Welcome to a home for my writings. I’m using this site to document aspects of my life. I reflect on my involvement in activism around lesbian & LGBTQ+ identities, as well as mental health awareness. For latest thoughts, follow me on Twitter or read blog postings right here.
Why Lesbian Essays?
I set up a website originally because I wanted to encourage other lesbians to write essays, articles and dissertations on lesbian subjects. That was in the late 1990s and motivations were differently earnest then. I came out as a lesbian in the late 1980s, so I grew up with too few representations and role models. Before the internet, I visited actual libraries and wandered lonely through the aisles of books in search of the slightest sign of understanding. So you can bet I was excited by the promise of world-wide connection and the do-it-yourself availability of HTML.
We are all products of our cultural history, and I want to remember the different ways I’ve attempted to be me. That’s why the full text of a number of my research writings are still available here. I wrote the earliest ones as a BA and then MA student within the English Department at Leicester University, England, 1987-1991. You’ll find that my writing interests are less academic these days.
Increasingly, over the last couple of decades, I’ve realised that how I relate to my gender and sexuality, and to the word ‘lesbian’, needn’t (and doesn’t necessarily) remain static. Identity and understanding is a process. Experience and language (and society and culture) evolve.
Everyone is welcome to find something of value in the content on this site. It’s a site for my personal interests; a home I return to (and add to) when I remember I need to remind myself who I am, and who I’m becoming.
What about Other Writings?
Most continue to be lesbian-themed. Or are explorations of identity in varied forms as I learn about myself in new ways.
An important recent (April 2021) project is A Memoir in Blackout Poetry.
Other writings include:
- conference presentations
- brief lighthearted articles
- recollections in the style of blog posts or memoir
- poetry in a variety of forms
- short prose fiction
- creative experiments in my multimedia studio
I hope these writings provide ideas and inspiration for others working to promote the visibility of lesbians in all areas of life. All I ask is that anyone who quotes from or prints these pages gives full acknowledgement and adequately references the source.