I can’t remember not loving books. From earliest childhood, I craved picture books and their glimpses into other worlds. After learning to read, I dove headfirst into the reality the author served up, and I stayed beyond the final word, closing my eyes and daydreaming, extending the story.
When I landed in university, I majored in English Literature. It kept me in a steady but daunting pile of novels that I had to read, although it usually wasn’t a chore. Still. Some of them were…challenging.
Around that same time, Olivia Records was in its nascence, Martina Navratilova was tearing up the tennis courts, and the second wave of feminism was trying to embrace sapphic culture. And in the midst of this heady milieu, I searched for more books. But rather than getting mired in the often depressing and demeaning lesbian fiction of the 1950s and 1960s, I wanted books that better reflected me and the changing culture.
Enter Rubyfruit Jungle, a book about a contemporary young woman coming out and living by her personal motto of putting her money into her head, i.e. getting educated.
After my formal schooling, I took learning into my own hands and lapped up the sapphist classics like Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein and found myself lurking in their words, between their lines, and in their symbols.
Fast forward to 2024 and we’re in the midst of a lesbian fiction explosion. Everyone from wonderful indie houses like Butterworth Books to “Big 5” publishers is looking to represent lesbian literature. But much of what’s available seems to fall into the youthful romance category. So, I tailor my writing not only to increase overall lesbian fiction offerings but to show a wider range of experiences: older women, women in unhappy same-sex relationships, women who don’t have a clear, linear direction in life. Women like so many of us.
As a child, teen, and adult, I relished finding myself in the pages of books. I hope to bring some of that same happiness to other readers.
Leigh Alder’s story, Bomb Cyclone, is in SapphFic Eclectic, volume 5.
Butterworth Books 