Meet Atlanta’s Lesbian Writers!

Author’s note: A previous version of the article appeared in the publication of the Atlanta Writing Resource Center, an organization that, to the best of my knowledge, is no longer in existence.

Lesbian writers have a grand tradition going back to Sappho. Indeed, literature would be impoverished beyond recognition without the contributions of gay women.

Lesbians are writing honestly about their issues and joys and are branching out into a variety of literary modes and genres. Atlanta is home to Lesbian writers who are contributing powerfully on all fronts.

María Helena Dolan is an out-of-the-closet Lesbian writer in Atlanta whose gardening column, “This Old Hoe,” appears regularly in the gay and lesbian newsmagazine Southern Voice. She used to write “Slouching Toward Lesbos,” a column for the gay entertainment magazine called etc.

Dolan says, “It is difficult to be a writer and find a venue. Most publications are male-oriented and male-owned. A lot of time they don’t recognize that they have a lesbian readership. Also, gay men often don’t realize they need lesbian input.”

How does lesbian writing differ from other women’s writing? “It is concerned with a woman herself or with women in relationship to each other,” she believes. “Self-discovery and self-actualization are more likely to be themes.”

Dolan thinks the problems for lesbian writers are “by and large the same issues women writers face. But we also have issues of homophobia. Issues around child-rearing and raising, for example, obstacles to lesbians having custody of children or adopting them, and not having our domestic partnerships taken seriously.”

Domestic partnerships are the subject of Becky Butler’s anthology, Ceremonies of the Heart: Celebrating Lesbian Unions. Like many lesbian writers, Butler looked for the book she wanted, couldn’t find it, and then filled the void. Ceremonies begins with a preface explaining that process, followed by an introduction on the history of female friendship and lesbianism, and then lets the women themselves tell their stories.

Butler does not focus narrowly on the issue of genital contact between women. Rather, her history emphasizes the importance of women in each other’s lives. The history is also, she admits, limited; after a brief overview of same-sex relationships in other cultures, she concentrates on female bonding in the West.

“Lesbian commitment ceremonies are exciting because there is no set pattern as there is with heterosexuality. Each couple decides what it will mean,” Butler explains. “Some of the partnerships in the book intend to last a lifetime. Others do not. A lot of Lesbian couples feel comfortable with the term ‘wedding’ but a lot don’t. Other words used are ‘trysts’ ‘handfasting’ and ‘holy unions.’”

As Butler notes, the women in her book “draw on a real diversity of traditions” including Judeo-Christian, Buddhist, and Native American, Wicca and New Age beliefs. “A lot of Lesbians have interwoven traditions in their ceremonies, drawing on personal history and combining different heritages,” Butler says.

Lesbian ceremonies “are not intended to create legally binding unions.” But she adds that, “there are couples who fill out legal documents to protect themselves but that is generally apart from the ceremony.”

If gay marriage is legalized, does Butler feel commitment ceremonies would be affected? “I don’t know how it would be affected if lesbians get legal recognition. I also hope that there is no assumption that lesbians would have ceremonies so they don’t become rigid. I think lesbian and gay couples who want to marry should be able to but there should be relationship recognitions without going through a wedding as it exists in heterosexual society.”

Butler doesn’t believe it is especially hard being an out lesbian in the South since there is “homophobia everywhere. I feel strongly about being out because that is the only way for us to get civil rights and diminish homophobia.”

There were no threesomes or group commitment ceremonies in her book but, she says, “Lesbians who had kids sometimes included them in the ceremony. In those cases, the ceremony was about the formation of a family. Any legal adoptions were separate from the ceremony.”

Butler has written, “as far back as I can remember. Essays, short stories, journal writing.” She hasn’t yet published prose but “wrote a short fictional film that I directed and produced while in college.” She also “co-wrote a series of ‘trigger’ films for teen-agers. Trigger films are designed to spark discussions about issues related to adolescence.”

Gay Pride is “a response to the efforts of so much of society trying to shame you,” she feels, “I hope that in the future there will be more lesbians writing openly as lesbians and an increasing sense of pride in being a lesbian.”

Butler works at a family counseling agency, “with heterosexual couples, gay men, and lesbians, any type of family.” She plans to continue both counseling and writing.

As Atlanta’s Sandy Bayer observes, Lesbian fiction in the early 1970’s, was “mostly Romance.” Today Lesbians are expanding into such traditionally “male” areas as the mystery and the spy novel.

Bayer herself is part of this trend, a mystery author currently finishing the third in her trilogy of thrillers featuring lesbian psychic Stephanie Nolan. The first book is The Crystal Curtain, the second The Crystal Cage, and the last will be called The Crystal Coffin. The Crystal Curtain was nominated for a Lambda literary award in the mystery category.

Extra-sensory perception is not just a literary device in Bayer’s case. She believes in ESP and says: “I was a professional psychic for years. People paid me to tell them things. Most psychics are disgusted with the term fortune-teller. They consider themselves psychic counselors.” However, the series is fiction and she used poetic license in creating both the heroine and her extra-sensory talents: “I never worked with the police like my heroine does. I’ve never met any psychics as good as the character and I don’t think anyone could have powers that intense.”

Finding the term “Lesbian writer” problematic, she notes, “Lawrence Block wrote several lesbian novels but he is not a ‘Lesbian writer.’ ”

Bayer didn’t start work on The Crystal Curtain “until I was close to forty.” Prior to that, she wrote for North Carolina weekly newspapers, mostly news and feature pieces. “I was never into short stories,” she says, “For me, there’s not room enough to develop character or plot in a short story.

She has a good memory for the milestones in her life as a lesbian: “I started going to gay bars in June of ‘68 in North Carolina. Self-recognition in terms of coming out was Sept 21, ‘68. There was an event in my life–taking a step over the edge. I came out to my parents shortly after that.”

She won’t elaborate on what the pivotal event was because “it’s too personal” but adds that, “I had been going to gay bars for six months before that date.”

Vividly recalling the anxiety of the closet period, she says, “You were dancing with another woman in a bar and then somebody gives a signal to stop dancing because the vice cop is here. It took a lot of years of harassment to push us into Stonewall.”

Her early “out” days were different from the present, Sandy Bayer believes, because now there is “a more aware political climate for women. Lines then were more obscure in terms of coming out. Then it revolved more around sexuality; these days more politics is involved.”

She elaborates that lesbianism was construed more narrowly in those days, “as just a sexual preference, whereas now we know it’s both a sexual and an affectional preference.”

Atlanta is a relatively hospitable environment for out lesbians, Bayer says, “because there is a large gay population and therefore more openness.”

Amanda Kyle Williams broke new ground for gay women when she published Club Twelve, the first espionage novel with a Lesbian protagonist. She is now working on the fourth book in her series about Lesbian CIA agent Madison McGuire.

A longtime spy novel fan, Williams describes the impetus for her writing: “When I was 30 years old I went up to Charis Books looking for espionage written by women. I found only a few by women and none by out Lesbians. What there was by women didn’t have the action/adventure I wanted.”

At the time, she had never written. Williams was “in the carpet business. I was Vice-President of a manufacturing company in Dalton. It just hit me that it wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I had a little money saved up but my friends thought I was crazy when I told them I was going to quit work to try and write a spy novel. But that’s what I did and the result was Club Twelve.”

The book was rejected by nine publishers. She had a chance to publish it if she compromised the novel’s premise: “One publisher said they would accept it if I made Madison either heterosexual or a man. But making Madison heterosexual would be impossible for me although her lesbianism is not always important to the story.” Finally, it was accepted by Naiad Press, a Lesbian publishing house.

There is an audience for espionage fiction in the gay women’s community, Williams is convinced, but she admits that a heroine who works for the CIA “isn’t considered politically correct by everyone.”

She says “Atlanta’s been good to me. I think it’s a wonderful place to be out.”

Unlike the novel and short story, the play is a literary form in which women did not become prominent until the middle of this century. As could be expected, openly Lesbian playwrights are an even more contemporary group.

Rebecca Ranson is a Lesbian playwright who has written The Incarceration of Annie, Desperado, Warren, Blood on Blood, and Secrets. Not all of Ranson’s own plays have lesbian themes. Desperados is about a tormented lesbian relationship,” she says, “and Secrets is about a long-term interracial lesbian relationship. But Annie is not lesbian-themed; it’s based on the experiences of a woman I know who was in prison. And Warren is about one of the first men I knew who died of AIDS.”

Ranson is also the director of SAME (Southeastern Arts, Media, and Education Project) a multi-arts organization for the gay and lesbian community. They publish the literary magazine Amethyst, put on several major visual arts shows, and do a season of five or six plays a year.

She believes SAME and other gay and lesbian oriented media are vital: “There’s a need in the gay community to have reflections of gay lives because every time you turn on the TV or go to a show you see something about heterosexuals. Also, like other cultures and groups that have experienced oppression, we often have deeper political insight.”

Today’s gay male plays and their lesbian counterparts are, as might be expected, quite different because of the specific crisis affecting gay men. “Most gay men’s plays have to do with AIDS,” Ranson remarks. “Lesbians have different issues.”

Ranson is currently working on a novel and a book of interviews with PWAs. She has found that prose demands a different perspective than playwriting: “I’m pretty new at other things. You have to think differently when you write books because theater and film are visual mediums.”

Pamela Parker is a lesbian playwright who works for Southern Fried Productions, an Atlanta theater group which puts on Southern-themed plays. “I’ve been writing plays for six years. I’ve had eight plays produced,” Parker says.

She says, “I’ve always been pretty open” about her sexuality but adds that “my plays are not gay or heterosexual; they’re written from my point of view. But if I have a straight woman character, she won’t be a stereotype, a sissy, she’ll be a strong woman.”

Parker says she “doesn’t limit her material” to gay stories because “while there’s a wide market for gay plays there’s a wider market if you don’t limit it to gays.” For example, a play of her was produced called Grass Widows. It is about divorced women cousins “but their sexuality is not an issue. The play ends with them going to bed together but the audience can make of it what they will. They could just be close cousins or they could be lovers.”

Combining music with poetry is the artistic form of Debra Hiers, a gay woman who describes herself as a “performance-oriented poet.” Hiers self-published a collection of poems titled Movin’ On and recorded “Monkey Talk,” a cassette of poetry and improvisational-style music. She is now at work on a solo performance of poetry and clarinet she will present at the Theatrical Outfit in December.

Gay visibility means “now there’s more willingness to embrace all of who we are,” Hiers believes, adding that “When I’m writing about relationships I’m not writing strictly for a gay audience because everyone can relate to relationships. But it’s wonderful that we write poems about our relationships because I think it’s validating and empowering.”

Hiers feels that Atlanta has a “very supportive atmosphere” for gay women. “We have a strong Lesbian community and a very strong women’s community centered around Charis bookstore,” she says.

Hiers belongs to a group of Atlanta Lesbian writers called The Websters that has been meeting since 1986. The Websters chose their name, she says, because “like spiders weave webs, we weave words.” Writing with courage and honesty, today’s gay women are indeed weaving a tapestry of extraordinarily diverse patterns.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 11th, 2008 at 4:45 am and is filed under Culture, Education, Entertainment, Media, Psychology, Society, Vox Populi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. | 192 views | Trackback | Print this page |

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