00:18:58.565 --> 00:19:01.765
a long, hard road. And, um,

279
00:19:02.865 --> 00:19:06.045
and here we are, and there\'s, we\'re still on the, on the journey.

280
00:19:09.375 --> 00:19:13.485
There had been a vital women\'s movement in the 19th century,

281
00:19:14.145 --> 00:19:15.925
in the early 20th century,

282
00:19:16.385 --> 00:19:20.205
but it began to focus entirely on women getting the vote.

283
00:19:20.545 --> 00:19:24.725
And finally we got the vote, and it was like,

284
00:19:25.065 --> 00:19:27.965
we didn\'t know what else to ask for, for a while.

285
00:19:28.665 --> 00:19:31.125
And so the women\'s movements sort of disappeared.

286
00:19:31.525 --> 00:19:36.525
I think what helped to trigger it was the 1963 publication of Betty

287
00:19:36.675 --> 00:19:39.565
Friedan\'s, the Feminine Mystique.

288
00:19:39.905 --> 00:19:44.325
But suddenly it caught fire because here was a new generation

289
00:19:45.145 --> 00:19:50.005
of women, and there was a lot of discontent going on.

290
00:19:50.255 --> 00:19:54.405
Women looked at other kinds of discontent going on.

291
00:19:54.815 --> 00:19:57.805
There was a black civil rights movement.

292
00:19:57.895 --> 00:20:01.725
There was an anti-Vietnam War movement.

293
00:20:02.665 --> 00:20:07.565
And I think it created the kind of atmosphere where more and more

294
00:20:07.565 --> 00:20:11.165
women were thinking, there\'s something wrong with,

295
00:20:11.355 --> 00:20:13.965
with the way I\'m being forced to live my life,

296
00:20:14.145 --> 00:20:17.845
I\'m going to join a movement to change that.

297
00:20:18.715 --> 00:20:21.645
Jane Rule wrote a novel in the early 1960s,

298
00:20:21.755 --> 00:20:25.805
published in 1964 as Desert of the Heart.

299
00:20:26.225 --> 00:20:30.805
And it was published in hardcover, and it got good reviews,

300
00:20:31.265 --> 00:20:35.085
and the characters did not end in suicide.

301
00:20:35.155 --> 00:20:39.605
They did not end by being committed to insane asylums or,

302
00:20:39.985 --> 00:20:44.525
or being lonely forever. It was actually a pretty happy ending.

303
00:20:44.825 --> 00:20:48.045
So that was a remarkable pioneering novel.

304
00:20:49.905 --> 00:20:51.875
When Desert of Heart first came out,

305
00:20:52.035 --> 00:20:54.915
a number of people in Hollywood did ask for options.

306
00:20:56.055 --> 00:21:00.355
And this was 19 65, 66. At that time,

307
00:21:00.515 --> 00:21:03.115
I knew perfectly well what they would do with the book. Uh,

308
00:21:03.265 --> 00:21:07.195
they would turn it into a Hollywood happy ending that is one of them would have

309
00:21:07.195 --> 00:21:09.275
to kill herself, and the other one would have to get married.

310
00:21:12.375 --> 00:21:16.675
And so I said, no. My agent said, you know, with movies,

311
00:21:16.785 --> 00:21:20.115
what you do is take your money and run. And I said,

312
00:21:20.115 --> 00:21:24.755
I don\'t have any place to run. When Donna de approached me,

313
00:21:25.175 --> 00:21:26.635
uh, a good many years later,

314
00:21:28.615 --> 00:21:32.435
she was an independent filmmaker. She showed me every film that she had made,

315
00:21:33.135 --> 00:21:36.675
and then we talked about the kind of film she wanted to make. And I said,

316
00:21:36.675 --> 00:21:38.515
you can\'t make a film of this book.

317
00:21:39.015 --> 00:21:43.555
You can make your film taking whatever from the book is useful to you.

318
00:21:45.055 --> 00:21:48.035
And so, no, I don\'t wanna have anything to do with it.

319
00:21:48.155 --> 00:21:50.715
I don\'t wanna write the script. I don\'t know how to write scripts. I\'m,

320
00:21:50.935 --> 00:21:52.515
I\'m not even much of a movie goer,

321
00:21:53.255 --> 00:21:56.955
but I trust you to make a movie that I may or may not like,

322
00:21:57.455 --> 00:22:01.795
but I know it won\'t offend me. I think it was, uh, just a marvelous job.

323
00:22:02.055 --> 00:22:04.835
And of course, it gave a whole new life to the book.

324
00:22:05.655 --> 00:22:10.475
And it\'s now been translated into many different languages. It\'s sold many,

325
00:22:10.475 --> 00:22:14.235
many more copies. And so, uh, in a sense,

326
00:22:14.615 --> 00:22:17.395
the film gave the book a second birth,

327
00:22:17.735 --> 00:22:20.115
so you don\'t have to choose between one and the other. Uh,

328
00:22:20.165 --> 00:22:21.795
thank heaven we have them both. Now,

329
00:22:24.815 --> 00:22:27.955
Isabel Miller, whose real name was Alma Root song,

330
00:22:28.295 --> 00:22:30.555
she wrote a novel called A Place For Us.

331
00:22:30.815 --> 00:22:33.555
It was Too Hard to Find a Publisher,

332
00:22:34.015 --> 00:22:37.475
and so she published it herself in 1969.

333
00:22:37.735 --> 00:22:42.435
She did find a publisher who reissued it as patient since Sarah.

334
00:22:43.065 --> 00:22:47.385
They said it was like a West Side story, you know,

335
00:22:48.335 --> 00:22:52.875
there\'s a place for us somewhere,

336
00:22:53.075 --> 00:22:57.435
a place for us. Then I said, so what, you know,

337
00:22:58.695 --> 00:23:01.775
I was saying a place for us all While I was writing it,

338
00:23:01.895 --> 00:23:03.335
I knew it was like West Side Story.

339
00:23:04.075 --> 00:23:06.455
It was based on an actual artist,

340
00:23:06.855 --> 00:23:10.695
a woman by the name of Maryanne Wilson in the early 19th century,

341
00:23:11.315 --> 00:23:12.895
and the woman who was her partner,

342
00:23:13.235 --> 00:23:17.975
and how they go off and make a life together and live happily ever after.

343
00:23:21.705 --> 00:23:25.815
There was much excitement around Betty Friedan\'s, the Feminine Mystique,

344
00:23:25.955 --> 00:23:29.535
and I think a lot of women came to her to encourage the idea,

345
00:23:29.835 --> 00:23:31.575
but she had the most prominent name.

346
00:23:31.835 --> 00:23:36.615
And so they decided they would start this organization called The National

347
00:23:37.175 --> 00:23:41.895
Organization for Women. And it grew all over the United States.

348
00:23:42.435 --> 00:23:47.005
In the beginning, Betty Friedan was really homophobic,

349
00:23:47.265 --> 00:23:49.645
didn\'t want lesbians in her organization.

350
00:23:50.265 --> 00:23:53.325
She had started a conference to unite women,

351
00:23:53.665 --> 00:23:57.045
and then she decided she would\'ve a second conference to unite women.

352
00:23:57.465 --> 00:24:01.725
It was popular enough so that she could have this big auditorium rented in

353
00:24:01.745 --> 00:24:02.385
New York.

354
00:24:02.385 --> 00:24:06.845
The only problem is that there wasn\'t a single lesbian speaker scheduled.

355
00:24:07.975 --> 00:24:11.885
There was a big Women\'s Congress meeting, and they\'re all there, and, you know,

356
00:24:11.885 --> 00:24:15.365
they\'re all what you would expect, you know, perfectly nice people,

357
00:24:16.105 --> 00:24:19.845
but they did not wanna discuss anything about lesbians because they felt it

358
00:24:19.845 --> 00:24:22.285
would hurt the movement. Betty said, we were,

359
00:24:22.745 --> 00:24:27.285
she at one time made a crack about lesbians being a lavender menace and

360
00:24:27.355 --> 00:24:29.245
harming the women\'s movement.

361
00:24:29.305 --> 00:24:33.525
And I gathered a bunch of people together that were in these couple gay groups.

362
00:24:33.815 --> 00:24:36.485
There were a few gay groups of women. Some were very leftist,

363
00:24:36.485 --> 00:24:39.445
others were really just focused on gay things.

364
00:24:39.905 --> 00:24:42.445
So I tried to get some of these people together, and I said, you know,

365
00:24:43.225 --> 00:24:46.045
we need to go to this Congress. And a couple other people said, yeah,

366
00:24:46.365 --> 00:24:48.245
probably we do. And then we all talked about it.

367
00:24:48.735 --> 00:24:52.045
There were a couple women there that I trusted. Uh, I,

368
00:24:52.205 --> 00:24:56.685
I knew they were as good as their word. And so we got the rest together,

369
00:24:56.905 --> 00:25:01.285
and we got these T-shirts, you know, these lavender t-shirts,

370
00:25:01.285 --> 00:25:04.445
this lavender menace. And we gathered out in the atrium,

371
00:25:04.625 --> 00:25:08.485
and they were all in there, you know, all the girls. And of course,

372
00:25:08.485 --> 00:25:10.085
you\'re not supposed to say girls, but they were girls.

373
00:25:10.585 --> 00:25:15.085
And so we had somebody behind the curtain because the lesbians knew the

374
00:25:15.085 --> 00:25:18.245
technology. The straight ladies didn\'t, which is really funny.

375
00:25:18.345 --> 00:25:21.565
If you think about it. I mean, here are the lesbians doing all the male jobs,

376
00:25:22.095 --> 00:25:23.685
which is just cracks me up.

377
00:25:24.025 --> 00:25:27.605
So they cut the lights and you hear this murmur,

378
00:25:27.605 --> 00:25:31.045
and then you hear a couple of screams, you know, like Phantom of the Opera.

379
00:25:31.985 --> 00:25:35.525
And the lights came back on, and we were all down in the aisles.

380
00:25:36.425 --> 00:25:39.005
All the gay women, nobody was ugly,

381
00:25:39.945 --> 00:25:43.845
but people began to speak and say, you know, we must all be treated equally.

382
00:25:43.985 --> 00:25:48.285
We have to stand together. And that, that was the beginning of it. But it was,

383
00:25:49.535 --> 00:25:51.645
there were some women that wouldn\'t do it, but not too many,

384
00:25:51.645 --> 00:25:52.485
because by that time,

385
00:25:52.915 --> 00:25:57.645
most of the gay women who\'d been trying to work with the feminist had been

386
00:25:57.645 --> 00:26:01.205
mistreated and got it, and realized, you know, if we don\'t resolve this,

387
00:26:01.825 --> 00:26:03.125
it isn\'t just about gay women.

388
00:26:03.225 --> 00:26:08.165
It is going to really harm the future of women\'s rights across the board.

389
00:26:08.435 --> 00:26:09.885
They really did get it, most of them.

390
00:26:10.065 --> 00:26:12.925
And I think that was the beginning of the re approachment.

391
00:26:13.325 --> 00:26:17.825
I got thrown out a nail for bringing up women,

392
00:26:17.825 --> 00:26:22.625
loving women. And I was, I think I was 22. I was the youngest person there,

393
00:26:22.845 --> 00:26:27.665
so it was easy to get rid of me. Um, I didn\'t necessarily go quietly,

394
00:26:27.665 --> 00:26:32.135
though. I needed to go. So I thought I\'d write a book.

395
00:26:32.435 --> 00:26:36.775
So I did. I mean, I\'d written two books of poetry. So I wrote this book,

396
00:26:36.775 --> 00:26:39.015
and I was having a good time. I was making myself laugh.

397
00:26:39.935 --> 00:26:41.695
I think any writer wants to be published.

398
00:26:41.715 --> 00:26:45.445
It doesn\'t matter what they\'ve written, written. When I wrote this, I,

399
00:26:45.805 --> 00:26:49.645
I thought it was funny. You know, I thought it was a true coming of age story,

400
00:26:49.645 --> 00:26:52.205
which is very much a part of Western literature.

401
00:26:53.365 --> 00:26:58.365
I had no idea of the venom that would be coming my way from agents

402
00:26:58.425 --> 00:27:01.005
and publishers and stuff like this. I mean,

403
00:27:01.005 --> 00:27:05.845
I was kind of shocked that people were that narrow and, uh,

404
00:27:06.205 --> 00:27:09.605
frightened. And the worst ones were the gay ones. It wasn\'t the straight ones,

405
00:27:10.515 --> 00:27:14.245
because if the gay ones were good to you, then people might think they were gay.

406
00:27:14.865 --> 00:27:18.885
So the closet people were brutal. I learned a lot. Um,

407
00:27:19.665 --> 00:27:24.525
and finally this tiny little new publisher, daughters Press, uh,

408
00:27:25.315 --> 00:27:29.405
June, Arnold and Park, Bowman and June had inherited oil wealth.

409
00:27:30.105 --> 00:27:31.645
She was a Houston girl, I think,

410
00:27:32.225 --> 00:27:35.845
and she wanted to publish women\'s fiction stuff that couldn\'t get published.

411
00:27:36.345 --> 00:27:40.445
So the first year she published five books. Sister Jen was hers,

412
00:27:40.825 --> 00:27:44.765
and then mine, and then three others. And mine just went through the roof.

413
00:27:45.505 --> 00:27:49.605
It never had an ad, it never had a review. \'cause nobody would touch this stuff.

414
00:27:50.465 --> 00:27:54.645
And, uh, it sold 70,000 copies in about three weeks, word of mouth.

415
00:27:55.985 --> 00:28:00.205
So they couldn\'t keep up with the volume, and I had no idea what was going on.

416
00:28:00.305 --> 00:28:04.285
You know, I was like 24 years old. It was,

417
00:28:04.385 --> 00:28:05.925
it was quite an adventure.

418
00:28:07.685 --> 00:28:12.525
I think everything you\'ve observed or lived through influences your fiction.

419
00:28:13.625 --> 00:28:17.925
Um, Gloria Steinem did a funny thing.

420
00:28:18.225 --> 00:28:21.925
She read it, and then for whatever reason, she said, autobiographical.

421
00:28:21.945 --> 00:28:25.125
And it stuck. And it\'s not, it\'s not, I mean,

422
00:28:25.125 --> 00:28:27.885
there\'s some things that I observed or lived through that are in there,

423
00:28:27.885 --> 00:28:30.125
but it\'s not really autobiographical. But,

424
00:28:30.125 --> 00:28:34.325
and then everybody expected me to be this big d**e, you know? And I\'m like, no,

425
00:28:34.545 --> 00:28:38.165
I\'m just a little one. I don\'t believe there\'s lesbian literature.

426
00:28:38.445 --> 00:28:40.445
I believe there are books written by lesbians,

427
00:28:40.705 --> 00:28:42.765
but if literature is only about lesbianism,

428
00:28:42.765 --> 00:28:45.885
then there\'s really only two or three stories you can tell coming out,

429
00:28:45.935 --> 00:28:48.765
which in the beginning we had to, those stories had never been told.

430
00:28:49.265 --> 00:28:52.045
But now they\'ve been told, you know, for the most part,

431
00:28:53.185 --> 00:28:57.645
how you met the person you love, or how you had a bad love affair or whatever,

432
00:28:57.705 --> 00:29:00.805
or how you decided to have children. Those are the stories. That\'s not enough.

433
00:29:01.025 --> 00:29:03.645
If you\'re gonna write, you have to embrace the world.

434
00:29:04.345 --> 00:29:06.045
You have to have all kinds of characters.

435
00:29:06.505 --> 00:29:10.445
The great thing about Ruby for Jungle really is, it\'s funny, none of this, oh,

436
00:29:10.475 --> 00:29:14.405
whoa, is me. My life is the most painful life in the world.

437
00:29:15.465 --> 00:29:18.965
Ugh. Well, people come up and they get very worshipful, you know,

438
00:29:18.965 --> 00:29:22.325
and some of them cry and they say, you changed my life. And I say,

439
00:29:22.405 --> 00:29:24.805
I did not change your life. I opened a door.

440
00:29:25.025 --> 00:29:28.925
You still had to have the courage to go through it. Take credit, you did it.

441
00:29:31.025 --> 00:29:34.765
We all had to stay after school every day to remember our lives and rehearse.

442
00:29:35.385 --> 00:29:36.405
Ms. Potter was right.

443
00:29:36.925 --> 00:29:41.445
I was so busy trying to get everything perfect that I didn\'t have time to get

444
00:29:41.445 --> 00:29:44.685
into trouble or think about anything else except Liotta.

445
00:29:45.245 --> 00:29:47.245
I began to wonder if girls could marry girls,

446
00:29:47.315 --> 00:29:52.005
because I was sure I wanted to marry Liotta and look in her green eyes forever,

447
00:29:53.025 --> 00:29:56.085
but I would only marry her if I didn\'t have to do the housework.

448
00:29:56.605 --> 00:30:00.725
I was certain of that. But if Liotta really didn\'t wanna do it either,

449
00:30:00.925 --> 00:30:03.565
I guessed I\'d do it. I\'d do anything for Liotta.

450
00:30:06.805 --> 00:30:10.915
Sarah Aldridge, who was really Anita Marchant,

451
00:30:11.365 --> 00:30:14.355
wrote her first novels when she was in her sixties.

452
00:30:15.325 --> 00:30:19.035
After retiring from the World Bank as an attorney,

453
00:30:19.455 --> 00:30:21.475
by early 1970s,

454
00:30:22.375 --> 00:30:25.315
she realized that there was nowhere to publish them,

455
00:30:25.935 --> 00:30:29.955
and she decided she had to publish them herself.

456
00:30:30.375 --> 00:30:33.635
She had written stories for the magazine, the latter.

457
00:30:34.075 --> 00:30:37.675
Previously she knew Barbara Greer, who was of course,

458
00:30:37.675 --> 00:30:42.115
the editor part of that time after she started to investigate

459
00:30:42.715 --> 00:30:45.675
printers and how you would go about doing it,

460
00:30:46.295 --> 00:30:51.275
she was able to get the mailing list from the latter from

461
00:30:51.275 --> 00:30:56.035
Barbara. The two of them put their heads together and started NIAID Press.

462
00:30:56.735 --> 00:31:00.155
It started with Muriel Crawford, aunt Donna McBride.

463
00:31:00.425 --> 00:31:05.355
They published The Late Comer. They had a good mailing list, and it took off.

464
00:31:05.775 --> 00:31:08.355
It was a very sweet,

465
00:31:08.885 --> 00:31:13.515
historical novel about a woman crossing the ocean on a, uh,

466
00:31:13.645 --> 00:31:17.995
ocean liner and meeting another woman on the ship. And it,

467
00:31:18.215 --> 00:31:22.195
it just did what Anita wanted, which was get into the hands of readers.

468
00:31:22.745 --> 00:31:27.195
Something where there was a lesbian couple that had what she

469
00:31:27.475 --> 00:31:30.075
considered to be a sweet and normal relationship.

470
00:31:33.505 --> 00:31:35.075
Anna Alan Shock\'s,

471
00:31:35.075 --> 00:31:39.875
loving her was a remarkable novel because it was the first novel about

472
00:31:39.895 --> 00:31:42.435
an interracial lesbian couple,

473
00:31:43.135 --> 00:31:45.435
and that had never been done before.

474
00:31:45.775 --> 00:31:50.635
And I think that will go down in the annals of history for its subject matter,

475
00:31:50.645 --> 00:31:52.075
which was so remarkable.

476
00:31:54.975 --> 00:31:59.075
One of the joys of my life has always been fantasy fiction and science fiction.

477
00:31:59.415 --> 00:32:02.915
And so the making of Utopias, you know,

478
00:32:02.975 --> 00:32:04.955
how you would really like for the world to be,

479
00:32:05.215 --> 00:32:08.675
has been configured in my imagination. You know, almost all of my life,

480
00:32:09.215 --> 00:32:12.115
the Wander Ground was

481
00:32:13.815 --> 00:32:17.715
almost 90% channeled. And by that I mean,

482
00:32:17.815 --> 00:32:22.795
it had come to me in short stories that I just suddenly wanted to write.

483
00:32:22.795 --> 00:32:24.155
And it was like automatic writing.

484
00:32:24.985 --> 00:32:27.795
This is certainly true up through the first half of the book,

485
00:32:27.795 --> 00:32:30.915
through the chapter called Diana in the Moon.

486
00:32:32.325 --> 00:32:36.115
After that, when I got into the matter of the, the Gentles,

487
00:32:36.775 --> 00:32:40.205
it was not quite so much channeled as it was, um,

488
00:32:41.225 --> 00:32:45.925
trying to be fitted into what I knew of what at that time was

489
00:32:46.685 --> 00:32:50.565
cultural feminism or, um, lesbian separatism,

490
00:32:50.905 --> 00:32:54.725
or whatever it was that you wanted to call, uh,

491
00:32:55.115 --> 00:33:00.005
that part of the new women\'s movement that talked about

492
00:33:00.055 --> 00:33:05.005
women taking the power into their own hands by going back to the land and

493
00:33:05.435 --> 00:33:10.205
finding their psychic powers. So the Wander ground was itself.

494
00:33:10.225 --> 00:33:14.005
It got passed around on those purple ditto sheets for years,

495
00:33:14.145 --> 00:33:18.405
and xeroxed copies of the Dittoes and then Dittoes of the Z Rocks.

496
00:33:18.405 --> 00:33:21.525
It was just being passed around at least all over the East Coast.

497
00:33:22.545 --> 00:33:25.445
And until Persephone said, we ought to publish this.

498
00:33:25.945 --> 00:33:28.925
And so when we got it published, it had become then the full,

499
00:33:29.155 --> 00:33:33.845
full vision of what I felt was the women of the world\'s

500
00:33:34.425 --> 00:33:37.645
answer to how we should deal with violence.

501
00:33:40.745 --> 00:33:42.805
In the 1970s, uh,

502
00:33:43.205 --> 00:33:47.645
suddenly all of these publishing houses appeared. There was Niaid Press,

503
00:33:47.695 --> 00:33:51.725
there was Persephone Press, there was the Women\'s Press.

504
00:33:52.305 --> 00:33:53.765
And because they appeared,

505
00:33:53.785 --> 00:33:58.565
and it was clear that women were dying for books about lesbians

506
00:33:58.595 --> 00:34:01.125
that didn\'t have us committing suicide,

507
00:34:02.205 --> 00:34:07.045
suddenly bookstores started appearing all over the country that would

508
00:34:07.045 --> 00:34:12.005
handle these books, and that would invite authors who wrote lesbian books.

509
00:34:12.345 --> 00:34:14.325
So that began in the 1970s,

510
00:34:14.345 --> 00:34:17.685
and it continued through the 1980s and the nineties.

511
00:34:21.495 --> 00:34:22.525
Annie on trial,

512
00:34:23.105 --> 00:34:27.045
how it feels to be the author of a Challenge book by Nancy Garden.

513
00:34:27.935 --> 00:34:31.005
Annie on my mind, is a story of two young women,

514
00:34:31.235 --> 00:34:34.845
high school seniors who fall in love with each other. Annie,

515
00:34:35.255 --> 00:34:38.805
along with a book called All American Boys by Frank Mosca,

516
00:34:39.385 --> 00:34:43.045
had been donated to 42 schools in and around Kansas City,

517
00:34:43.625 --> 00:34:48.085
in both Kansas and Missouri by an organization called Project 21.

518
00:34:48.715 --> 00:34:52.285
Well, good evening and welcome to Casey Online for a number of weeks.

519
00:34:52.305 --> 00:34:56.725
The top local story around Kansas City has been a couple of books at some local

520
00:34:56.725 --> 00:34:59.125
schools placed in their library. The books,

521
00:34:59.125 --> 00:35:02.725
which looked favorably on the gay lifestyle were donated by a group calling

522
00:35:02.745 --> 00:35:04.365
itself Project 21.

523
00:35:04.675 --> 00:35:09.085
Project 20 one\'s purpose is to encourage schools to include

524
00:35:09.485 --> 00:35:10.245
accurate,

525
00:35:10.245 --> 00:35:14.925
positive materials about homosexuality in their libraries and curricula.

526
00:35:15.415 --> 00:35:17.085
About long after the donations,

527
00:35:17.565 --> 00:35:21.805
a fundamentalist minister and a small group of his supporters, doused Annie,

528
00:35:21.805 --> 00:35:24.805
with gasoline, dropped at into a metal bucket,

529
00:35:25.225 --> 00:35:28.965
And it was burned on the steps of the building housing the Kansas City School

530
00:35:28.965 --> 00:35:32.085
Board. That whole saga for went on for a couple of years,

531
00:35:32.805 --> 00:35:35.005
happened 11 years after Annie was published.

532
00:35:36.715 --> 00:35:39.315
Well, I\'m, I\'m Reverend Birmingham. I I, I earned the book.

533
00:35:42.395 --> 00:35:42.515
I

534
00:35:42.515 --> 00:35:43.355
Saw you on video tape.

535
00:35:43.385 --> 00:35:44.015
Yeah.

536
00:35:44.015 --> 00:35:48.755
And I\'m committed to keep on burning and other books lack your

537
00:35:48.755 --> 00:35:53.595
book until not one homosexual pro book on the shelf by a library.

538
00:35:53.855 --> 00:35:54.688
So you not city,

539
00:35:55.455 --> 00:35:57.035
Not go online. Go Reverend

540
00:35:57.035 --> 00:35:59.995
Bernie, you go make my, comes

541
00:36:00.005 --> 00:36:03.515
Ahead. Some schools kept the donations, some returned them,

542
00:36:03.695 --> 00:36:08.155
and a few removed copies that were already in their libraries that led to cries

543
00:36:08.155 --> 00:36:11.035
of censorship, of banning. It was a lot of fussing.

544
00:36:11.035 --> 00:36:12.875
The papers and on radio talk shows,

545
00:36:13.335 --> 00:36:17.595
and eventually a group of extremely brave high school students and their parents

546
00:36:17.745 --> 00:36:20.395
from one of the towns involved. Olathe, Kansas,

547
00:36:21.065 --> 00:36:25.195
sued their school district and its superintendent for violating their first and

548
00:36:25.195 --> 00:36:28.235
14th amendment rights. Eventually, there was a trial,

549
00:36:28.455 --> 00:36:32.395
and the judge ruled that Annie had been unconstitutionally removed from the

550
00:36:32.395 --> 00:36:35.635
shelves of those school libraries and ordered that it be returned.

551
00:36:36.775 --> 00:36:39.475
Gay and lesbian teenagers who,

552
00:36:39.475 --> 00:36:43.115
when they are beginning to come out and realize that they are gay,

553
00:36:44.185 --> 00:36:47.275
have very little to go on in our society.

554
00:36:47.305 --> 00:36:51.115
They do not have open role models often,

555
00:36:52.495 --> 00:36:57.355
and if they do not have books in which they can see something to

556
00:36:57.675 --> 00:37:00.355
validate their existence, something to solace them, something to say,

557
00:37:00.355 --> 00:37:03.515
they\'re not the only ones in the world. There are other people like you.

558
00:37:03.575 --> 00:37:08.435
It is possible to be happy to be a moral productive

559
00:37:08.435 --> 00:37:12.635
member of society and be gay. They need to know this,

560
00:37:12.935 --> 00:37:17.875
and straight kids need to know this. Also, homophobia is very harmful.

561
00:37:18.415 --> 00:37:23.075
It hurts everybody, not just gay people. It hurts straight people as well,

562
00:37:23.135 --> 00:37:23.968
for many reasons.

563
00:37:24.545 --> 00:37:29.035
That is why gay kids need books in their libraries.

564
00:37:34.695 --> 00:37:38.235
In 1982, Alice Walker wrote The Color Purple,

565
00:37:38.765 --> 00:37:41.995
which was about black women in the 1930s.

566
00:37:42.735 --> 00:37:44.795
She never uses the word lesbian,

567
00:37:45.375 --> 00:37:49.315
but clearly there\'s a beautiful lesbian relationship.

568
00:37:50.145 --> 00:37:53.995
They have a love relationship. They fall in love with each other. Sealy is,

569
00:37:54.055 --> 00:37:57.875
is enamored of Suge. Even before she meets her, she sees a photograph.

570
00:37:58.375 --> 00:38:03.315
And Sealy has never been loved, uh, by, by anyone except her sister Netty,

571
00:38:03.935 --> 00:38:06.955
who ends up being sent off to Africa.

572
00:38:08.135 --> 00:38:12.795
So their relationship that they have really develops Seeley\'s

573
00:38:12.925 --> 00:38:16.875
sense of herself as a person, a real person, instead of a drudge.

574
00:38:17.545 --> 00:38:21.395
When I went to China in 1983, just after the book was published,

575
00:38:21.735 --> 00:38:26.555
it was already a bestseller in China. They didn\'t tell me about it, but it was,

576
00:38:26.655 --> 00:38:31.075
and so I said to them, well, um, why do people respond so,

577
00:38:31.255 --> 00:38:34.755
so deeply to this novel? And they said to me, well, Alice,

578
00:38:34.955 --> 00:38:39.605
it\'s a very Chinese story, because the oppression of women is global.

579
00:38:40.425 --> 00:38:44.325
The beauty of nature is what reminds us of what is divine. I mean,

580
00:38:44.325 --> 00:38:48.165
that we are already in heaven, really, it\'s just that we haven\'t noticed it,

581
00:38:48.165 --> 00:38:50.085
and we\'ve been diverted, uh,

582
00:38:50.185 --> 00:38:53.845
by people who want us to believe whatever it is they\'re basically selling us.

583
00:38:54.825 --> 00:38:59.205
Um, but if you pass by the color purple in a field and you don\'t even notice it,

584
00:38:59.625 --> 00:39:01.965
why should you even be here on the planet? I mean,

585
00:39:01.965 --> 00:39:06.885
you should notice what is here because it is wonderful and amazing and loves you

586
00:39:06.885 --> 00:39:07.718
back.

587
00:39:13.485 --> 00:39:14.965
I had written Curious Wine,

588
00:39:16.065 --> 00:39:19.445
but I had put that on the shelf because there was something wrong with it,

589
00:39:19.445 --> 00:39:21.365
and I couldn\'t quite figure out what it was.

590
00:39:21.985 --> 00:39:25.325
And I had written a draft of Amateur City,

591
00:39:25.335 --> 00:39:27.285
which was the first Kate Delafield book.

592
00:39:27.545 --> 00:39:31.205
And I had also started an emergence of green.

593
00:39:31.605 --> 00:39:33.725
I had all these projects I was working on,

594
00:39:34.505 --> 00:39:39.325
so I went to see Sheila Ortiz Taylor at Sisterhood Bookstore to

595
00:39:39.325 --> 00:39:42.845
get Fault Line signed Sheila Taylor, Los Angeles,

596
00:39:43.115 --> 00:39:47.165
June, 1982. This is a profoundly important book to me,

597
00:39:47.165 --> 00:39:49.565
because it was when everything began.

598
00:39:50.465 --> 00:39:54.365
And little did I know that Barbara Greer, uh, was there with her.

599
00:39:54.505 --> 00:39:57.845
She was on tour. And, uh, after Sheila read,

600
00:39:58.115 --> 00:40:02.205
Barbara got up and she talked about Nyad Press and what they were hoping to

601
00:40:02.205 --> 00:40:03.925
achieve at Nyad Press. And I was so,

602
00:40:05.365 --> 00:40:10.125
I was so moved and affected by everything that she said,

603
00:40:10.595 --> 00:40:14.965
that I went up to her afterward and I said, I have this novel.

604
00:40:16.155 --> 00:40:18.775
Uh, and she just looked at me and said, tell me,

605
00:40:18.775 --> 00:40:20.455
does anything happen in this novel?

606
00:40:22.525 --> 00:40:27.455
Like she had been asked this a million other times. And so I said,

607
00:40:27.595 --> 00:40:30.895
yes, I thought that a few things did happen in the book.

608
00:40:31.715 --> 00:40:33.655
And so she said, send it to me. She said,

609
00:40:33.675 --> 00:40:36.495
I\'m going up to a conference on the West Coast, but she said,

610
00:40:36.495 --> 00:40:40.695
send it to me and I\'ll look at it when I get back. So I thought, thank Heavens,

611
00:40:40.695 --> 00:40:42.895
because I need to look at the book again.

612
00:40:43.115 --> 00:40:48.055
So I took Curious Wine off the shelf and discovered that what was wrong

613
00:40:48.055 --> 00:40:49.815
with it was where it opened.

614
00:40:50.635 --> 00:40:54.815
So I fixed the opening to the book and sent it off to her,

615
00:40:55.195 --> 00:40:58.455
and she called me and she said, we would like to publish your novel.

616
00:40:58.955 --> 00:41:03.895
So that was how it all began. Curious Wine, this book that I wrote,

617
00:41:04.005 --> 00:41:07.015
just to celebrate how very beautiful women are together.

618
00:41:07.715 --> 00:41:10.655
And I wrote that book because nobody had written a book like that.

619
00:41:10.875 --> 00:41:13.695
As I have often said, I wrote the book I wanted to read,

620
00:41:14.235 --> 00:41:17.855
and it turned out that an awful lot of other women wanted to read the same book.

621
00:41:18.675 --> 00:41:23.575
So I\'ve ended up writing what is considered now a milestone book on a lesbian

622
00:41:23.685 --> 00:41:28.335
classic. A lot of people think that it\'s a romance, which it is,

623
00:41:28.485 --> 00:41:31.535
certainly it is above all. But to me,

624
00:41:31.595 --> 00:41:34.525
it was an incredibly political book when I wrote it,

625
00:41:34.525 --> 00:41:38.565
because I wrote it into all of the stereotypes of the tithe.

626
00:41:39.065 --> 00:41:44.045
One of them was that lesbians became lesbians because we were too ugly to get

627
00:41:44.145 --> 00:41:48.845
men, you know? And so Elaine is beautiful, and Diana is very, very attractive.

628
00:41:49.985 --> 00:41:50.205
Uh,

629
00:41:50.205 --> 00:41:55.045
another one was that we were seduced into this life when we were

630
00:41:55.245 --> 00:41:59.085
children or whatever. Late is 32 Diana\'s 34.

631
00:42:00.225 --> 00:42:03.565
Uh, both of them have had heterosexual experience.

632
00:42:04.355 --> 00:42:08.285
Both of them are professional women. They have all of these options.

633
00:42:09.065 --> 00:42:11.605
And out of all of these options they have in their lives,

634
00:42:11.605 --> 00:42:14.045
they choose the most difficult one, which was each other.

635
00:42:15.085 --> 00:42:18.165
I consider myself really a practitioner of the craft.

636
00:42:18.925 --> 00:42:22.165
Learning to write was really difficult for me.

637
00:42:22.465 --> 00:42:26.085
My partner at the time said, this is when I turned 40. She said,

638
00:42:26.785 --> 00:42:28.405
you\'ve always wanted to write a book.

639
00:42:28.665 --> 00:42:33.325
Why don\'t you take six months and write a book? So anyway, three years later,

640
00:42:35.305 --> 00:42:36.525
you know, when I was growing up,

641
00:42:36.525 --> 00:42:40.845
they said that gay people didn\'t have and couldn\'t have children. Well,

642
00:42:40.845 --> 00:42:42.725
we did have children, you know,

643
00:42:42.725 --> 00:42:47.245
and it was the generation coming after us was they were our children.

644
00:42:47.845 --> 00:42:49.725
I wanted life to be different for them.

645
00:42:50.125 --> 00:42:53.045
I didn\'t want them to have to go through what I went through.

646
00:42:53.185 --> 00:42:55.925
And we were criminals when I grew up.

647
00:42:57.185 --> 00:43:00.765
We were thrown out of our families. We were thrown out of the church.

648
00:43:00.985 --> 00:43:04.085
We were thrown out of our jobs. We were thrown out of the military.

649
00:43:04.865 --> 00:43:09.805
We were forced into therapy. Every book that I\'ve written,

650
00:43:10.475 --> 00:43:14.765
there\'s something in there that matters to my community. I feel very,

651
00:43:14.765 --> 00:43:17.245
very lucky to be a lesbian writer,

652
00:43:17.705 --> 00:43:21.285
and that I actually could write books that mattered to my readers.

653
00:43:25.595 --> 00:43:26.525
Oranges are not,

654
00:43:26.525 --> 00:43:31.045
the only fruit was based on Jeanette Winterson\'s own life.

655
00:43:31.225 --> 00:43:36.165
She was adopted into a fundamentalist religious family.

656
00:43:36.905 --> 00:43:40.645
And oranges are not the only fruit challenges.

657
00:43:40.795 --> 00:43:45.645
That notion of religion that has been until fairly recently

658
00:43:46.265 --> 00:43:47.885
has been so homophobic,

659
00:43:48.225 --> 00:43:51.605
so condemnatory of homosexuals.

660
00:43:54.445 --> 00:43:58.765
I was very innocent. I didn\'t understand what the difference,

661
00:43:58.825 --> 00:44:03.365
my difference was until about junior high.

662
00:44:03.665 --> 00:44:06.765
The boys started calling me Butch. At 15,

663
00:44:07.545 --> 00:44:11.925
my best friend and I fell in love. Fortunately,

664
00:44:11.925 --> 00:44:15.405
being in New York, we had Greenwich Village.

665
00:44:15.775 --> 00:44:19.005
While the adults went to the bars, the kids went to the ice cream parlor,

666
00:44:19.035 --> 00:44:19.885
that sort of thing.

667
00:44:20.105 --> 00:44:24.085
That\'s also where we found our first lesbian pulps.

668
00:44:24.965 --> 00:44:28.645
I go to college, I turn 21. I can subscribe to the latter.

669
00:44:29.385 --> 00:44:33.325
And Barbara Greer sent me Jane Rule\'s Desert of the Heart.

670
00:44:34.325 --> 00:44:37.885
I wanted to write like Jane Rule. I wanted to be Jane Rule.

671
00:44:38.625 --> 00:44:40.285
And we continued writing for the latter.

672
00:44:41.005 --> 00:44:45.165
I continued writing for sinister wisdom, and then Common Lives, lesbian Lives.

673
00:44:45.425 --> 00:44:49.885
That\'s how I met Carol cj, who became really important in women in print,

674
00:44:50.315 --> 00:44:53.125
unfounded women\'s bookstore in San Francisco.

675
00:44:54.445 --> 00:44:56.165
Nyad Press was founded up and running,

676
00:44:56.865 --> 00:45:00.925
and Barbara was making a place for us in the academic world.

677
00:45:01.385 --> 00:45:05.685
At the same time, reaching out to every closeted lesbian in the universe,

678
00:45:06.105 --> 00:45:10.845
the known universe, and maybe some others too. Knowing her, um, she,

679
00:45:11.385 --> 00:45:14.685
uh, she made it possible. She,

680
00:45:14.705 --> 00:45:19.205
she created a distribution system that made it possible for lesbians,

681
00:45:19.205 --> 00:45:24.125
even the most timid lesbians to, to read our books.

682
00:45:25.125 --> 00:45:29.685
I just wrote about what it was like coming in from Queens and

683
00:45:29.755 --> 00:45:33.765
meeting Susie under the clock by the subway, getting her cigarettes.

684
00:45:33.985 --> 00:45:35.045
She would rip off, um,

685
00:45:35.445 --> 00:45:39.205
lipstick from Kresge or awards or something,

686
00:45:39.345 --> 00:45:41.885
and we would get down to, to the village and,

687
00:45:42.225 --> 00:45:46.365
and just hang out and kind of watch the lesbians and see how they acted

688
00:45:47.305 --> 00:45:50.205
and how they talked, how they held their cigarettes.

689
00:45:50.425 --> 00:45:54.325
And they used lighters. And, uh,

690
00:45:55.665 --> 00:45:59.165
it, it was a dismal, dismal scene, really. The bars were awful.

691
00:45:59.745 --> 00:46:04.685
It was dirty and loud, and, but you could dance, you know,

692
00:46:04.685 --> 00:46:09.245
if you got to the back room, but only to an extent. I mean, it could not be

693
00:46:10.765 --> 00:46:15.645
anything risque, but we did, of course. Um,

694
00:46:17.345 --> 00:46:21.805
so that\'s, that\'s the background of this Washbox player. That\'s

695
00:46:25.025 --> 00:46:28.405
the essence of my experience in that world. I,

696
00:46:28.525 --> 00:46:32.285
I very much wanted to express, you know,

697
00:46:32.725 --> 00:46:37.285
a rebellion against the feminists express the but and,

698
00:46:37.425 --> 00:46:42.005
and the femorals, uh, because that\'s who we were. And,

699
00:46:42.025 --> 00:46:46.685
and the feminists wanted to deny that they thought we were posturing,

700
00:46:46.955 --> 00:46:50.685
wanting to be like men. Uh, and that was all wrong.

701
00:46:51.025 --> 00:46:52.405
And I\'ve been trying all life,

702
00:46:52.435 --> 00:46:56.525
life to portray that as being real for us.

703
00:46:57.225 --> 00:46:58.058
Uh,

704
00:47:00.985 --> 00:47:04.525
She walked up the subway steps, pulling the comb from her back pocket.

705
00:47:05.625 --> 00:47:09.325
The cigar shop on the corner was still open, selling Sunday papers.

706
00:47:10.265 --> 00:47:14.445
And she used its window to take the point out of her DA and to dismantle her

707
00:47:14.775 --> 00:47:18.845
pobor. She whistled Brenda, I\'m sorry,

708
00:47:19.665 --> 00:47:23.845
softly, as she wound small spit curls in front of her ears

709
00:47:30.865 --> 00:47:34.885
For a lot of feminists, they were very opposed to pornography,

710
00:47:35.345 --> 00:47:38.685
to explicit images of women\'s sexuality.

711
00:47:39.145 --> 00:47:43.885
It often included lesbian sexuality that could have been construed as

712
00:47:44.285 --> 00:47:48.325
pornographic, because the argument was, this is what men like to see.

713
00:47:48.785 --> 00:47:53.045
And there was blowback against that. A lot of lesbians were saying,

714
00:47:53.045 --> 00:47:57.085
wait a minute, this is my sexuality. I define it the way I want.

715
00:47:57.185 --> 00:48:00.605
And this began sex wars among feminists,

716
00:48:00.625 --> 00:48:04.845
not only in the lesbian community, but among radical feminists and, uh,

717
00:48:04.855 --> 00:48:06.965
mainstream feminists.

718
00:48:07.665 --> 00:48:12.565
The sex wars led to the emergence of lesbians who were

719
00:48:12.795 --> 00:48:16.205
radical in terms of sexuality. Mm-Hmm. Who said, I,

720
00:48:16.325 --> 00:48:19.965
I don\'t want my sexuality censored in any way.

721
00:48:20.105 --> 00:48:23.605
I\'m gonna make porn films that are are for lesbians,

722
00:48:23.625 --> 00:48:25.765
and I\'m gonna show what I want to show.

723
00:48:26.345 --> 00:48:30.525
I\'m going to write novels that are poor novels for lesbians.

724
00:48:30.545 --> 00:48:31.965
And I\'m not gonna hold back.

725
00:48:32.185 --> 00:48:35.605
I\'m gonna talk about a variety of sexual pleasures.

726
00:48:39.165 --> 00:48:43.805
I made a gender transition from female to male when I was about 45.

727
00:48:44.325 --> 00:48:48.125
I have been a writer my whole adult life. I began, I think,

728
00:48:48.125 --> 00:48:53.005
because it was important for me to document the origins of the

729
00:48:53.005 --> 00:48:54.245
leather dite community.

730
00:48:54.845 --> 00:48:59.325
I think that people often see sex radicalism as being self-indulgent

731
00:49:00.475 --> 00:49:05.445
libertina that is separated from any other movement for social change. To me,

732
00:49:05.625 --> 00:49:08.285
it is vital to the cause of social justice.

733
00:49:08.865 --> 00:49:10.805
We have a right to control our own bodies.

734
00:49:11.225 --> 00:49:13.365
We have a right to do what we want with our bodies,

735
00:49:13.395 --> 00:49:16.445
with other consenting adults. And by God,

736
00:49:16.505 --> 00:49:21.485
the state will take every single opportunity it has to

737
00:49:21.635 --> 00:49:26.565
push us and to tighter and tighter and more constricted ways of living.

738
00:49:27.045 --> 00:49:31.965
I also wanted to start publishing because I was a feminist and still am.

739
00:49:32.465 --> 00:49:36.805
And the anti-porn movement had gotten cranked up in San Francisco,

740
00:49:37.545 --> 00:49:42.245
and they were sort of taking over the women\'s movement and

741
00:49:42.605 --> 00:49:47.005
reducing it to this single issue campaign to get rid of

742
00:49:47.565 --> 00:49:49.645
whatever they call pornography, uh,

743
00:49:49.645 --> 00:49:53.765
which was very poorly defined and included a lot of stuff that I thought should

744
00:49:53.765 --> 00:49:56.645
have First Amendment protection. Um,

745
00:49:57.465 --> 00:50:00.765
so I wanted to write about a different kind of feminism,

746
00:50:01.085 --> 00:50:03.165
a feminism that was sex positive.

747
00:50:03.925 --> 00:50:08.325
I was one of the organizers of the first leather d**e

748
00:50:08.325 --> 00:50:12.205
organization. Samoa actually, I mean, I was the founder,

749
00:50:12.845 --> 00:50:13.678
although at that time,

750
00:50:13.785 --> 00:50:18.445
nobody was ever supposed to be a leader or take individual credit for

751
00:50:18.765 --> 00:50:23.445
anything, because the women\'s movement sort of mandated that everything be a

752
00:50:23.445 --> 00:50:28.405
collective, which is God. That\'s why I started having migraines as collectives,

753
00:50:28.485 --> 00:50:29.685
I swear. But anyway,

754
00:50:30.285 --> 00:50:35.045
I wanted to talk about the reality of sadomasochism,

755
00:50:35.505 --> 00:50:40.165
the reality of female desire. Its intensity, its variety.

756
00:50:41.045 --> 00:50:42.205
I think that we have this,

757
00:50:42.595 --> 00:50:47.245
this idea that you only come out once if you are honest with

758
00:50:47.485 --> 00:50:49.845
yourself. As you learn, as you grow,

759
00:50:50.585 --> 00:50:53.365
as your understanding of yourself and the world deepens,

760
00:50:53.745 --> 00:50:58.365
it is entirely possible that you may realize you need to add

761
00:50:58.535 --> 00:51:03.005
other things to your experience and to your identity. And that\'s okay.

762
00:51:04.025 --> 00:51:04.858
It is okay.

763
00:51:05.345 --> 00:51:09.445
We can come out over and over and over again.

764
00:51:09.755 --> 00:51:11.685
It\'s a simple matter of evolution.

765
00:51:17.525 --> 00:51:19.165
I was born in Australia.

766
00:51:19.965 --> 00:51:24.485
I have trouble speaking because I have

767
00:51:26.925 --> 00:51:31.525
a pernicious disease called

768
00:51:31.915 --> 00:51:36.395
Parkinson\'s, but it hasn\'t kept me down.

769
00:51:37.605 --> 00:51:41.245
I was determined to be published in America.

770
00:51:43.365 --> 00:51:47.965
I wrote the book into America Night,

771
00:51:49.785 --> 00:51:53.845
and I had to call back from the, um,

772
00:51:54.945 --> 00:51:59.725
my quenching voice on bomb

773
00:52:00.855 --> 00:52:03.765
night. Often I had seen, she said,

774
00:52:03.765 --> 00:52:07.245
they\'re not necessarily going to publish your book. But as it finished,

775
00:52:07.465 --> 00:52:12.445
and I had written three love scenes and the end and Everyth,

776
00:52:13.905 --> 00:52:18.485
and I said, asked need a few weeks to polish it.

777
00:52:19.385 --> 00:52:23.805
And she said, just ride it with you.

778
00:52:25.705 --> 00:52:28.765
So I did. And they accepted it.

779
00:52:29.305 --> 00:52:32.045
And it was very successful.

780
00:52:44.475 --> 00:52:48.765
I\'ve been on panels with other writers, lesbian writers,

781
00:52:49.705 --> 00:52:53.205
one that I remember very, very vividly. I don\'t know what the question was,

782
00:52:53.205 --> 00:52:54.765
but her answer was, oh my gosh.

783
00:52:54.925 --> 00:52:59.085
I get up and I look at myself every morning in the mirror,

784
00:52:59.705 --> 00:53:01.845
and I think I am a lesbian.

785
00:53:04.665 --> 00:53:08.525
And I, and, and I thought, boy, that\'s not me.

786
00:53:09.425 --> 00:53:11.565
You know? Um, if I,

787
00:53:11.885 --> 00:53:14.525
I get up in the morning and if I look at myself in the mirror,

788
00:53:14.905 --> 00:53:18.845
I\'m looking for what\'s crumbled since the night before. You know, I\'m not,

789
00:53:19.915 --> 00:53:24.245
that is not where my mind initially goes. And I think it\'s the same thing.

790
00:53:24.955 --> 00:53:28.245
Jane is a lot of things, and I\'m, a lot of things,

791
00:53:28.925 --> 00:53:32.965
a daughter and a sister. And Kathy and I,

792
00:53:33.025 --> 00:53:37.285
we have two girls who have had multiple children.

793
00:53:37.505 --> 00:53:41.165
So we have five grandkids. I\'m a writer. I\'m a lot of things.

794
00:53:41.985 --> 00:53:46.485
The kind of mystery I was writing didn\'t really allow for sex scenes.

795
00:53:48.225 --> 00:53:51.365
And I used to get all kinds of people coming up to me,

796
00:53:51.825 --> 00:53:56.605
all kinds of people saying, I need to put sex scenes in my books. I never did.

797
00:53:56.605 --> 00:53:58.845
And the rea and I have no problem with sex scenes in books,

798
00:53:59.505 --> 00:54:03.125
but the reason I didn\'t is because the traditional mystery was the kind I wrote

799
00:54:03.265 --> 00:54:06.645
and that didn\'t have sex scenes. Okay? Because of that,

800
00:54:07.765 --> 00:54:12.525
I think my books were perhaps more palatable in terms of the mainstream.

801
00:54:13.385 --> 00:54:17.755
And I think that that has helped them, um, sell,

802
00:54:18.565 --> 00:54:22.355
which has helped me stay alive as a writer. It was a very different world.

803
00:54:22.455 --> 00:54:25.235
Things were harder. I don\'t, I don\'t know that I would, I mean,

804
00:54:25.275 --> 00:54:27.875
I wouldn\'t write it that way if I were starting today.

805
00:54:28.355 --> 00:54:31.715
I loved writing the Jane Lawless series, and I still do, thankfully.

806
00:54:32.215 --> 00:54:34.035
But I just thought, well, this is it. You know,

807
00:54:34.035 --> 00:54:37.475
I\'ve reached the level I\'m going to reach. And then they called

808
00:54:39.125 --> 00:54:43.875
kinda out of the blue, the woman who called said, are you sitting down?

809
00:54:43.975 --> 00:54:48.875
And that\'s, you know, is that good or bad? And she said, we\'re,

810
00:54:48.875 --> 00:54:53.635
you know, we\'re going to make you the 2017 Grand Master. Congratulations.

811
00:54:54.585 --> 00:54:59.435
Yeah, that was huge. That was, that\'s those people, you know,

812
00:54:59.775 --> 00:55:02.155
uh, aga, the Christie and, uh,

813
00:55:02.375 --> 00:55:05.715
Alfred Hitchcock and Stephen King and Sarah Persky,

814
00:55:06.095 --> 00:55:07.155
the Mystery Writers of America.

815
00:55:07.155 --> 00:55:11.555
Grandma is the sort of the pinnacle of achievement in crime writing. And

816
00:55:14.665 --> 00:55:16.395
it\'s really, really cool.

817
00:55:21.595 --> 00:55:22.515
I was in North Hampton.

818
00:55:22.865 --> 00:55:25.835
This woman stopped me on the street because she knew I was a writer.

819
00:55:26.295 --> 00:55:30.915
She was a lesbian mom at the time with a four year old. She said to me, we,

820
00:55:31.095 --> 00:55:34.235
we don\'t have a book to read to Sarah that shows a family like ours.

821
00:55:34.235 --> 00:55:37.435
And that\'s really important. And we really want somebody to write. Well,

822
00:55:37.435 --> 00:55:40.835
you know, she just planted that seed. When I was growing up,

823
00:55:40.835 --> 00:55:43.795
there were no books for Jewish kids. My family was invisible.

824
00:55:44.535 --> 00:55:48.875
So I took this request very seriously to write this children\'s book mistakenly.

825
00:55:48.915 --> 00:55:51.235
I thought, well, how hard can it be? This, not that many words, right?

826
00:55:51.335 --> 00:55:52.595
I\'m a poet, I should know better.

827
00:55:53.535 --> 00:55:57.315
So I went to the library and I just started checking out children\'s books and

828
00:55:57.315 --> 00:55:58.475
reading these picture books.

829
00:55:58.735 --> 00:56:02.995
And then I tried it and I wrote the story about Heather and her two moms,

830
00:56:03.055 --> 00:56:05.275
and they do all these fun things together.

831
00:56:05.935 --> 00:56:09.795
And then she goes to preschool and nobody else has two moms.

832
00:56:09.815 --> 00:56:12.995
And then all the kids draw pictures of their families. And then of course,

833
00:56:13.215 --> 00:56:16.875
the message is that the most important thing about a family is that all the

834
00:56:16.875 --> 00:56:20.235
people in it love each other. I went to mainstream publishers,

835
00:56:20.235 --> 00:56:23.725
they weren\'t interested. I went to lesbian publishers. They were like,

836
00:56:23.825 --> 00:56:27.285
we don\'t do children\'s books. I have a very good friend, her name is Svia Gover.

837
00:56:27.625 --> 00:56:30.325
And she, at the time was a lesbian mom of a one-year-old.

838
00:56:30.705 --> 00:56:33.805
She had a desktop publishing business at the time, called, in other words,

839
00:56:34.145 --> 00:56:37.645
we decided that we would do this together. You know, two strong Jewish women.

840
00:56:37.705 --> 00:56:42.405
We can do anything. And so the first thing, of course, was that we had no money.

841
00:56:43.545 --> 00:56:48.485
So we started a Kickstarter campaign back in the

842
00:56:48.485 --> 00:56:51.845
day before computers. So what we licked envelopes, right?

843
00:56:52.285 --> 00:56:56.445
Remember that We put stamps on envelopes. We handwrote the addresses, and we,

844
00:56:56.545 --> 00:57:01.375
um, printed a flyer that explained the book and said,

845
00:57:01.475 --> 00:57:06.135
you know, if you send us $10, we will send you a copy of the book within a year,

846
00:57:06.355 --> 00:57:09.935
or we\'ll give you your $10 back. We printed 4,000 books.

847
00:57:10.535 --> 00:57:13.655
Somebody from New Words, which was the feminist bookstore in Cambridge,

848
00:57:13.655 --> 00:57:17.375
Massachusetts, contacted us and she ordered some books from us.

849
00:57:18.455 --> 00:57:21.855
A man named Sasha Allison wandered in and saw the book,

850
00:57:22.275 --> 00:57:26.575
and he called us up and he said he had just published Daddy\'s roommate.

851
00:57:27.275 --> 00:57:29.095
And so he thought maybe we should join forces.

852
00:57:29.275 --> 00:57:32.215
And he had this actual press called Allison Publications.

853
00:57:32.715 --> 00:57:36.735
He bought the back stock and then he bought the rights. And, um,

854
00:57:37.395 --> 00:57:41.825
he took over from there. It was featured in Newsweek.

855
00:57:42.885 --> 00:57:44.665
It was just a small little box.

856
00:57:45.455 --> 00:57:49.505
Basically it said that the face of the American family was changing.

857
00:57:49.925 --> 00:57:52.425
And now there were children\'s books that reflected that change.

858
00:57:52.485 --> 00:57:55.265
And it talked about Heather has true mommies and daddy\'s roommate.

859
00:57:55.365 --> 00:57:57.625
And it didn\'t really say anything positive or negative,

860
00:57:57.625 --> 00:58:00.105
it was just kind of the fact of their existence.

861
00:58:00.685 --> 00:58:03.425
So that story got picked up everywhere. You know,

862
00:58:03.825 --> 00:58:06.505
I learned when you\'re in Newsweek, you know, the world pays attention.

863
00:58:07.085 --> 00:58:10.745
One of the biggest controversies was the rainbow curriculum in New York City.

864
00:58:11.035 --> 00:58:13.385
Chancellor Joseph Fernandez lost his job,

865
00:58:13.815 --> 00:58:18.185
largely because of Heather has two mommies. I mean, this is the power of a book.

866
00:58:18.725 --> 00:58:19.375
Um,

867
00:58:19.375 --> 00:58:23.945
Senator Smith read part of the book into the congressional record

868
00:58:24.525 --> 00:58:28.265
during a session when Congress was meeting, which is just kind of amazing.

869
00:58:28.575 --> 00:58:29.165
Heather

870
00:58:29.165 --> 00:58:33.505
Has two mommies, two roommates, mama Jane and Mama Kate.

871
00:58:34.295 --> 00:58:38.105
Nice and cute. Mama Jane has a no nukes sweatshirt on.

872
00:58:42.485 --> 00:58:44.695
Then it goes on to say that they were good friends,

873
00:58:46.555 --> 00:58:49.615
and Kate and Jane wanted to have a baby. So they talked about it for a while.

874
00:58:50.315 --> 00:58:54.615
And, uh, then we have, uh, Heather,

875
00:58:55.165 --> 00:58:59.495
Heather comes into the world and it goes on

876
00:59:01.955 --> 00:59:02.788
to promote

877
00:59:06.575 --> 00:59:11.115
the lifestyle of two lesbian parents with a small child.

878
00:59:12.015 --> 00:59:16.915
He was proposing a bill that said that any school that had any gay book in its

879
00:59:16.915 --> 00:59:19.915
library would lose all his federal funding. And Heather was, you know,

880
00:59:19.915 --> 00:59:23.485
just kind of the epitome of what should not be in our public schools.

881
00:59:23.815 --> 00:59:27.125
There were fist fights around the meetings about the New York Rainbow

882
00:59:27.175 --> 00:59:31.525
curriculum. I mean, it got really intense. There was a big case in, uh,

883
00:59:31.555 --> 00:59:34.925
Wichita Falls, Texas. This woman took the book outta the library,

884
00:59:35.785 --> 00:59:38.045
and she gave it to her minister and he wouldn\'t return it.

885
00:59:38.045 --> 00:59:41.725
And the librarian reminded him, thou shall not steal. You are a minister.

886
00:59:41.745 --> 00:59:44.805
So he wanted to give her the price of the book. And she\'s like, no,

887
00:59:44.805 --> 00:59:46.605
this is a public library. It doesn\'t work this way.

888
00:59:46.605 --> 00:59:50.925
And then a big thing exploded over that I was called the Antichrist.

889
00:59:51.265 --> 00:59:53.845
The book was defecated upon in a public library.

890
00:59:54.505 --> 00:59:59.245
It was returned with his pages glued shut so nobody could open it. You know,

891
00:59:59.315 --> 01:00:02.805
poor little Heather. All kinds of things happened. On the other hand,

892
01:00:04.085 --> 01:00:08.645
I got wonderful letters from kids, from lesbian moms.

893
01:00:09.005 --> 01:00:12.365
I heard about a kid who took the book to bed with him and put it under his

894
01:00:12.365 --> 01:00:17.205
pillow every night. I got a letter from a little girl named Tasha who said,

895
01:00:17.205 --> 01:00:19.045
thank you for writing. Heather has two mommies.

896
01:00:19.085 --> 01:00:22.805
I know that you wrote it just for me. That\'s really what I tried to focus on.

897
01:00:23.405 --> 01:00:25.685
\'cause you could almost even forget that it\'s a children\'s book,

898
01:00:25.685 --> 01:00:27.925
because the adults just went crazy. You know,

899
01:00:27.965 --> 01:00:30.925
I never have heard of a child getting upset about the book.

900
01:00:31.465 --> 01:00:34.005
We are born without prejudice. You know,

901
01:00:34.005 --> 01:00:38.565
we\'re born without any notion. This is a family. This isn\'t a family.

902
01:00:38.695 --> 01:00:42.765
We\'re born. And we learn very quickly, these are the people who love me.

903
01:00:42.815 --> 01:00:46.325
These are the people who take care of me. These are the people I feel safe with.

904
01:00:53.105 --> 01:00:54.485
Desert Hearts came out,

905
01:00:54.505 --> 01:00:59.005
and it was my wife who saw the credit in the film for,

906
01:00:59.295 --> 01:01:01.685
based on the novel by Jane Rule. Oh,

907
01:01:01.685 --> 01:01:06.005
she went to the Berkeley Public Library and looked up Jane Rule and saw that

908
01:01:06.005 --> 01:01:08.645
these were cards you had to do this to go through.

909
01:01:08.985 --> 01:01:11.245
And the card said Jane Rule,

910
01:01:11.305 --> 01:01:16.005
and then her subject field underneath which subject was Lesbianism Fiction,

911
01:01:16.455 --> 01:01:20.325
which, you know, was that a crime we didn\'t know? She went to the subject index,

912
01:01:20.415 --> 01:01:21.325
lesbianism fiction,

913
01:01:21.425 --> 01:01:23.805
and started going through them alphabetically and looking for the books on the

914
01:01:23.805 --> 01:01:25.445
shelf. Two, three weeks later,

915
01:01:25.765 --> 01:01:30.365
I was sobbing my way for the second time through Curious Wine and, and going,

916
01:01:30.565 --> 01:01:32.365
I had no idea. I had no idea.

917
01:01:32.495 --> 01:01:36.565
These books were not at my library at that point. Um,

918
01:01:36.945 --> 01:01:40.125
and so I read Curious Wine, and I thought, well, this is it.

919
01:01:41.235 --> 01:01:45.685
This is the story I wanna tell, and I may never write anything so fine as this,

920
01:01:45.785 --> 01:01:48.325
but I\'m gonna try. So I took note of who the publisher was,

921
01:01:48.325 --> 01:01:53.085
which was Naya Press, and I got on their mailing list, which was legendary.

922
01:01:53.505 --> 01:01:56.645
It was, it tens of thousands of women were on their mailing list.

923
01:01:56.985 --> 01:01:59.445
And you would get these very discreet flyers once a month.

924
01:01:59.445 --> 01:02:01.765
It had all the new releases in it. It had not just theirs,

925
01:02:01.765 --> 01:02:03.925
it had other lesbian and feminist publishers books in it.

926
01:02:04.185 --> 01:02:07.325
It was this little package of wonder that you got every month,

927
01:02:07.325 --> 01:02:10.605
and then the books would come. I read a lot of those, and I thought, okay,

928
01:02:10.605 --> 01:02:13.245
I\'ll ask for their submission guidelines. My favorite part,

929
01:02:13.245 --> 01:02:15.165
which I still remember, are the submission guidelines.

930
01:02:15.345 --> 01:02:17.485
The last sentence or so was something like,

931
01:02:17.785 --> 01:02:22.245
we believe that lesbians are superior at once and your

932
01:02:22.245 --> 01:02:26.165
manuscript must reflect this. And I thought, okay,

933
01:02:27.965 --> 01:02:32.525
I can do this. So I, I sent them my first manuscript,

934
01:02:32.525 --> 01:02:34.445
which was called in every Report, and they published it.

935
01:02:34.545 --> 01:02:37.325
And my editor was Catherine Forest, who wrote Curious Wine.

936
01:02:37.705 --> 01:02:40.405
So it was just this magical progression,

937
01:02:40.405 --> 01:02:42.965
and it\'s all because of books with Touchwood.

938
01:02:43.265 --> 01:02:47.005
The reason I decided to write about an older woman was that I had been working

939
01:02:47.185 --> 01:02:48.845
for a trade association.

940
01:02:49.095 --> 01:02:52.405
Their goal was to help nonprofit providers of senior housing. I heard the,

941
01:02:52.505 --> 01:02:55.045
the muted whispers that some of the housing projects had,

942
01:02:55.315 --> 01:02:59.765
some of those people in them. And it always felt like their stories were,

943
01:03:00.675 --> 01:03:02.085
were never gonna be told by anybody.

944
01:03:02.305 --> 01:03:05.885
And then I really started to wonder if you were 70 years old and it was in the

945
01:03:06.085 --> 01:03:08.005
1990s and you were living in a,

946
01:03:08.285 --> 01:03:12.405
a senior housing complex and still hiding who you were because you were afraid

947
01:03:12.405 --> 01:03:16.405
of the repercussions from not just the other residents, but from the, you know,

948
01:03:16.405 --> 01:03:18.965
the people who manage the complex. What would that be like?

949
01:03:18.985 --> 01:03:22.005
And what would your life have been to have brought you to that place?

950
01:03:22.145 --> 01:03:23.565
And what are the different challenges?

951
01:03:23.665 --> 01:03:27.965
So I wanted to write a story about an older woman, but being in my mid twenties,

952
01:03:28.285 --> 01:03:31.165
I didn\'t really have a gateway into the character. So that\'s when I thought,

953
01:03:31.165 --> 01:03:35.245
well, what about an intergenerational romance? And then after I submitted my,

954
01:03:35.905 --> 01:03:36.125
uh,

955
01:03:36.125 --> 01:03:41.125
first manuscript to Niaid and Barbara Ger called me one of the

956
01:03:41.125 --> 01:03:43.125
things, because it\'s what she famously did,

957
01:03:43.225 --> 01:03:47.885
she informed me that I had the most excellent bookstore in the entire country,

958
01:03:48.105 --> 01:03:52.365
in the city where I lived. And why had I not gone there? So

959
01:03:54.155 --> 01:03:58.285
that became a, a, a scene I added to my novel because the,

960
01:03:58.385 --> 01:04:00.845
the adventure of going into a women\'s bookstore for the first time,

961
01:04:01.475 --> 01:04:05.805
that was also an amazing thing. And that loss of that culture is,

962
01:04:05.995 --> 01:04:08.925
I\'ve really felt that because it was for 15 years,

963
01:04:09.385 --> 01:04:12.765
you could go into a woman\'s bookstore and it\'d be immediately updated as to what

964
01:04:12.765 --> 01:04:16.045
the issues were. People were talking about what the books were that were out,

965
01:04:16.045 --> 01:04:18.725
that people were talking about. And all those women did all that work.

966
01:04:19.195 --> 01:04:21.245
They built their own bookstores and they built their own presses,

967
01:04:21.245 --> 01:04:24.605
and they built their own distribution networks. They built their own economic,

968
01:04:25.025 --> 01:04:28.885
um, realities around all of that so that people made enough money to stay in

969
01:04:29.045 --> 01:04:31.485
business. And, and I did that for 15,

970
01:04:31.485 --> 01:04:34.885
20 incredible years working 24 7 pretty much.

971
01:04:35.385 --> 01:04:37.485
And that I\'m still grateful.

972
01:04:40.625 --> 01:04:43.845
The Black Arts movement was very influential for me.

973
01:04:44.145 --> 01:04:49.005
You didn\'t go to any kind of rally or march without a poet or

974
01:04:49.045 --> 01:04:53.125
a singer kicking things off. The two movements,

975
01:04:53.185 --> 01:04:57.525
the Black Arts Movement really started me out thinking.

976
01:04:58.065 --> 01:05:02.605
And the lesbian feminist movement gave me the opportunity to publish my writing

977
01:05:02.745 --> 01:05:04.685
and, and to hone my skills.

978
01:05:05.745 --> 01:05:08.405
All of these amazing lesbian feminist

979
01:05:09.925 --> 01:05:14.445
publications and presses. It\'s like you were in a candy store, you know,

980
01:05:14.465 --> 01:05:17.725
you could turn this way. He was a fabulous, you know,

981
01:05:17.895 --> 01:05:21.085
press and you turn that way. He was this new magazine,

982
01:05:22.335 --> 01:05:25.525
Gilda was actually an incident.

983
01:05:26.245 --> 01:05:30.565
I was standing on the street corner near my

984
01:05:30.975 --> 01:05:31.808
house.

985
01:05:31.885 --> 01:05:36.845
I think my phone either was out of order or I had not paid the

986
01:05:36.845 --> 01:05:39.365
bill, but it wasn\'t working.

987
01:05:40.025 --> 01:05:43.125
So I went down to the corner to use the phone booth to call this friend of mine.

988
01:05:44.065 --> 01:05:48.925
And these two guys walked by and started that thing that they like to do.

989
01:05:49.705 --> 01:05:53.765
Oh baby, let me suck your blah blah. And I\'m like,

990
01:05:55.505 --> 01:06:00.325
mm, no. So I keep talking to my friend and they wouldn\'t go away.

991
01:06:01.565 --> 01:06:05.605
I said, excuse me, Maryanne, I\'ll be right back. I turned around,

992
01:06:06.765 --> 01:06:09.565
I screamed like a wild bashi.

993
01:06:09.865 --> 01:06:14.725
So I started for them instead of packing

994
01:06:14.755 --> 01:06:18.805
away, and his friend grabbed him and they ran.

995
01:06:19.505 --> 01:06:23.885
So I go in the house and I wrote the first Gilda story, and in the story,

996
01:06:23.945 --> 01:06:28.445
she of course kills them. So, and that felt really good.

997
01:06:29.685 --> 01:06:32.845
I had these great friends in Brooklyn,

998
01:06:33.345 --> 01:06:36.725
Alexis Devoe and Gwendolyn Hardwick.

999
01:06:37.275 --> 01:06:41.085
They used to run something called the Flamboyant Lady Salon

1000
01:06:42.765 --> 01:06:46.425
in their apartment in Brooklyn, in this huge pre-war building.

1001
01:06:47.125 --> 01:06:51.705
So once a month they would invite artists to come.

1002
01:06:52.005 --> 01:06:54.905
People would just come and read. And that\'s where I read the Gilda stories.

1003
01:06:54.925 --> 01:06:55.758
The first time,

1004
01:06:57.145 --> 01:07:01.885
the response was so intense and I realized

1005
01:07:02.205 --> 01:07:06.325
I had, I had something there that I\'d created a character that people

1006
01:07:07.795 --> 01:07:12.045
responded to and felt a kinship with.

1007
01:07:14.165 --> 01:07:19.165
I wanted to do something with them, but I couldn\'t quite figure it out.

1008
01:07:20.025 --> 01:07:23.925
So I asked Audrey Lord to read them. Mm-Hmm. And,

1009
01:07:26.225 --> 01:07:30.565
you know, it was one of those situations in which she was my friend.

1010
01:07:31.445 --> 01:07:35.765
I wasn\'t her peer, but she was always very generous with her time.

1011
01:07:36.185 --> 01:07:39.885
She said, I don\'t really care for short stories that much,

1012
01:07:40.785 --> 01:07:43.845
and I definitely am not interested in vampires,

1013
01:07:45.305 --> 01:07:49.685
but I will read it. So I gave her, you know, this manuscript.

1014
01:07:50.005 --> 01:07:52.645
\'cause in those days it was paper. And, um,

1015
01:07:53.865 --> 01:07:56.925
she read it and she came back and said,

1016
01:07:59.995 --> 01:08:01.085
This is very good,

1017
01:08:02.265 --> 01:08:05.085
but it\'s a novel and you need to turn it into a novel.

1018
01:08:06.815 --> 01:08:08.935
I got an agent. He said,

1019
01:08:09.655 --> 01:08:14.455
I just want you to know how ridiculous this can be.

1020
01:08:15.065 --> 01:08:17.965
The acquisitions editor said,

1021
01:08:18.595 --> 01:08:21.725
your character is black, a lesbian,

1022
01:08:22.705 --> 01:08:25.845
and a vampire. That\'s too confusing.

1023
01:08:27.385 --> 01:08:28.285
And I\'m thinking,

1024
01:08:30.065 --> 01:08:33.855
who\'s who do you think your market is gonna be like two year olds?

1025
01:08:34.475 --> 01:08:36.695
In the meantime, uh, I,

1026
01:08:36.895 --> 01:08:41.695
I was friends with Nancy Ano who\'d founded firebrand books.

1027
01:08:42.995 --> 01:08:47.055
She said, well, jewel, when you get sick of those commercial publishing,

1028
01:08:47.155 --> 01:08:51.055
if you real, I would love to do it. So I went back and I said, Nancy, you know,

1029
01:08:51.215 --> 01:08:55.335
I think this will be, this will be fun for us to do together.

1030
01:08:56.315 --> 01:08:59.455
But it\'s a little bit helpful to know that someone started beating the ground

1031
01:08:59.605 --> 01:09:01.335
down for you.

1032
01:09:02.875 --> 01:09:06.055
She maintained a slow pace moving south,

1033
01:09:06.365 --> 01:09:11.255
then west to the edge of the city and enjoying the evening air and the memory of

1034
01:09:11.255 --> 01:09:13.415
the girl\'s soft pale skin.

1035
01:09:14.795 --> 01:09:19.335
Her resurgent dreams cast a new glow on Gilda\'s life

1036
01:09:20.235 --> 01:09:23.455
in giving dreams. She had recaptured her own.

1037
01:09:32.005 --> 01:09:35.095
Growing up in Greenville, South Carolina, you,

1038
01:09:35.595 --> 01:09:40.455
you were who your family was, and we were white trash. We were genuinely trash.

1039
01:09:40.555 --> 01:09:44.975
We were the classic definition and we were arrogant about it in the way that,

1040
01:09:45.115 --> 01:09:47.175
uh, is necessary for survival.

1041
01:09:49.335 --> 01:09:54.135
I was raped when I was five. It altered the world.

1042
01:09:55.605 --> 01:10:00.215
It\'s hard to say that that can in some ways save your life.

1043
01:10:03.645 --> 01:10:07.775
What it meant was that I had to become really,

1044
01:10:08.195 --> 01:10:10.895
really focused on survival.

1045
01:10:12.155 --> 01:10:12.988
Boy,

1046
01:10:13.125 --> 01:10:16.255
It\'s hard sometimes to even think about how you become who you are,

1047
01:10:17.275 --> 01:10:20.935
but I fell into books. Ah, I fell into books like You fall into a river,

1048
01:10:21.575 --> 01:10:22.935
I would just disappear into them.

1049
01:10:22.935 --> 01:10:26.775
It was the place I could hide and literally I would hide. You know,

1050
01:10:26.775 --> 01:10:29.975
you could read stories about what working class people and poor people,

1051
01:10:30.075 --> 01:10:33.775
and they were always kind of modeling. Um, and the, they were good,

1052
01:10:33.905 --> 01:10:38.055
inherently good. We weren\'t, and I knew this,

1053
01:10:38.635 --> 01:10:41.095
we were violent, uh, angry

1054
01:10:42.695 --> 01:10:45.855
addicted to liquor and drugs and bad behavior.

1055
01:10:46.815 --> 01:10:51.455
I wanted to find the stories that were about my people and give me some sense of

1056
01:10:51.455 --> 01:10:54.655
purpose and meaning and some way to fight the shame.

1057
01:10:55.375 --> 01:10:59.215
I remember being a sophomore in college and hearing about the first, uh,

1058
01:10:59.285 --> 01:11:02.895
consciousness raising meaning, and the first, um,

1059
01:11:03.995 --> 01:11:08.375
you know, baby gatherings of lesbians and feminists.

1060
01:11:08.635 --> 01:11:10.575
It was like the world began to crack open.

1061
01:11:11.745 --> 01:11:16.165
There has never been a separation in my life between my

1062
01:11:16.605 --> 01:11:21.525
identity, not just as a lesbian, but as a particularly difficult,

1063
01:11:22.115 --> 01:11:26.405
provocative, angry, working class lesbian.

1064
01:11:27.025 --> 01:11:30.805
It was hard to be a baby writer in the early women\'s movement,

1065
01:11:30.805 --> 01:11:35.405
which was so hungry for love stories and I couldn\'t do \'em.

1066
01:11:36.315 --> 01:11:39.775
One of the things that was lifesaving for me was daughters and Diana,

1067
01:11:39.995 --> 01:11:43.015
the two founding lesbian presses that I discovered.

1068
01:11:43.285 --> 01:11:47.375
June Arnold was looking for fiction with a social conscience.

1069
01:11:47.955 --> 01:11:50.855
The other huge thing that happened was that I read, um,

1070
01:11:53.975 --> 01:11:56.655
I read Toni Morrison, the Bluest guy.

1071
01:11:58.215 --> 01:12:00.655
I didn\'t think you could write about ancestor rape,

1072
01:12:00.655 --> 01:12:01.855
particularly the rape of children.

1073
01:12:02.315 --> 01:12:06.415
And the way that she wrote about it altered me on some essential level.

1074
01:12:07.255 --> 01:12:09.215
A bunch of stuff happened in my job.

1075
01:12:09.595 --> 01:12:12.495
And one of the things that happened is they could not pay overtime.

1076
01:12:12.605 --> 01:12:13.495
They didn\'t have any money.

1077
01:12:13.755 --> 01:12:17.095
So what they did was that they set up this system of comp time.

1078
01:12:17.315 --> 01:12:20.135
And if I didn\'t use it by the end of the year, it was going away.

1079
01:12:20.595 --> 01:12:23.255
My mother didn\'t raise a child capable of giving them back that money.

1080
01:12:23.695 --> 01:12:27.775
I needed that cash or that time, and I really needed time.

1081
01:12:28.515 --> 01:12:29.855
And they gave me the two months.

1082
01:12:31.035 --> 01:12:34.215
And a friend of mine loaned me her place.

1083
01:12:34.395 --> 01:12:39.215
She had a place out on Fire Island so that I went out there in the winter,

1084
01:12:39.305 --> 01:12:43.015
which is when nobody goes to Fire Island \'cause it\'s cold as hell and you could

1085
01:12:43.275 --> 01:12:46.935
die. I wrapped up in blankets and wrote,

1086
01:12:48.975 --> 01:12:52.415
I wrote Gospel song, Which is a,

1087
01:12:52.655 --> 01:12:54.695
a long short story in trash, um,

1088
01:12:55.395 --> 01:12:58.375
and is in the center of bastard out of Carolina.

1089
01:12:59.205 --> 01:13:01.055
That has two months changed my life.

1090
01:13:01.835 --> 01:13:06.695
It made me one a better writer. And it told me,

1091
01:13:06.835 --> 01:13:09.575
you gotta think how to get more of this time thing.

1092
01:13:10.175 --> 01:13:13.495
I knew what I wanted to do and I knew that if I did it right,

1093
01:13:14.065 --> 01:13:16.895
there were gonna be very few presses that could publish it.

1094
01:13:17.315 --> 01:13:19.735
So I can\'t give this book to Nancy Baro.

1095
01:13:20.175 --> 01:13:25.135
I have got to find a way to buy a year if possible. I had a friend,

1096
01:13:25.355 --> 01:13:28.495
um, Jeff, who wanted to be a literary agent. Lemme just say,

1097
01:13:28.875 --> 01:13:31.335
if you\'re planning to hire a literary agent,

1098
01:13:31.775 --> 01:13:36.735
possibly a calm f****t is not the way to go because he didn\'t know s**t about

1099
01:13:36.735 --> 01:13:39.455
what he was doing, and he was as uncomfortable with money as I was.

1100
01:13:39.595 --> 01:13:42.295
So it was not an entirely successful venture.

1101
01:13:44.875 --> 01:13:47.695
Oh God. Um, but at the same time,

1102
01:13:47.935 --> 01:13:52.535
I published that first chapter of Bastard as a short story. Um,

1103
01:13:52.555 --> 01:13:56.295
and it was the first short story published by the Village Voice Literary

1104
01:13:56.295 --> 01:13:59.295
Supplement. In their first issue, I won some prizes,

1105
01:14:00.185 --> 01:14:01.695
which means I got some attention,

1106
01:14:01.825 --> 01:14:06.735
which meant that when he took the proposal to talk to publishers,

1107
01:14:06.915 --> 01:14:10.975
um, they offered me money. It was shocking. Already

1108
01:14:11.105 --> 01:14:14.325
In its seventh printing the book received extraordinary praise from the New York

1109
01:14:14.325 --> 01:14:16.485
Times when it was published earlier this year.

1110
01:14:16.865 --> 01:14:19.805
It is a finalist in tomorrow night\'s National Book Awards. In it,

1111
01:14:19.805 --> 01:14:23.765
Alison Chronicles a childhood of a sexually and physically abused girl named

1112
01:14:23.795 --> 01:14:26.405
Bone who dreams of being a gospel singer.

1113
01:14:26.985 --> 01:14:31.165
The novel works. It does what I wanted it to do. I want what I really want.

1114
01:14:31.235 --> 01:14:32.365
Yeah. I want somewhere,

1115
01:14:32.365 --> 01:14:37.165
some 13 year old girl to go to the library and find this book and read it and No

1116
01:14:37.165 --> 01:14:40.565
bone and know that what\'s happening to her in her life is not her fault.

1117
01:14:40.715 --> 01:14:42.365
That she does not have to think she\'s a monster.

1118
01:14:42.915 --> 01:14:47.125
Because the way I made bone is to show you young girls who think they\'re

1119
01:14:47.125 --> 01:14:49.045
monsters, who think it\'s their fault.

1120
01:14:51.035 --> 01:14:53.075
I show you a little girl getting mean enough to survive.

1121
01:14:53.135 --> 01:14:56.435
That\'s what I wanna teach. That\'s what I wanted in this book. And

1122
01:14:56.435 --> 01:14:57.268
That\'s you.

1123
01:14:57.625 --> 01:15:00.235
Yeah. Make way. And then again, there\'s also,

1124
01:15:00.515 --> 01:15:02.675
I wanted to show a working class family trash.

1125
01:15:02.675 --> 01:15:04.235
That\'s not what everybody thinks they are.

1126
01:15:07.935 --> 01:15:09.515
Leslie Feinberg\'s,

1127
01:15:09.885 --> 01:15:14.835
stone Butch Blues came out in 1993 and it

1128
01:15:14.835 --> 01:15:18.155
was groundbreaking about the complexities of,

1129
01:15:18.575 --> 01:15:23.195
of gender and what it means to be butch and what it means to be trans.

1130
01:15:24.165 --> 01:15:28.635
Every single culture on this planet, every society,

1131
01:15:28.965 --> 01:15:30.995
every continent, including the North Pole,

1132
01:15:31.295 --> 01:15:33.595
has always had a range of gender expressions.

1133
01:15:33.655 --> 01:15:38.635
No matter how gender was expressed, the oldest, oldest written and oral,

1134
01:15:38.895 --> 01:15:43.555
uh, traditions show us that sex change was once a very,

1135
01:15:44.215 --> 01:15:46.155
uh, sacred path in ancient times.

1136
01:15:46.655 --> 01:15:51.395
And Intersexuality can be found as part of the creation stories everywhere

1137
01:15:51.575 --> 01:15:53.275
of all peoples. Um,

1138
01:15:53.455 --> 01:15:57.955
but we haven\'t always been reviled and hunted and hated that there was a

1139
01:15:57.955 --> 01:16:00.395
beginning to that. And therefore there can be an end to it,

1140
01:16:00.395 --> 01:16:03.235
and we don\'t have to accept it. That bigotry,

1141
01:16:03.335 --> 01:16:07.195
any form of bigotry or racism is just a product of human nature that we just

1142
01:16:07.195 --> 01:16:11.275
have to accept. \'cause well, you can\'t, what can you do? You know? Um,

1143
01:16:11.535 --> 01:16:16.355
but I wrote Stone Butch Blues as a novel first with

1144
01:16:16.375 --> 01:16:20.195
the intention of writing transgender warriors as my kind of one,

1145
01:16:20.195 --> 01:16:22.875
one-two punch on, on transgender.

1146
01:16:22.875 --> 01:16:27.675
Because I felt that it was one thing to reach out to people\'s thinking and say,

1147
01:16:27.675 --> 01:16:30.035
look at all this information. Look at all these photos.

1148
01:16:30.615 --> 01:16:34.635
Let it shake up your thinking. But if people hadn\'t thought about it at all,

1149
01:16:34.745 --> 01:16:39.315
then I wanted to take them with a novel through the life and

1150
01:16:39.515 --> 01:16:43.955
experiences of someone who is treated completely differently based on whether

1151
01:16:43.955 --> 01:16:47.275
they\'re perceived as a masculine woman, as a feminine man,

1152
01:16:47.335 --> 01:16:50.715
as an androgynous person. And that was stone butch blues.

1153
01:16:57.595 --> 01:17:01.595
I was a very lonely kid growing up, very demeaned by my peers.

1154
01:17:01.955 --> 01:17:03.315
I was obviously queer.

1155
01:17:03.945 --> 01:17:08.355
What had saved me sort of in my childhood and helped me get through that was

1156
01:17:08.365 --> 01:17:12.285
sport. It was swimming, competitive swimming. It was basketball,

1157
01:17:12.305 --> 01:17:16.645
it was volleyball, it was things like that. When I was coming up,

1158
01:17:16.785 --> 01:17:21.445
it was illegal to be queer and to practice homosexual sex.

1159
01:17:22.455 --> 01:17:26.845
Originally I was writing, this was in the late seventies,

1160
01:17:27.175 --> 01:17:31.045
early eighties. Sure. And I was working on, um, stories

1161
01:17:32.715 --> 01:17:36.325
that were frankly, openly lesbian stories.

1162
01:17:36.325 --> 01:17:40.605
They had lesbian sex in them. They were butch femme, um,

1163
01:17:40.865 --> 01:17:44.845
at the time, which was sort of on the borderline.

1164
01:17:44.845 --> 01:17:48.845
Then it was like around the time of the sex wars.

1165
01:17:49.095 --> 01:17:53.405
There was sort of a staunchly lesbian feminist aspect to

1166
01:17:54.015 --> 01:17:56.045
overt lesbian life in the city.

1167
01:17:56.465 --> 01:18:00.245
And then there was sort of what was considered k***y, butch,

1168
01:18:00.255 --> 01:18:03.525
found bondage and dominance, that kind of thing.

1169
01:18:03.785 --> 01:18:08.605
But I like the idea of like really frank sex between women.

1170
01:18:08.705 --> 01:18:13.325
And I wanted to write about it because I was just reading too much about fruits

1171
01:18:13.345 --> 01:18:17.805
and flowers. Whenever two d***s got into bed. And I thought, you know,

1172
01:18:17.805 --> 01:18:20.445
this is not really what I want to read,

1173
01:18:20.665 --> 01:18:23.285
so I have got to write what I want to read.

1174
01:18:23.845 --> 01:18:26.245
I was 25 when I got my first novel published.

1175
01:18:26.955 --> 01:18:30.245
Several agents rejected the book. They said, well,

1176
01:18:30.245 --> 01:18:34.485
we\'re uncomfortable with the sexuality. We don\'t quite understand the sexuality.

1177
01:18:34.835 --> 01:18:39.405
It\'s lesbian sexuality, you know, what\'s not to understand. But,

1178
01:18:39.945 --> 01:18:44.645
you know, finally got it placed in a very good house, Simon and Schuster.

1179
01:18:45.165 --> 01:18:47.525
I was very lucky. I was very fortunate.

1180
01:18:47.945 --> 01:18:51.365
And actually the way it was introduced first was that a friend of mine worked at

1181
01:18:51.365 --> 01:18:55.565
Double Day at the time, and she took it in, in the slush pile,

1182
01:18:56.145 --> 01:18:58.485
put it in the slush pile, just sort of rose to the top.

1183
01:18:59.395 --> 01:19:04.325
That was kind of the weird way that I entered becoming

1184
01:19:04.565 --> 01:19:07.725
a mainstream published author.

1185
01:19:09.525 --> 01:19:13.965
I think homosexuality as sex is a profoundly revolutionary

1186
01:19:14.865 --> 01:19:19.805
and, and potentially freeing concept.

1187
01:19:21.265 --> 01:19:24.685
In reality. It\'s freeing because it leads to ecstasy.

1188
01:19:25.235 --> 01:19:28.125
When you allow yourself to be honest about your sexuality,

1189
01:19:28.265 --> 01:19:32.885
to choose partners accordingly and really fall in love leads to surrender.

1190
01:19:32.985 --> 01:19:35.405
It leads to power, it leads to ecstasy.

1191
01:19:36.625 --> 01:19:40.525
As gay artists and as gay political activists,

1192
01:19:40.555 --> 01:19:44.045
some of us people who were brave enough to live an open,

1193
01:19:44.045 --> 01:19:47.445
honest life and to bear the potential burden of,

1194
01:19:47.545 --> 01:19:51.325
of being cast out of society, of being deemed an outlaw.

1195
01:19:51.765 --> 01:19:56.765
I think that we can push the envelope more. Whether I was a,

1196
01:19:56.965 --> 01:20:01.005
a trailblazer or whether I lucked out in terms of time,

1197
01:20:01.865 --> 01:20:03.445
the time that I was in and,

1198
01:20:03.465 --> 01:20:08.085
and the ability of society to sort of wanna reach out and try something new

1199
01:20:08.285 --> 01:20:11.885
artistically at that time. There I was, I don\'t know.

1200
01:20:12.205 --> 01:20:13.405
I don\'t know how brave I was.

1201
01:20:13.565 --> 01:20:16.365
I just know that I wrote what I had to write because I really,

1202
01:20:16.845 --> 01:20:17.965
I couldn\'t write anything else.

1203
01:20:18.465 --> 01:20:23.285
And I had decided I wanted to write the stories that I wasn\'t finding to

1204
01:20:23.315 --> 01:20:24.148
read.

1205
01:20:27.085 --> 01:20:29.405
I was a journalist in my first life.

1206
01:20:29.745 --> 01:20:34.725
The lesbian mystery novels that I write feature a journalist

1207
01:20:35.065 --> 01:20:39.645
and a police lieutenant. I am from Atlanta, Georgia.

1208
01:20:39.785 --> 01:20:42.245
I\'m a fifth generation Georgian.

1209
01:20:43.045 --> 01:20:47.645
I was raised by parents who cushioned us against

1210
01:20:48.265 --> 01:20:53.085
the most stark realities of the racism of the South.

1211
01:20:53.935 --> 01:20:58.315
It was their job to shoulder it and absorb it

1212
01:20:59.065 --> 01:21:03.765
and to give us as much as black parents could give

1213
01:21:03.965 --> 01:21:08.845
children in the South in those days so that we could see a

1214
01:21:08.845 --> 01:21:10.885
way clear to move forward.

1215
01:21:11.755 --> 01:21:15.965
When I said I wanted to be a newspaper reporter, they were like, good,

1216
01:21:16.575 --> 01:21:21.245
let\'s go do that. I also am very fortunate that in the place I grew up,

1217
01:21:21.535 --> 01:21:24.005
there were role models. There were black newspapers.

1218
01:21:25.265 --> 01:21:30.085
The first lesbian book that I read was one of Catherine Forest\'s,

1219
01:21:30.235 --> 01:21:32.005
Kate Delafield. I had the flu.

1220
01:21:32.305 --> 01:21:36.085
My then partner went to the bookstore and bought an armload of books.

1221
01:21:36.505 --> 01:21:41.165
And when she came in, she said, did you know there\'s a lesbian mystery?

1222
01:21:41.425 --> 01:21:46.365
And I said, no. And then she gave me this book and I said, well, wow.

1223
01:21:47.315 --> 01:21:50.805
Lesbian mystery. Okay. She said, well, you know,

1224
01:21:50.895 --> 01:21:53.125
while you\'re laying here not doing anything,

1225
01:21:53.585 --> 01:21:57.285
you ought to write one of these things. And I said, I can\'t, I can\'t do that.

1226
01:21:57.825 --> 01:22:01.485
And she said, sure, you can. Sure you can. You read enough of them.

1227
01:22:01.625 --> 01:22:06.125
You\'ve always read them. You know what you like, you know what makes them good.

1228
01:22:06.425 --> 01:22:10.285
Of course you can. My, uh, baby brother was,

1229
01:22:10.865 --> 01:22:15.245
was dying of aids. And I told him that I was writing this book,

1230
01:22:15.265 --> 01:22:19.085
and I think I sent the first 50 pages to niaid.

1231
01:22:19.305 --> 01:22:23.205
And the last conversation that I had with him, he said,

1232
01:22:23.205 --> 01:22:28.085
have you heard anything from the people that

1233
01:22:28.085 --> 01:22:32.965
you sent the book to? And I said, I said, no, I haven\'t. And he said,

1234
01:22:32.965 --> 01:22:36.605
well, what\'s wrong with him? Uh, he, he said, tell,

1235
01:22:36.605 --> 01:22:38.725
tell him to tell him to get on it. You know,

1236
01:22:38.745 --> 01:22:43.325
get busy Dying of AIDS was not part that had not been in in his,

1237
01:22:44.145 --> 01:22:48.925
in his game plan. And, and, and so he was like, let\'s get on with it. Let\'s,

1238
01:22:48.925 --> 01:22:53.765
you know, I got stuff to do. Let\'s, let\'s move forward. And, and he died.

1239
01:22:54.485 --> 01:22:56.045
I was just totally depressed.

1240
01:22:56.205 --> 01:23:00.325
\'cause he and I were very close and I was sitting in a dark room and Diane came

1241
01:23:00.325 --> 01:23:04.405
in and she said, uh, there\'s a phone call for you. And I said, I\'m I who? I,

1242
01:23:04.485 --> 01:23:07.885
I don\'t care. Who is it? And she said, Barbara Greer. I said,

1243
01:23:07.885 --> 01:23:11.525
I don\'t know anybody named Barbara Greer and I don\'t wanna talk to her.

1244
01:23:11.525 --> 01:23:13.685
And she said, I think you do. Um,

1245
01:23:14.075 --> 01:23:18.405
it\'s the woman from Nyad Press. I said, oh, whatever.

1246
01:23:18.465 --> 01:23:22.125
So I got up and went to the phone and it was almost like, and what do you want?

1247
01:23:23.025 --> 01:23:25.925
And, and then she said, have you finished this book?

1248
01:23:27.895 --> 01:23:29.545
Yeah, well send it to me.

1249
01:23:30.805 --> 01:23:35.345
So my baby brother, bless him. So he got that done for me.

1250
01:23:39.785 --> 01:23:43.985
I went off to the Virginia Center for the Arts, which is a writer\'s colony.

1251
01:23:44.325 --> 01:23:47.025
And I was armed with these novels I loved,

1252
01:23:47.445 --> 01:23:52.305
and lots and lots of artists drawing paper. And when I got there,

1253
01:23:53.105 --> 01:23:56.465
I just put all this drawing paper up on the walls in my studio,

1254
01:23:56.845 --> 01:23:59.985
and I diagrammed a bunch of these novels that I loved.

1255
01:24:00.105 --> 01:24:02.505
I was trying to figure out, how do you build a novel? How do you do this?

1256
01:24:02.705 --> 01:24:03.335
I have no,

1257
01:24:03.335 --> 01:24:06.745
I\'ve never really sat down and figured out the architecture of a novel.

1258
01:24:07.285 --> 01:24:10.465
But what happened was when I wrote Memory Mambo,

1259
01:24:11.585 --> 01:24:16.545
I got completely seduced by the process. I,

1260
01:24:17.625 --> 01:24:22.465
I really thought I didn\'t have it in me to have that kind of sustained attention

1261
01:24:23.485 --> 01:24:27.385
on something to be that focused on a piece.

1262
01:24:28.325 --> 01:24:32.065
You know, I was used to writing journalism, which is very quick, you know,

1263
01:24:32.065 --> 01:24:35.625
relatively speaking, when I began writing, um,

1264
01:24:36.875 --> 01:24:41.585
there was still somewhat of a robust network of

1265
01:24:41.585 --> 01:24:42.465
women\'s bookstores.

1266
01:24:44.845 --> 01:24:49.785
The book industry still operated on this idea that you

1267
01:24:49.785 --> 01:24:54.305
had to go out and promote the book personally. So these tours were, uh,

1268
01:24:55.485 --> 01:24:59.105
really kind of unreal and grueling. I remember for, um,

1269
01:24:59.525 --> 01:25:04.145
we came all the way from Cuba. I had a six week tour. It was madness.

1270
01:25:04.535 --> 01:25:08.385
They put me on a train and they just like shoved me out the door.

1271
01:25:09.245 --> 01:25:12.905
And to be on those tours where you were going from one woman\'s bookstore to

1272
01:25:12.905 --> 01:25:15.745
another was also really energizing in a lot of ways.

1273
01:25:16.245 --> 01:25:21.145
You met really powerful and intense women at all these stages as

1274
01:25:21.145 --> 01:25:22.065
you were going through it.

1275
01:25:22.425 --> 01:25:26.665
I think the thing that\'s shaped my writing more than anything else is the

1276
01:25:26.665 --> 01:25:31.625
rupture caused by leaving Cuba. We were political exiles rather than immigrants.

1277
01:25:31.645 --> 01:25:32.625
You know, I think one of the,

1278
01:25:32.685 --> 01:25:36.265
the big differences between exiles and immigrants is the,

1279
01:25:36.265 --> 01:25:38.105
the question of memory. Um,

1280
01:25:38.945 --> 01:25:43.265
\'cause immigrants can go back if they, if they don\'t, it\'s a choice.

1281
01:25:44.805 --> 01:25:47.945
In my books, everybody interacts with everybody.

1282
01:25:48.725 --> 01:25:53.225
One of the things I really was always sort of annoyed with a lot of lesbian

1283
01:25:53.635 --> 01:25:58.385
early literature was that these lesbians seem to exist in some lesbian

1284
01:25:58.865 --> 01:26:01.225
parallel universe, in which they never interacted with family.

1285
01:26:01.445 --> 01:26:05.485
If they were white, they never ran into a black person. If the, you know, if,

1286
01:26:05.585 --> 01:26:09.645
if they were, and if they did it, they was their one black friend,

1287
01:26:10.665 --> 01:26:14.965
you know? Um, and, uh, you know, they,

1288
01:26:15.545 --> 01:26:18.885
if if the story was about a Chicana,

1289
01:26:18.885 --> 01:26:23.605
then all the other Latino lesbians were also Chicanos. They, you know,

1290
01:26:24.165 --> 01:26:25.485
I was like, where is this place?

1291
01:26:28.675 --> 01:26:32.205
When I started writing in the early seventies,

1292
01:26:33.105 --> 01:26:34.845
was the start of the women\'s movement.

1293
01:26:35.765 --> 01:26:39.165
I lived in a collective and I made $50 a week.

1294
01:26:39.265 --> 01:26:43.085
And that seemed like a fortune at the time. You know,

1295
01:26:43.785 --> 01:26:48.605
we all pulled our resources and we had a seven room house,

1296
01:26:48.905 --> 01:26:53.805
and the rent was $300 a month for, you know, for seven of us.

1297
01:26:54.025 --> 01:26:57.565
So it, it was easy to live and,

1298
01:26:58.825 --> 01:27:01.365
and work and dedicate yourself to the movement.

1299
01:27:02.205 --> 01:27:05.645
I published my first novel when I was 24.

1300
01:27:05.805 --> 01:27:07.245
I wrote it when I was 21.

1301
01:27:08.405 --> 01:27:11.805
I was working in the Women\'s Center in North Hampton,

1302
01:27:11.905 --> 01:27:14.245
and I saw a flyer for Daughters Inc.

1303
01:27:15.365 --> 01:27:17.805
A new publishing company that was starting up.

1304
01:27:17.945 --> 01:27:22.925
And so I sent the manuscript to them and they said, come up and see us.

1305
01:27:23.105 --> 01:27:27.605
And so I did. I went up to Vermont and visited with June and Patty,

1306
01:27:27.745 --> 01:27:31.685
who were starting Daughters Inc. They were wonderful publishers,

1307
01:27:31.705 --> 01:27:36.525
and they were the women at the beginning of the Lesbian Publishing

1308
01:27:37.245 --> 01:27:38.078
Movement.

1309
01:27:39.685 --> 01:27:42.405
A lot of women in my generation were changing their names.

1310
01:27:43.885 --> 01:27:48.805
I changed my name from my patron of Nachman to D**e

1311
01:27:48.805 --> 01:27:53.285
Woman. I figured that\'s what I was both, both a d**e and,

1312
01:27:54.025 --> 01:27:57.725
and a woman. And I wanted to signal, um,

1313
01:27:58.945 --> 01:28:03.485
my political alliance with the causes of women.

1314
01:28:04.075 --> 01:28:08.405
When I looked around in the women\'s movement in the seventies and eighties,

1315
01:28:08.765 --> 01:28:11.765
I saw that a lot, uh,

1316
01:28:12.475 --> 01:28:17.325
activists that I knew and admired were Jewish lesbians.

1317
01:28:17.825 --> 01:28:21.805
Beyond the Pale is an ancestor novel.

1318
01:28:22.875 --> 01:28:27.285
It\'s about Jewish women and lesbians from like 1860 to

1319
01:28:27.485 --> 01:28:29.245
1912 in Russian, New York.

1320
01:28:30.085 --> 01:28:34.845
I look back and I saw all of the Jewish lesbians who were part

1321
01:28:35.105 --> 01:28:38.605
of the labor movement in the early 20th century,

1322
01:28:39.885 --> 01:28:44.285
although they didn\'t use that language and made me realize how fluid the

1323
01:28:44.645 --> 01:28:46.645
language is for how we describe ourselves.

1324
01:28:47.955 --> 01:28:50.085
They certainly were women who loved women.

1325
01:28:50.345 --> 01:28:53.685
It was very clear in their letters and their, um,

1326
01:28:53.905 --> 01:28:58.005
and their fights with each other and their lines of support.

1327
01:28:58.105 --> 01:29:02.565
The scholarships that more wealthy women set up for working class women to

1328
01:29:03.045 --> 01:29:08.005
organize women workers beyond the Pale was very much concerned with

1329
01:29:08.185 --> 01:29:10.325
the history of Jewish lesbian activism.

1330
01:29:16.805 --> 01:29:21.125
I taught, starting in the sixties,

1331
01:29:23.275 --> 01:29:28.125
and I taught for 25 years in the public school system.

1332
01:29:29.105 --> 01:29:33.685
It is probably one of the most closeted professions

1333
01:29:33.775 --> 01:29:38.625
other than the clergy that you could get into in order to keep

1334
01:29:38.785 --> 01:29:42.905
a job, in order to keep teaching and coaching, which I love to do.

1335
01:29:43.385 --> 01:29:47.865
I had to keep my private life quiet. It had to be very carefully guarded.

1336
01:29:48.905 --> 01:29:51.385
I really couldn\'t afford, like, therapy, therapy.

1337
01:29:51.765 --> 01:29:55.665
So my cheap therapy was to write. So I continued to write,

1338
01:29:56.085 --> 01:29:59.945
and they turned into stories, and then they turned into, you know,

1339
01:30:00.795 --> 01:30:04.185
novel length work. I shared some of that with my partner,

1340
01:30:04.645 --> 01:30:06.665
and she was the one that just kept saying, well,

1341
01:30:06.685 --> 01:30:11.065
why don\'t you try to publish this or send it in to one of the publishers? And,

1342
01:30:11.085 --> 01:30:14.025
and I kept, no, no, no. I would\'ve had to use

1343
01:30:15.805 --> 01:30:19.445
a pen name and, and somehow keep that all silent.

1344
01:30:20.655 --> 01:30:24.065
When I finally did decide that I would go ahead and be published,

1345
01:30:24.335 --> 01:30:26.785
Barbara Greer on the other end of the phone asked me,

1346
01:30:26.845 --> 01:30:31.425
do you want to use a pen name? And I said, you know what?

1347
01:30:32.245 --> 01:30:36.745
I\'m gonna use my real name because that\'s my fist in the air to say,

1348
01:30:37.765 --> 01:30:40.785
I\'m done. I\'m done teaching. I\'m done being silent.

1349
01:30:41.925 --> 01:30:46.785
I\'m finally gonna have a voice, and it\'s gonna be my true voice. Love.

1350
01:30:46.785 --> 01:30:48.545
And The Balance was the first book I had written.

1351
01:30:49.005 --> 01:30:53.105
The book is based on real life murders of two lesbians,

1352
01:30:53.515 --> 01:30:58.505
Susan Pittman and Christine Puckett, probably 35 miles from where I live.

1353
01:30:58.965 --> 01:31:00.785
It wasn\'t being labeled as a hate crime.

1354
01:31:01.235 --> 01:31:04.105
Everything pointed to the fact that yes, it was a hate crime.

1355
01:31:04.635 --> 01:31:09.545
There were some small LGBT organizations that were just starting up right

1356
01:31:09.545 --> 01:31:11.945
around the time I was writing Love In The Balance.

1357
01:31:12.405 --> 01:31:17.225
And the reason I started writing it was that those organizations came

1358
01:31:17.255 --> 01:31:21.985
into play in trying to make sure that the man who

1359
01:31:22.045 --> 01:31:25.145
did this was justifiably arrested,

1360
01:31:25.605 --> 01:31:30.545
put on trial and convicted at that time. First of all,

1361
01:31:30.545 --> 01:31:35.105
there were very few people that were out marching for

1362
01:31:36.105 --> 01:31:40.625
anything gay. You know, you, you just didn\'t have that kind of freedom.

1363
01:31:40.885 --> 01:31:41.825
You were always worried.

1364
01:31:42.125 --> 01:31:46.825
So what I did was I tried to show how brave that was of

1365
01:31:46.895 --> 01:31:51.505
that many over 250 gays and lesbians,

1366
01:31:51.505 --> 01:31:55.865
but mostly lesbians who had always been silent,

1367
01:31:56.845 --> 01:31:58.985
had always been under the radar,

1368
01:32:00.265 --> 01:32:05.165
as invisible as they could possibly be out there marching in

1369
01:32:05.165 --> 01:32:08.885
front of God and everyone. The media was there.

1370
01:32:09.355 --> 01:32:13.565
Your bosses were gonna see you, your friends and family were gonna see you.

1371
01:32:14.705 --> 01:32:19.285
The bravery that it took for them to step up for the first time

1372
01:32:19.985 --> 01:32:24.525
in most of their lives and be out and open and protesting something

1373
01:32:25.035 --> 01:32:29.565
that had happened to their sisters. Today, we have that freedom today.

1374
01:32:29.625 --> 01:32:31.605
We march and we know we have support.

1375
01:32:32.875 --> 01:32:37.805
They didn\'t have straight men and women marching with them in the

1376
01:32:38.045 --> 01:32:39.965
nineties, and now we do.

1377
01:32:44.935 --> 01:32:48.365
While I wrote Tip in The Velvet, I hadn\'t written fiction before. I\'d,

1378
01:32:48.505 --> 01:32:51.685
I\'d just finished some academic work, um, a PhD thesis,

1379
01:32:51.855 --> 01:32:56.765
which was looking at lesbian and gay historical fiction for about the last 150

1380
01:32:56.765 --> 01:32:57.305
years.

1381
01:32:57.305 --> 01:33:01.005
And I finished it having read a lot of lesbian and gay historical novels and

1382
01:33:01.005 --> 01:33:04.885
wanting to write my own. So I wrote it pretty quickly, amazingly quickly.

1383
01:33:05.125 --> 01:33:08.045
I now think, given how it takes me several years to write a book now,

1384
01:33:08.045 --> 01:33:10.805
I wrote the first draft of Tipping the Velvet in about a year, actually,

1385
01:33:10.985 --> 01:33:15.525
and then began to try and find publishers, first of all. And then agents.

1386
01:33:15.845 --> 01:33:18.005
I was completely clueless. I didn\'t know what I was doing.

1387
01:33:18.025 --> 01:33:21.925
So I just basically sent it off to any publisher who caught my eye, you know,

1388
01:33:21.925 --> 01:33:24.845
saying, please publish this. And didn\'t get anywhere with publishers at all,

1389
01:33:24.845 --> 01:33:29.605
but got a bit more interest from agents and then found a very sympathetic

1390
01:33:29.615 --> 01:33:33.085
agent who\'s still my agent, who\'s great. And in the end, um,

1391
01:33:33.425 --> 01:33:35.885
we placed it with Virago, who is still my publisher,

1392
01:33:35.885 --> 01:33:39.725
who have a history of publishing books by women, by and for women,

1393
01:33:39.805 --> 01:33:43.245
a feminist publisher, but within a mainstream imprint.

1394
01:33:43.645 --> 01:33:46.765
I feel very affectionate towards the novel because it was through writing Tip in

1395
01:33:46.765 --> 01:33:50.005
the Bell. But that I kind of became a writer. I\'m still learning how to write.

1396
01:33:50.305 --> 01:33:54.245
It was a longer process than that, but it was, you know, I\'d never written a,

1397
01:33:54.445 --> 01:33:58.005
a long piece of fiction before. Um, and I was lit.

1398
01:33:58.125 --> 01:34:01.725
I was learning as I wrote. And I remember the excitement of, you know,

1399
01:34:01.725 --> 01:34:03.925
can I write a paragraph? Yes, I\'ve written a paragraph. You know,

1400
01:34:03.925 --> 01:34:07.045
can I write a scene? Oh my God, I\'ve written a scene. Can I write a chapter?

1401
01:34:07.105 --> 01:34:09.685
Can I put these chapters together? Oh, I\'ve written a book. You know,

1402
01:34:09.685 --> 01:34:11.965
it was amazing. It was, it was like nothing.

1403
01:34:11.965 --> 01:34:14.285
And no other novel I\'ve written since then has been so,

1404
01:34:14.745 --> 01:34:17.605
so exciting because I wrote it really for myself. You know,

1405
01:34:17.605 --> 01:34:20.005
I wrote it in a vacuum. I didn\'t have a publisher or an agent.

1406
01:34:20.705 --> 01:34:25.565
And so I wrote it purely for the passion of telling the story and

1407
01:34:25.565 --> 01:34:30.165
just wanting to write in ways that I hoped felt sort of authentic

1408
01:34:30.375 --> 01:34:32.845
about lesbian sex and, and fun.

1409
01:34:32.945 --> 01:34:37.685
And just capture the deliciousness really, of lesbian love and lesbian sex.

1410
01:34:37.955 --> 01:34:40.445
It\'s very romantic. I think it\'s a very romantic book, actually. I mean, it,

1411
01:34:40.505 --> 01:34:42.685
it got known at the time as quite a risque novel. I mean,

1412
01:34:42.685 --> 01:34:46.085
looking back at it now, it\'s not that risque. But, um,

1413
01:34:46.645 --> 01:34:51.325
I think it\'s more romantic than anything else For me, you know,

1414
01:34:51.365 --> 01:34:54.325
I couldn\'t have written my novels and I certainly couldn\'t have written Tip in

1415
01:34:54.325 --> 01:34:59.045
the Velvet without having had this kind of bedrock of lesbian and gay,

1416
01:34:59.105 --> 01:35:02.685
but mainly lesbian writing behind me. You know, I\'d, I\'d grown up as a reader.

1417
01:35:02.785 --> 01:35:06.325
I\'d always been an avid reader. And then from my late teens onwards,

1418
01:35:06.885 --> 01:35:09.805
I was a great reader of women\'s fiction, feminist fiction,

1419
01:35:09.805 --> 01:35:12.805
lesbian and gay fiction. So when I think back, you know,

1420
01:35:13.035 --> 01:35:17.925
writers like Ellen Alford, um, Jeanette Winterson,

1421
01:35:18.175 --> 01:35:23.125
Sarah Schulman, um, Allison Bechdel, Joelle Gomez, Dorothy Allison,

1422
01:35:23.265 --> 01:35:26.285
you know, they seemed very much of a, of a, of an era. Um,

1423
01:35:26.565 --> 01:35:28.365
I just kind of gobbled up all that stuff.

1424
01:35:28.645 --> 01:35:31.645
A really important early book for me was Isabelle Miller\'s patients and Sarah,

1425
01:35:32.095 --> 01:35:36.325
where she sort of goes back into the 19th century and, and reimagines this,

1426
01:35:36.325 --> 01:35:39.805
this kind of small lesbian relationship. It\'s absolutely beautifully done.

1427
01:35:39.885 --> 01:35:43.765
I love that novel. And a book I read at a similar time was, uh,

1428
01:35:43.765 --> 01:35:47.645
Lillian Faderman Surpassing the Love of Man, which absolutely blew me away.

1429
01:35:47.685 --> 01:35:49.285
I mean, I was a student when I bought it,

1430
01:35:49.305 --> 01:35:52.005
so I would\'ve been 20, 21 maybe at the most.

1431
01:35:52.585 --> 01:35:56.685
And I just hadn\'t realized that lesbianism had a history. You know, I just,

1432
01:35:56.845 --> 01:35:57.845
\'cause nobody had ever told me,

1433
01:35:57.945 --> 01:36:01.925
I\'d never seen it if I\'d seen lesbians represented on TV or in film.

1434
01:36:01.945 --> 01:36:04.885
It was very much as a modern phenomenon, you know,

1435
01:36:04.965 --> 01:36:06.765
a social problem or something like that.

1436
01:36:07.225 --> 01:36:09.765
And the idea that there had been a queer presence in the past,

1437
01:36:09.765 --> 01:36:12.245
whether we can call it lesbian, whatever we can call it,

1438
01:36:12.245 --> 01:36:15.725
whether it was romantic friendship, whether it was something trans, you know,

1439
01:36:16.115 --> 01:36:19.085
this, this queer presence going back through the centuries.

1440
01:36:19.105 --> 01:36:23.525
The idea that that was there was really important for me. And obviously,

1441
01:36:23.585 --> 01:36:25.565
you know, given that my novels have all been historical,

1442
01:36:25.715 --> 01:36:29.645
that was kind of a starting point for me. I think in lots of ways. You know,

1443
01:36:29.645 --> 01:36:34.325
I\'ve always felt as a lesbian reader and as a lesbian writer that, you know,

1444
01:36:34.325 --> 01:36:35.285
lesbian and gay stories,

1445
01:36:35.285 --> 01:36:37.965
they\'ve often been put in the dusty corner of the bookshop,

1446
01:36:37.965 --> 01:36:40.605
the dusty shelf on the library, as if they\'re very sort of niche.

1447
01:36:40.785 --> 01:36:43.645
But it\'s always seemed to me that, um, les, you know,

1448
01:36:43.645 --> 01:36:47.325
lesbian and gay stories can also just Beto big human stories.

1449
01:36:47.325 --> 01:36:51.205
They\'re just stories about love and loss and desire and betrayal and the,

1450
01:36:51.225 --> 01:36:54.685
the big meaty stories. So the fact that my, my,

1451
01:36:55.105 --> 01:36:59.965
my lesbian novels have been adapted in the mainstream is,

1452
01:37:00.025 --> 01:37:03.565
um, is pretty pleasing. You know, I feel like that\'s part of that,

1453
01:37:03.565 --> 01:37:08.445
that recognition that that queer stories have got more and more,

1454
01:37:08.755 --> 01:37:10.725
that they\'re not just niche,

1455
01:37:10.755 --> 01:37:13.405
they\'re not just niche stories with a niche interest.

1456
01:37:13.405 --> 01:37:14.845
They\'re much bigger than that too.

1457
01:37:20.105 --> 01:37:23.925
Her hair fitted her head like a little cap that had been sewn just for her by

1458
01:37:23.925 --> 01:37:28.525
some nimble fingered mil. I would say it was brown. Brown, however,

1459
01:37:28.745 --> 01:37:30.205
is too dull a word for it.

1460
01:37:30.625 --> 01:37:35.245
It was rather the kind of brown you might hear sung about a nut brown or a ruid.

1461
01:37:35.745 --> 01:37:39.645
It was almost perhaps the color of chocolate. But then chocolate has no luster.

1462
01:37:39.785 --> 01:37:42.805
And this hair shone in the blaze of the limes like titta.

1463
01:37:43.385 --> 01:37:46.125
It curled at her temple slightly and over her ears.

1464
01:37:46.545 --> 01:37:49.125
And when she turned her head a little to put her hat back on,

1465
01:37:49.565 --> 01:37:53.605
I saw a strip of pale flesh at the nape of her neck where the collar ended and

1466
01:37:53.605 --> 01:37:58.565
the hairline began. That for all the fire of the Hot, hot Hall made me shiver.

1467
01:38:17.195 --> 01:38:21.165
They try to silence, they try to scare us with thunder.

1468
01:38:25.425 --> 01:38:29.365
Sunday comes the rain. After rain

1469
01:38:30.455 --> 01:38:33.565
Comes the, from that pain,

1470
01:38:34.145 --> 01:38:34.978
Sea will

1471
01:38:35.035 --> 01:38:38.965
Grow taller than the sky and stronger than, you know,

1472
01:38:39.155 --> 01:38:39.988
Because

1473
01:38:53.535 --> 01:38:58.045
we\'re stronger. We\'re stronger.

1474
01:39:01.065 --> 01:39:04.805
So another question that we were very interested in, uh, because again,

1475
01:39:04.805 --> 01:39:07.885
we\'re going to be using some of this for, uh, the project that we\'re,

1476
01:39:07.885 --> 01:39:11.205
that we\'re doing with, uh, lesbian, uh,

1477
01:39:12.245 --> 01:39:14.685
literature legacies and lesbian literature. Um,

1478
01:39:16.755 --> 01:39:20.405
what do we want our footprint to be? Where do you,

1479
01:39:20.815 --> 01:39:24.645
where do you see us taking our writing today and in the future?

1480
01:39:24.675 --> 01:39:27.565
What do we want our footprint to be? What do we want reflected?

1481
01:39:27.905 --> 01:39:28.885
Or is that a big question.