LFW 
Every year, somebody has to read hundreds of erotic stories and pick the best ones. It sounds like a dream job, and it’s harder than it looks. For Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year, Volume 3, that somebody was Sacchi Green. Cleis Press published the volume in 2018. It’s part of a long-running tradition. The … Read more
Before we get to the book, a quick history lesson. In the late 1970s and through the 1980s, feminists fought a long, bitter argument that came to be known as the sex wars. On one side were activists who saw pornography, and much of sexuality as it was then practised, as a tool of male … Read more
Amber L. Hollibaugh, the American lesbian activist, organizer, filmmaker and writer best known for her essay collection My Dangerous Desires, died on October 20, 2023. Hollibaugh was born on June 20, 1946, in Bakersfield, California, to working-class parents of Irish and Romani descent. She left home as a teenager, worked as a sex worker and … Read more
Every December, a certain kind of movie takes over the streaming services. A woman with a big-city career problem, a small town or snowy cabin, a fake relationship, a family that’s a little too nosy, and a kiss under the mistletoe right before the credits roll. For decades the couples in those movies were straight. … Read more
Maureen Seaton, the lesbian poet and memoirist whose books include the Lambda Literary Award winners Furious Cooking and Sex Talks to Girls, died on August 26, 2023. Born on October 20, 1947, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Seaton earned an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College in 1996. In Chicago she taught poetry as artist-in-residence … Read more
Minnie Bruce Pratt, the American poet, essayist and activist best known for the poetry collection Crime Against Nature, died on July 2, 2023. Born on September 12, 1946, in Selma, Alabama, Pratt grew up in nearby Centreville. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Alabama in 1968 and a Ph.D. in English from … Read more
Anita Cornwell, the Philadelphia journalist and essayist who published the first collection of essays by an out Black lesbian, Black Lesbian in White America, died on May 27, 2023. Born September 23, 1923, in Greenwood, South Carolina, Cornwell moved to Philadelphia and studied journalism at Temple University, graduating in 1948. She worked as a journalist … Read more
You’ve probably seen the movie. In 1991, Fried Green Tomatoes became a surprise hit, with Kathy Bates as a frustrated housewife, Jessica Tandy as the storyteller in the nursing home, and Mary Stuart Masterson and Mary-Louise Parker as Idgie and Ruth, the two women at the heart of the story. People still quote it. Some … Read more
Dolores Klaich, the American journalist and author best known for the 1974 social history Woman Plus Woman: Attitudes Toward Lesbianism, died on March 8, 2023. Born on August 9, 1936, in Cleveland, Ohio, to Jacob Klaich, an organizer for the Socialist Labor Party, she graduated from Case Western Reserve University in 1958. She worked as … Read more
If Tipping the Velvet is Sarah Waters throwing a party, Affinity is Sarah Waters turning off the lights and telling a ghost story. The /books entry, quoting a review by Kerry Fried, makes the comparison directly. Waters’s debut was a lesbian romp with a utopian socialist streak. Her second novel, first published in 1999, is … Read more