Lesbian, on wavy neon purple with foreshadow

Three Hundred Rabbits… and One Photograph

Karin Kallmaker Sisters of the Pen

Faultine
One of my early influences as a baby lesbian fiction reader was Shiela Ortiz Taylor. I still have my first edition Naiad Press copy of Faultline. It has a favorite opening line of

“I realize that my three hundred rabbits are the most serious piece of material evidence against me.”

Faultline was one of the first novels featuring lesbian characters that I ever read. It remains one of the funniest, and proved to me that it ws okay to laugh about ourselves. But what really changed me was a couple of pages inside: a large photograph of the author, with her real name.

It was the first time I’d ever seen such a thing. I’d seen news articles with pictures of lesbians of course, but this was a voluntary photograph, taken in a moment of smiling, content leisure. With her name. Proud. Open. Unabashed. And my little baby lesbian heart went through many painful thumps, realizing that such a step could be taken.

A woman could publish her photograph and put her name on it and say “I’M A LESBIAN” – and survive.

I wanted to be a writer, and I accepted, whilst looking at Sheila Ortiz Taylor’s photograph, that some day I would have to be that brave.

These many years later it seems adolescent, the fear I had back then of being out, of being seen. Now my picture’s all over the place; I can’t imagine being any other way. But the only reason my world is so open is because women like Sheila were there first, way ahead of me.

This post is to honor that I — and the many other lesfic writers — are under a big umbrella with an incredible legacy. We reach back into the roots of our literary history. I’m doing my best to reach forward. The expanse of the territory we cover is breathtaking — as big as our collective imaginations, and then some.

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