Month: June 2012

Link Round Up: June 19-26

Posted on by

      

The Advocate posted Disney Dykes and Bourbon Street Boys: Authors Lisa Girolami and Greg Herren.

AfterEllen posted

Autostraddle posted Queering The Library: Collecting Downtown, Riot Grrrl, Feminism & You.

Bella Books posted

      

Bold Strokes Books posted Shower Scenes.

Elisa posted

Lambda Literary posted

      

lesbian meets books nyc by Where are all the new lesbian writers?

LGBT@NYPL posted Pride! Book Suggestions for Teens.

Out On the Shelves Library posted Jeanette Winterson on Tapestry and New Titles Out on Our Shelves!

The Outer Alliance posted Outer Alliance Podcast #21: The “Heteronormativity in YA Dystopians” panel from WisCon 36.

Readings In Lesbian and Bisexual Women’s Fiction posted

      

“Queering SFF – Pride Month Extravaganza: Spotlight on James Tiptree, Jr. / Alice Sheldon” was posted at TOR.

“Queering SFF – Pride Month Extravaganza: Here, We Cross Edited by Rose Lemberg” was posted at TOR.

“LGBT families denied chance to address board on restricted lesbian book” was posted at The Salt Lake Tribune.

“ACLU seeks records limiting access to lesbian book” was posted at Daily Herald.

“From This Day Forward: Marriage in Gay and Lesbian Fiction” was posted at The New York Times.

      

Kiki Archer was interviewed at Epiphany.

Sarah Diemer (aka Elora Bishop) posted Once Upon a Lesbian, Or: On the Reclaiming of Fairy Tales and Sparkle Announcement: THE DARK WIFE Wins the Golden Crown Literary Award for Speculative Fiction!

Eloise Healy posted “Three Things This Editor Thinks About” at Metre Maids.

Jae posted Goldie Awards 2012.

Malinda Lo posted YA Pride: 2012 LGBT YA Books, July-September and YA Pride: 2012 LGBT YA by the numbers.

Catherine Lundoff posted Yet more stuff coming up and Saturday catch-up post.

Bett Norris posted Marianne K. Martin, a Winner.

      

Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel was reviewed at LGBTQ Recs Month.

In Another Place, Not Here by Dionne Brand was reviewed by Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian.

Identity by Nat Burns was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

One in Every Crowd by Ivan E. Coyote was reviewed at Quill & Quire.

Chicago Whispers: A History of LGBT Chicago Before Stonewall by St. Sukie de la Croix was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg was reviewed at Novels About Queer People.

Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson was reviewed by Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian.

Bottle Rocket Hearts by Zoe Whittall was reviewed by Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian.

Also, at the Lesbrary’s tumblr account, I posted a list of book blogs to follow. Those are some of my favourites. But if you’re curious to see how the Link Round Ups are made, here is the full list of blogs and Google Alerts I sift through to get these links.

As always, more reviews can be seen linked on the Lesbrary’s twitter account.

Allysse reviews Sapphistires: A global history of love between women by Leila J. Rupp

Posted on by

Sapphistires: A global history of love between women

By Leila J. Rupp

Sapphistires: A global history of love between women is a non-fiction book that aims to take the reader through the history of love between woman from all era and all places. Leila J. Rupp succeeds quite well in doing that. Her perspective is truly global as all part of the world are mentioned at some point in the book. I found this book to be a good introduction to this topic. I barely knew anything about it, especially about what happened/is happening outside of the western world and I found the book to give a good overview of things.

As you can imagine there is not a great deal of written information about love between woman in the past, but it didn’t stop the author from mentioning all eras. When there are no historical evidences she uses myths, legends, and stories to tell what might have been. I like the use of those stories to illustrate possible past. Of course, for an academic book it isn’t very well regarded to have no proof of what is said, but the author does make it clear that she uses myths, legends, and stories as a guiding point and that it is not necessarily the truth, just one possibility of truth.

The title is made vague on purpose. The author tries to include as many sort of relationships as possible and not label any of them. The chapter about naming and labeling was in that regard extremely interesting. The author tries to tell a story of love/desire/sex for other woman in whatever form possible. She uses women in a biological term. I did think that for a few cases she mentioned it might have been a story of transexuals but history doesn’t give us the luxury to know how people identified themselves at the time. They didn’t have the plethora of labels we had and very rarely left any evidence of how they felt. The author did address this question in the book.

Overall I really enjoyed reading this book. The writing was easy to read and comprehend and the text flowed easily. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in getting a general introduction to love/desire/sex between women.

Danika reviews The Mere Future by Sarah Schulman

Posted on by

This was a puzzling book to me. The Mere Future takes place “In the future, when things are slightly better because there has been a big change.” I was expecting a dystopia, but I finished the book still not certain whether things were, in fact, slightly better. “The big change” is a political one, involving housing costs plummeting (eliminating homelessness) and a ban of chain stores and public advertising in New York. Also, the “Media Hub” provides almost all employment.

The characters, however, seem to be sacrificed to the satire. The main characters are unlikeable and self-obsessed. Their relationship is dysfunctional to say the least. This isn’t inherently bad, but I didn’t feel any personal investment in them or their relationship. They seemed to just be vehicles for information about the reality of the “big change”.

The plot also seems to be secondary to the message. Not much seems to happen in the first two-thirds of the book, other than revealing the consequences of the “big change” (which is fine, because it’s a small book and there’s enough there to pull it along), but then suddenly there’s a murder and trial involving side characters. It seemed sudden. I suspect it was to emphasize the downsides of this “big change”, but to me the consequences didn’t seem to naturally follow.

This isn’t a bad book by any means. It’s written well, and it’s definitely clever. I spent most of the book feeling like it was going over my head. And although I wasn’t into the “dystopic” (or utopic) elements to begin with, they stuck with me. I found myself thinking about them after I finished the book, and discussing them with other people. I’m still debating the merits of the “big change”, and it’s a change from the usual dystopias I’ve read, which are unequivocally bad.

This is the first Sarah Schulman book I’ve read, and I definitely plan to read more, but this one isn’t a perfect fit for me. I definitely think there are lots of readers who would really enjoy it, however, especially if you’re looking for an intellectual read.

As a side note, the main characters are a lesbian couple (of course, that’s why I’m reviewing it!), but as I said to my partner while reading it “You don’t really want them on our team…”

Guest Post and ebook Giveaway by Prologue Books: Interview with Marijane Meaker

Posted on by

1. What are the origins of the Vin Packer name?

I was having lunch with a man named Vincent and a woman whose last name was Packer. I told them I’d just become a Literary Agent after trying in vain to get one. I had printed stationery with Marijane Meaker, Literary Agent on it and all my clients would be me under various pseudonyms.  My first pseudonym would be Vin Packer. And so it was.


2. How did you come to write your first Vin Packer novel, Spring Fire?

I went to a Southern boarding school where many of the girls and some teachers, too, were gay. This was during WWII and there were no men around, none allowed on that campus anyway. I told Dick Carroll, publisher of Gold Medal Books, that I’d like to write a novel about it. He said there were two things I couldn’t do because of the strict postal censors. I could not set it in a boarding school because girls would be underage, and I couldn’t have a happy ending because that seemed as though author accepted homosexuality as normal.


3. How was it received by the Gold Medal publisher, and were you surprised by its pioneering success?

I was amazed by the success of Spring Fire. So were the Fawcett Brothers. Roger Fawcett invited me to the penthouse for a drink.  He announced that “we’d” outsold the paperback edition of God’s Little Acre.  He poured water for all our drinks from a special thermos he had made with a tiny penis as the spout. I didn’t even tell my parents about the book the cover was so gaudy, nevermind the subject matter.

4. What was it like to work for Gold Medal back in the Fifties?

It was fun working for Gold Medal because Dick Carroll who was in charge was a joke-telling, scotch-drinking Irishman. He’d been working in Hollywood and he was filled with ideas for books he thought would make good movies and we met often at The Algonquin Hotel, next door to Fawcett. He loved talking book ideas. He was always missing his train to Connecticut and he had an eye for the pretty secretaries who stopped in the Blue Bar, and nursed one drink for hours.


5. Can you give us an idea of what inspired some of your early works like Dark Don’t Catch Me, Young and Violent, The Twisted Ones and Come Destroy Me?

Dark Don’t Catch Me was inspired by the Emmett Till murder. The Young and Violent was written when gang wars were in the news and up the street from me was Spanish Harlem where you’d see gang members strutting around in their leather jackets. I don’t remember how I came to write The Twisted Ones or what inspired it, but Come Destroy Me was written with an actress named Geraldine Page in mind. Again, Dick with his interest in movies, had taken me to a play she was starring in.  Of course I never met her and although I sent her a copy of the book, there was no reply from her. BUT, that book got me my first review in The New York Times Sunday Mystery Column, written by Anthony Boucher. He’d never reviewed paperbacks, so the book also established a rapport between Boucher and me. I vowed I’d write mysteries from then on, because it was the only place I got reviewed.


6. Tell us a little about the background for The Evil Friendship. Did you change the details much when you wrote the book?

Soon after I received a New York Times review from Anthony Boucher, I began an interest in crime and hit upon a matricide, the Fraden/Wepman case. Two boys murdered the mother of one hoping to have a homosexual life minus her criticism, plus her money. They were convicted of murder. I recreated this in a book Gold Medal called Whisper His Sin.  It was well reviewed by Boucher and soon after he sent me the court records of a New Zealand trial, two schoolgirls had murdered the mother of one fearing she would move the family away and they would be parted. This was the Parker/Hulme case, and again the guilty ones were convicted of murder. Many many years later when a movie called Heavenly Creatures was  released (based on the same case) it was revealed that Juliet Hume, after her release from prison, grew up to be the famous mystery writer Anne Perry…My book about them became The Evil Friendship.


7. Which of your Vin Packer books besides Spring Fire sold the best? Did one subject seem to work better than another?

Both books about homosexuality sold well.  The postal censors had made any public interest in the subject very difficult, but in the mid-fifties this was canceled.  The books that existed, like my two matricides and Spring Fire were good sellers.


8. Which are your personal favorite Vin Packer novels?

My personal favorites of my Packer books was probably The Damnation of Adam Blessing, with Intimate Victims second.


9. What made you decide to retire the Vin Packer name and start writing under your real name of Marijane Meaker? Was Game of Survival intended to be a break from the Packer name?

After Dick Carroll died in the 60’s, Knox Burger took his place. We didn’t get along, so I remembered an NAL editor who’d always said he’d like to work with me one day. I decided to leave Fawcett and the Packer name. I was moving into hardcover.  I used my own name but Game of Survival was not really my idea.  For some reason my new editor wanted this book done about people trapped in an elevator.  I made a big mistake telling him I’d do it.  I decided to use the Meaker name because Doubleday had recently bought a book I’d written (under my own name) about famous suicides. It was called Sudden Endings by M.J. Meaker. It did all right for Doubleday but Game of Survival was a dud…During this period I was trying to move to hardcover but it did not pay as well as soft cover and I could not find an editor I thought I could work with…Meanwhile I met Louise Fitzhugh who was just starting to write a children’s book for Harper&Row.  She said I should try one because I so often used youngsters in my stories. She also said I should meet Ursula Nordstrom, her editor…I met Ursula. We clicked. I decided to try writing for kids, particularly after reading Paul Zindel’s Pigman.  I took the new pseudonym M.E. Kerr, fashioning it from my own last name. I loved writing for kids, still do.


10. With Scott Free you brought the Vin Packer name back for the first time in 40 years. What made you decide to resurrect it?

I did Scott Free under both names; both were on the cover.  I had already launched Kerr and I was toying with the idea of having a series starring a transsexual detective. I wasn’t sure what name to use and somehow I decided to use both Meaker & Packer.  I don’t remember my reasoning for that, but I very much enjoyed writing my first series book, Scott Free. Then the publisher folded.  I still want to do the series.

11. In 1972 you introduced the publishing world to a new pseudonym, M. E. Kerr, and began writing young adult novels. What inspired you to write the Fell Trilogy and how do you feel it differs from the Packer books?

I felt series were going to be featured in YA books and Fell was one of the early series. I was right that YA would take to series, but I think Fell was a little too sophisticated for that age.  I never figured out why it didn’t take off but my editor told me the books were not “falling” off the shelves.  I stopped writing Fell after the third one.  I still like the idea of Fell. I lived next door to a policeman for awhile and remembered lots he told me, but I sensed that I wasn’t reaching kids because there was very little mail from them, regular or e, and reluctantly I abandoned Fell. I think the books were certainly in the Packer spirit but Packer had more opportunities since her characters could be adult and do and think adult things…I really don’t know why Fell didn’t click with the young.  They were moving into fantasy then.  I like writing fantasy–have done many short stories–but never tried a fantasy novel.

———

Prologue Books is re-releasing in ebook format best selling pulp fiction that has previously been out of print. In anticipation of Gay Pride Month, and in celebration of one of our most esteemed authors, we’re giving away The Evil Friendship by iconic lesbian pulp fiction author Vin Packer (nee Marijane Meaker) for a week on Amazon and with other ebook vendors (June 24 – 30).

Download The Evil Friendship at Amazon, BN.com, or Kobo.

Link Round Up

Posted on by

      

AfterEllen posted

Autostraddle posted Trials and Titillation in Toronto: A Virtual Tour of the Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives and The Very Lesbian Life of Miss Anne Lister.

Bella Books posted Goldie Awards Night – Congratulations to Spinsters Ink and Bella Books Authors!

      

Elisa posted

GLBT Promo Blog posted New Releases from JMS Books LLC!

Good Lesbian Books posted Official Temporary Hiatus and Not Currently Taking Requests and their forum.

      

Lambda Literary posted

Lesbilicious posted The trouble with lesbian literature and other tales… My reply, still (curiously) in moderation, can be read at the FYLesLit tumblr.

The Outer Alliance posted Carion and Clarion West Write-a-thons.

      

Piercing Fiction posted 2012 Golden Crown Literary Society Award Winners.

Queer Women of Color Media posted Written on the Body: Celebrating Samar Habib’s Contributions to Queer Muslim Women Visibility in the Middle East.

Shelly’s LGBT Book Review Blog posted Updates to the Top 10 Gay and Lesbian Fiction for the Kindle.

Sistahs On the Shelf posted a bunch of new reviews!

      

“‘Out’ in Paperback: The Top 10 LGBT Books for Summer” was posted at GayNow.

“Five [Lesbian] Novels We’d Love to See Made Into Movies” was posted at SheWired.

“Kenyan Lesbian Romantic Novel Short Of Winning Award” was posted at Identity Kenya.

“Words for What We Feel” (on writing about “homosexuals” before the term “homosexual” existed) was posted at This Is So Gay.

      

“Interview with Harmony Ink – Publisher of Positive LGBT YA Fiction” was posted at YAM Magazine.

“Queering SFF — Pride Month Extravaganza: The Bending the Landscape Series” was posted at TOR.

“Lady Lovers: Batwoman & Sune Get Frisky In ‘Batwoman #10′” was reviewed at New Now Next.

“In Which Sarah Waters Teaches Me That There Doesn’t Need To Be a Beginning or an End.” was posted at To Light, Life, and the Literary.

      

Clare Ashton posted Where are the new UK lesbian authors? and Your influences are showing….

Alison Bechdel was written about at the Advocate.

R. E. Bradshaw posted The Oklahoma Spirit.

Emily M. Danforth talked about Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown on NPR.

Malinda Lo posted

     

D. Jackson Leigh posted Small towns, secrets, and shaded tobacco at Bold Strokes Books Authors Blog.

Catherine Lundoff posted Golden Crown Literary Con write-up.

Andi Marquette posted

Susan Stinson was interviewed at Mass Live.

      

Pennance by Clare Ashton was reviewed by Gabriella West.

The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue was reviewed at silencing the bell.

My Sister Chaos by Lara Fergus was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Tangles: A Story about Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me by Sarah Leavitt was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction edited by Brit Mandelo was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Kill Me by Alex Owens was reviewed at Bending the Bookshelf.

Keeping You a Secret by Julie Anne Peters was reviewed at Aine’s Realm.

A Kiss Before Dawn by Laurie Salzler was reviewed by Clare Ashton.

Time of Grace by Gabriella West was reviewed at The LL Book Review.

Danika reviews Seasons Change by Jennifer A. Lightburn

Posted on by

I have read quite a few self-published books for the Lesbrary now, and the majority of the time I come back to one point: editing. Some authors do self-publishing well and put in the time to have their work edited thoroughly (I haven’t had any issues with Sarah Diemer’s editing, for instance), but a lot of the authors I’ve read do not, and it really detracts from the book.

Seasons Change needed a lot of editing. It’s not that the premise is bad; I was looking forward to the plot, which is different from the standard lesbian romance storylines. Seasons Change is about Annette, a woman who is coming out of an abusive relationship, fighting her ex for custody rights, and trying to sort out her relationship with her lifelong best friend, Monica. It focuses on an interracial relationship and has a bisexual main character. It’s a nice change from the more commonly published white lesbian romances. Their relationship has an interesting dynamic, and I enjoyed the amount of backstory and subplots introduced. There is definitely the material in Seasons Change for an interesting book, but as it is, it reads like a rough draft.

The most significant problem in Seasons Change was the constant typos. Typos like “flee market” and “she peaked out the window” appear constantly, sometimes two to a page. “Wave”, for instance, is spelled “waive” throughout the book. More than once I had to put down the book after reading such a terrible typo. One was at “he tied the towel around his waste” (sadly, not the first time I’ve seen that typo in the book. The other time was Fireflies by Lacey Reah). Another was in response to this: “He thought if the government gave the green light to freedom of sexuality and the acknowledgement of same-sex union, people would request the right to marry their pets, and the country would become a nation of half-bread animal lovers.” (bold mine, italics hers)

There were some other problems editing could have helped with, too: some awkward sentences, odd pacing, and an ending that seemed too neat. But those would have been a lot more bearable if the typos had been fixed. Near the end of the book, it talks about sodomy laws making “homophobic activity” illegal, which is pretty much the opposite of what was meant.

I think this was a story worth telling, and to be honest, I always feel bad writing bad reviews. But I always come back to the same thought: I’m not reading anyone’s diaries. I think that if you are publishing a book and putting it into the world, you have a responsibility to live up to a certain standard. And I just don’t think this story was ready for print yet.

Casey reviews Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel

Posted on by

Alison Bechdel’s second graphic memoir Are You My Mother? (2012) certainly has an huge mountain of success to live up to: unbeknownst to Bechdel herself and all her leftist, alternative lesbian Dykes to Watch Out For fans, her first memoir Fun Home (2006) became a best-seller, was named Time magazine’s number one book of the year, and was deemed a best book of 2006 by a ton of other prestigious—and, significantly, non-queer—publications like The New York Times.  I absolutely loved Fun Home in all its neurotic glory, literary nerdiness, and heartbreaking exploration of the connections between Bechdel’s queer sexuality and her father’s—latent and closeted as it was.  I thus had high expectations for Are You My Mother?, which I’m sad to say weren’t exactly met, although perhaps that was inevitable.  Like Fun Home, Bechdel’s new book is an examination of her relationship with a parent, this time her mother.  Bechdel’s mother is certainly a worthy character to study: eccentric, artistic, complex, and troubled in many of the same ways Bechdel’s father was.  Are You My Mother?, however, doesn’t have the same urgency as Fun Home because it lacks anything close to the burning question that preoccupies Bechdel’s first memoir: is Bechdel’s coming out as a lesbian causally related to her father’s (assumed) suicide just four months later?  This isn’t to say that Bechdel doesn’t explore some intellectually fascinating questions about the nature of the mother-daughter relationship in this book, such as the kinds of misogyny that mothers inherit from their own mothers and pass onto their children.  In a heartbreaking scene, Bechdel’s mother Helen tells her that the main thing she learnt from her own mother was “that boys are more important than girls”; Helen admits freely that she carried on this pattern of favouring male children, to the obvious detriment of her daughter.

Are You My Mother? follows a circular pattern, as did Bechdel’s first memoir: each section begins with a recounting of an important dream, then meanders through a dizzying narrative moving back and forth in time, recalling different eras of Bechdel’s life, doing close readings of psychoanalytic texts and thinkers, and returning to previously examined scenes and thoughts.  The incidents of her life that she chooses to focus on are, obviously, often momentous—at least in psychological terms—events with her mother from her childhood as well as adulthood: one telling such scene is when Helen abruptly tells her daughter, at age seven, that she is “too old to be kissed goodnight anymore.”  Here and in other scenes Bechdel expertly captures the rawness and immediacy of childhood emotional injury: when her mother leaves her tucked in bed with a mere “goodnight” Alison feels as if her mother has “slapped her.”  The drawing shows Alison shocked and still tucked in her bed with wide open eyes; a thick line of wall divides the two and her mother’s back faces the reader as she walks away.  The black and white, red-accented drawings here and everywhere in the memoir are truly exquisite.  They’re beautifully expressive, and do a fantastic job of illustrating a narrative that is largely an introspective, inward journey.

Other than her relationship with her mother, the other theme around which Are You My Mother? revolves is Bechdel’s therapy sessions, linked to her obsession with psychoanalysis.  Again like Fun Home, this memoir is a highly allusive text: instead of the literary references, like the Icarus and Daedalus myth, however, we have psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott’s works.  I have to say I agree with Danika’s review that I simply didn’t enjoy these allusions as much as the ones in Fun Home.  I’m a huge fan of Bechdel’s work and have taken graduate-level courses in psychoanalytic theory and literary and queer theory, but some of the psychoanalytic discussion took a fair amount of concentration for me to follow.  Moreover, I found a significant part of it simply not that interesting.  A student of psychoanalysis would have a field day with this memoir, as will English and Women’s Studies professors.  I’m not sure, however, how much fans of Dykes to Watch Out For and Fun Home, or queer women readers in general, will really enjoy the psychoanalysis and the concentration on Bechdel’s therapy sessions.  I found myself feeling impatient with the amount of the book that focused on these topics.  Maybe I’m not a child of the 80s enough to sympathize with the impulse for obsessive and life-long therapy (I’m reminded of a Dykes to Watch Out For strip where Sydney tells Mo “I know it’s so 80s, but you have considered therapy?”).  I wanted to know more about Bechdel’s “serially monogamous” adult relationships and more about her mother as an individual; Bechdel seems to have made peace with Helen, reconciling herself to the person her mother is by cathartic means of the book, but I left the memoir still unsure as to what exactly made Helen the woman  she was (and is).  Ironically, Bechdel dedicates the book to her mother, “who knows who she is.”  Maybe this dedication means that Bechdel had to let go of any desire she had to know who her mother is, something that readers have to relinquish as well. Cathy Camper at the Lambda Literary site seems to feel left without answers by the memoir as well.  Despite my mixed feelings about Are You My Mother?, I would still recommend it to readers who like Bechdel’s other work; I would just advise them to put on as much of an academic, intellectual lens as they have available to them when they pick it up.

Anna K. reviews Wildthorn by Jane Eagland

Posted on by

With 19th-century British asylum scenes reminiscent of Sarah Waters’s Fingersmith, Eagland’s YA novel, Wildthorn, is in turns suspenseful, sad, and romantic. Louisa Cosgrove is sent by her brother to the home of a wealthy family to be a companion for another young lady. But instead of a cushy manor, she finds herself left at Wildthorn Hall, an asylum for the insane, and is told that her name is not Louisa Cosgrove but Lucy Childs.

However, in childhood flashbacks portraying Louisa’s stuffy, well-mannered mother; kind, physician father; and indulgent aunt, readers begin to trust in the narrator’s sanity.

The majority of the book takes place in the asylum. Accurately reflecting Louisa’s suspension from real life and lack of connection to the outside world, these scenes can grow tiresome. Readers will be with Louisa throughout as she tries to figure out how she ended up in her current situation–betrayal, mistaken identity, or did someone find out about her “unnatural” attraction to her cousin Grace.

But it is Louisa’s love for another woman that provides a more significant arc in the novel. She develops a warm, slow, wholly natural love with a nurse at the asylum, and their sweet romance is easy to identify with.

As a young adult novel, the plot-centric nature of the book and its somewhat stereotypical tropes–a tomboyish girl in 19th-century Essex wants to be a doctor and rebels against social customs and her mother’s guidance–are to be expected. With a satisfying love story and a likable, smart protagonist, this is an enjoyable read for fans of YA.

Link Round Ups

Posted on by

      

AfterEllen posted Queer literary stars have their night on the red carpet for the Lambda Literary Awards.

Arsenal Pulp Press posted Literary Press Group of Canada funding derailed.

Autostraddle posted

Bella Books posted

Bibrary Book Lust posted Waiting on Wednesday – She Shifters edited by Delilah Devlin and GUEST POST & GIVEAWAY: Going Girl-on-Girl for the First Time with Bonnie Bliss.

Elisa posted

GLBT Promo Blog posted an excerpt from Charmed in the Big Easy by Delilah Devlin and Paisley Smith.

Kool Queer Lit posted Female Vampires Rule!

Lambda Literary posted Glitterbomb: Poetry Wilds Out (June 16, Ohio) and Transit of Venus: A Personal (Queer) Tribute to Ray Bradbury.

      

lesbian meets books nyc posted Mothers and Power: Winterson, Bechdel, and More.

Lez Books posted about critical reviews, Andi Marquette, and the “bad boy” trope in lesbian fiction.

Queer Women of Color Media Wire posted AMPLIFY: Black Girl Dangerous Offering Writing Workshops to Queer and Trans POC.

The Rainbow Project posted 2013 Nominations: 8 New Titles!

Sapphist Gazetteer posted The Wounded Butch.

Shelly’s LGBT Book Review Blog posted Top 10 in Gay and Lesbian Fiction for the Kindle – June 9th, 2012.

Women and Words posted Wanna Get Married? and Submission links.

“Lambda Literary Awards Strike A Celebratory Note” was posted at Velvet Roper.

“‘In Our Mothers’ House,’ Book About Lesbian Family, Restricted By Utah School District” was posted at Huffington Post.

“Discover the Winners of the Lambda Literary Awards” was posted at Advocate.

“Butch Fatale, Dyke Dick: Book 2 – The Big Sister” has a Kickstarter page.

“Celebrating YA Pride: June 22-July 19” was posted at Hooked On Books.

“Preserving History” (The Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives (ALGA)) was posted at Gay News Network.

      

Sarah Diemer (aka Elora Bishop) posted Release Day: Sappho’s Fables, Volume 1: Three Lesbian Fairy Tale Novellas (The First Volume in the Sappho’s Fables Series!).

Nicola Griffith posted The gentrification of lesbian fiction.

Malinda Lo posted YA Pride: 2012 LGBT YA Books, January-March and Huntress is now in paperback!

Catherine Lundoff posted My 4th Street Fantasy Schedule and Lesbian shapeshifters and werecreatures.

Sarah Waters was interviewed at Diva.

Jeanette Winterson was posted about at Sapphist Gazetteer and Integral Options Cafe.

      

Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama by Alison Bechdel was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Noctilucent by Melissa Buckheit was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue was reviewed at Spanglish in Lesbilandia.

Kiss the Morning Star by Elissa Janine Hoole was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Time of Grace by Gabriella West was reviewed at The LL Book Review.

Wild Dogs by Helen Humphrey was reviewed by Caroline Wilkinson.

Ill Will by JM Redmann was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Everything Pales in Comparison by Rebecca Swartz was reviewed at The Rainbow Reader.

Review of Boys Like Her by Taste This was reviewed by Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian.

Mfred Reviews Fearful Symmetry by Tash Fairbanks

Posted on by

This review is the result of one of those serendipitous fishing expeditions on Paperbackswap.com.  I found Tash Fairbanks’ Fearful Symmetry completely by chance.  It is an enjoyable, engrossing read.  Unfortunately, I can’t find any other fiction novels from this author.

A coastal town in England is in the grips of hysteria– a teenager claims to find a fetus with the head of a goat and body of a human in the woods near the genetic lab.  A reporter looking to get back at her scientist mother writes incendiary, shocking articles making barely factual claims against her mother’s genetics lab and the local women’s clinic.  A day or two later, a local disabled girl is found murdered on the lab’s grounds.   The town church immediately begins rallying against the obvious satanic influence of liberals and feminists, things are made worse when scientists at the lab claim they are actually trying to find and cure the gene for homosexuality.  Sam Carter, private investigator (and recent returnee to sobriety after a bad breakup), is asked by the murdered girl’s mother to investigate.

It’s a lengthy read, divided into short chapters that tend to focus on just one or two characters at a time.  Sam Carter is the central element to the novel, but does not necessarily get the most page time.  Fairbanks surrounds her with characters just as well-developed and fleshed out, that each own part of the mystery and are important to its denouement.

For being over 20 years old, the story is fairly fresh and vivid.  The power of shock journalism, the infighting between different social progressive groups (factions within factions of lesbians, feminists, disability rights groups, etc.), the religious hysteria and manipulation; all of it was very familiar to me as a modern reader.  Refreshingly, when characters discuss these social issues, it didn’t read as dry or boring exposition, it felt organic to the conversation and plot.

Overall, I thought this was a great mystery novel, and was disappointed to learn that I won’t be able to read the further adventures of Sam Carter.