Beaver Girl
Cassie Premo Steele
Anxiety/Outcast Press, 2023, 260 pages
$16.00

Reviewed by Sarah Parsons

I am often wondering where all the climate stories are. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and general ecological collapse are, after all, among the most existential issues we face, are they not? Perhaps these stories are too impersonal, I sometimes think, or too bogged down in scientific jargon to be accessible or appealing to the average reader. Yet in Beaver Girl, a digestible and compelling dystopian novel, Cassie Premo Steele makes it clear that climate fiction is more present and engaging than ever.

Beaver Girl exists in a world which hints at an eerie but possible future for us all–a world ravaged by climate disaster, viruses, and general collapse. Within this world, which has largely seen an end to familiar capitalist systems, people have had to invent new ways of living. This is challenging, given that resources are in short supply and human contact carries the risk of disease or death. Yet, in the absence of all that is familiar, Steele creates a story of reconnection and returning to the ecosystems that we exist within.

The story follows two protagonists: a nineteen-year-old girl named Livia and Chap, the patriarch of a small beaver family. When a wildfire descends upon Livia’s community, she finds herself seeking a new home beyond the human world. Joining a large and rich canon of queer stories about chosen family, Beaver Girl shows the perspective of seeking family and connection beyond human terrain, which is what I find to be so unique about the novel. What lessons can we learn from the animals and plants living among us? Through the split perspectives between Livia and Chap, Steele highlights the varied struggles the characters face and the ways in which they learn to live in proximity to one another. As Livia deals with the aftermath of grief and loss while growing into her adulthood, Chap deals with the fear of caring for his family as his home is under threat. Steele seamlessly weaves ecological knowledge throughout the text, helping the reader access a deeper understanding of the characters (particularly the non-human beings) that populate the story.

Readers of all ages who enjoy dystopian fiction will likely connect with this book, though I think it is particularly suited to YA readers and those with a developing curiosity about the world we live in and the ecology that connects us all. This will also appeal to those like myself who appreciate the intersection between queer narratives and climate stories. What I find perhaps most effective about Cassie Premo Steele’s Beaver Girl is the ultimate sense of hope or resilience the reader is left with, which is endlessly important in stories about our changing world.

Sarah Parsons is a Sinister Wisdom intern and writer based in Oregon whose work can be found online in Paperbark Magazine.

Interview with Penelope Starr on Desert Haven

Sandra Butler: What is it about landdykes that initially captured your curiosity/interest?

Penelope Starr: Perhaps it was a way to reflect the trajectory of my own life, if not in actual fact, then in spirit. My consciousness was raised by the political unrest of the 1960s, the second wave of feminism, and more visible lesbianism of the 1970s, and utopian ideals generated by authors like Marge Piercy and Starhawk. I’m inspired by women who attempt to construct new societies defined by liberation and freedom, so when I began researching women’s land and interviewing a broad range of landdykes, from extraordinary visionaries to wounded warriors to hippie dropouts, I felt a need to amplify their voices. The decision to write it as fiction gave me the freedom to explore my life experiences and imagine fictional characters who represented the wide range of women’s land dwellers.

Sandra: How did you shape the novel?

Penelope: There are 15 interlinked short stories, so each woman stars in her own story but shows up in other stories as the years progress. I conceived it as a family tale that spans years and generations, illuminating the joys and challenges that the women faced in their day-to-day living and relationships. I aimed to capture the fullness of the emotional truths of their lives.

Each woman reflects a different aspect of women’s experience and the overlapping bonds they have created in the community. Some came for a respite from the patriarchal “norm,” healed, and moved on. For others, it remained their home for decades.

Keeping track of fifteen women over four decades allowed me to reflect on the cultural shifts in women’s lives over the last forty years.

Sandra: What do you see as the values Desert Haven represented?

Penelope: There is a determined DIY ethos prevalent on women’s land. Women have the power and imagination to create anything they set their minds to. When they needed a hot shower—they found ways to make that happen; if digging trenches for water lines, they got it done. Desert Haven is about the challenges and successes of women bonding together to create a new paradigm with joy and fortitude.

Sandra: What do you take away from this years-long immersion into the lives of landdykes?

Penelope: I learned to appreciate how the women lived their lives fully, in their bodies, on the land, establishing a place committed to earth-based, sustainable traditions.

I respect their courage to create an alternative culture and to live it fully, both in comfortable collaboration as well as in discomfort and disagreement. They celebrated woman-ness every day by choosing to separate themselves from the patriarchy and aimed to live in harmony with Mother Earth.

Sandra: What has been the response to your readings?

Penelope: Many older women remember themselves in those early years, the risks they took, and the choices they made. Conversations often shift into personal memories of moments when they took their first steps away from patriarchal expectations and began to shape their own lives. Desert Haven is a book about a specific part of lesbian history but can be read more broadly. Lesbian or not, readers seem to respond to the longing for freedom, autonomy, and community the book illuminates.

Sandra: What hopes do you have for the book?

Penelope: I believe it is essential to know our past in order to build the future—and while the challenges today are not what we faced in years past, the work is far from over. I think Desert Haven would be an important read for a women’s studies class, and I would love to hear from young queer people who have read it.

Besides being a part of our history, women’s land is still very much in the present. There are viable communities in varying states of organization and occupancy across the country looking for new energy and vision. Maybe this book will inspire cohesive connections to strive for that lesbian utopia. Or, at the very least, a better future for all of us.

Sandra Butler conducted this interview on August 19, 2024.

See Sandra’s review of Desert Haven here.

Sandra Butler is a writer and an 86-year-old life-long outside agitator. The Kitchen is Closed: And Other Benefits of Being Old is currently available, and Leaving Home at 83 will be published in October of 2024. Butler is Old, Jewish, and Queer, and looking forward to opportunities for future agitation—whenever necessary.

Penelope Starr is a gatherer of stories. Founder of Odyssey Storytelling, a community storytelling event now celebrating its twentieth year, she understands how our stories illuminate the commonalities of our lesbian lives while leaving lots of room for the unique and distinct way each woman makes and lives her choices. Her latest book Desert Haven is available for purchase now.

Nest of Matches
Amie Whittemore
Autumn House Press, 2024, 80 pages
$17.95

Reviewed by Kelsey McGarry

In Nest of Matches, Whittemore skillfully blends longing, queerness, eroticism, love, loss, and grief with the natural world. This beautiful poetry collection is an exploration and meditation on cycles; the life cycles of humans and animals, the moon cycle, astrological and zodiac cycles, the life and blooming of flowers, relationships, queer identity, and more.

The book is embedded with the contradictions of being alive, especially the dichotomies that can feel innate to queer identity. A series of poems titled “Another Queer Love Poem that Fails” mourns works of art and expression that fall short. In several poems, Whittemore celebrates the possibilities of transfiguration within queerness and recognizes the connections and resilience that queerness often brings.

In “Blue Moon,” Whittemore incorporates phrases from the namesake song by The Marcels, finding renewed meaning in the song’s lyrics while providing another tender addition to the series of poems on the moon cycle. In “Butterfly Bandage,” she remembers her caretaker grandparents and finds comfort in the tending that caretakers can provide long after they are gone, through their memories and the relics they leave behind. In “Libra Questionnaire,” she answers hard-hitting questions about patterns of those born under a Libra sky, using Google’s suggested searches. She answers these astrological questions with authority, consistently giving sincere thought and reverence to every subject.

Each poem is personal and relevant to the aim of loving oneself and the world; Whittemore explicitly reflects on the struggle of self-love for queer people. She describes the beauty in all of earth’s creatures, finding hope in each and every living thing–from her ancestors, to foxes, to the moon.

From walks in poppy fields to observing the full bloom of a peony, the collection reads like a sweet walk through both earthly and astral meadows. She creates a natural world so appealing that it feels like a dreamworld, while expertly reminding us that the most beautiful visions of all are found in our everyday surroundings, like the flowers we see, the moon that guides our evenings, the waves, and the presence of our ancestors in the natural world.

This collection of poems feels like an aching love letter to desire in the queer body. There is at once a wisdom and a deep vulnerability in each poem, which does not seem accidental; this mixture is an intentional, calculated balance. The collection inspires the reader to appreciate the holiness in both stillness and the natural elements that move all too quickly.

Kelsey McGarry is a Sinister Wisdom intern and volunteer based in Los Angeles, CA. She is interested in queer history and archiving, scheming, and being outside.

Still Life
Katherine Packert Burke
Simon and Schuster, 2024, 272 pages
$28.99

Reviewed by Catherine Horowitz

Still Life, Katherine Packert Burke’s debut novel, is a heartfelt, candid, sometimes overcomplicated, always authentic, and ultimately singular tribute to queer friendship and relationships. Its main character, Edith, is a writer in her late twenties returning to Boston for the first time since living there for a few years after undergrad. Boston holds old friends, old haunts, an ex-girlfriend, and memories of a life she feels both removed from and still stuck in. The book moves between Edith’s visit and life back at home in Texas, and her memories of college and the years directly after.

The structure works well, moving back and forth between past and present in a way that generally feels seamless and purposeful. The present often feels trancelike and strange, while the past feels real and vivid. Dialogue is written in italics throughout both past and present, making the past feel not so distant and the present feel as blurry as a memory.

The three main characters, Edith, her ex, Tessa, and Valerie, their friend from college who has since died in a car crash, are clearly written with care and love. Many books attempt the challenge of authentically capturing what it is to be a young queer person alive in the twenty-first century. It’s a difficult thing to convey, but Burke does it beautifully.

Edith, Valerie, Tessa, and their friends all feel very real; they talk about things I talk about and act like people I know; they have similar interests, similar conflicts and feelings, and are frustrating in similar ways. I grew to feel real concern about Edith, and frustration at how stuck in her feelings she was. I was fond of Tessa’s Boston lesbian hangouts, with all their irritating characters, silly activities, and oscillation between belonging and not. I wanted to know exactly how these characters changed and what ultimately happened between them, which is revealed gradually and strategically throughout the first part of the book.

The second part of the book follows Edith’s current life in Texas alongside her evolving relationship with Valerie while in grad school. Valerie is a little less tangible as a character than Edith and Tessa, although she still felt recognizable. This, along with the absence of the first half’s clear trajectory, might be why this section was harder to become invested in.

I also initially found Still Life compelling because of its use of Sondheim, Edith’s personal soundtrack that she often uses to analyze her own life. Burke mainly references two musicals, Merrily We Roll Along and Into the Woods. The parallels to Merrily are obvious and articulated poignantly. Both works follow the trajectory of a group of three friends, ultimately explaining how their relationships become fractured and unrecognizable from how they began.

Into the Woods isn’t as clear. I truly understand the impulse to incorporate it, a cathartic classic for theater kids during lonely times, into one’s work. But Burke struggles a little to articulate its thematic connections to Still Life, instead complexly weaving lyrics and summary into the narrative. I wonder whether its use is effective for those who aren’t Sondheim lovers like me.

The theme of autofiction presents another intriguing throughline in Still Life. Edith is initially apprehensive of autofiction and hesitant to admit that she is working on it. She reflects on the genre, continuously reevaluating her work and ultimately writing the first line of Still Life itself, unsure of what it will lead to. This discussion may be meant as a sort of meta-reflection on autofiction, or an attempt from Burke to account for her own misapprehensions about it. I might not have read Still Life as autofiction otherwise, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have thought as heavily about the genre’s shortcomings while reading. I’m not sure whether this was Burke’s goal, but it warrants interesting conversation.

Despite its sometimes tangled themes and storylines, Still Life is mesmerizing, profound, and will stick with you. I find myself thinking back to the characters, and wondering whatever became of them. I can imagine a neater version—maybe one that ended after Edith left Boston—but at the same time, this version, messy, imperfect, and a little cumbersome, has its own kind of authenticity and beauty.

Catherine Horowitz is a writer and educator living in Washington, D.C. She earned a B.A. in English and Jewish Studies from Oberlin College. You can find her other work in Bright Wall/Dark Room, New Voices, and the Jewish Women’s Archive. She has previously worked with Sinister Wisdom on A Sturdy Yes of People: Selected Writings by Joan Nestle.

Perfume and Pain
Anna Dorn
Simon and Schuster, 2024, 352 pages
$18.99

Reviewed by Kelsey McGarry

In Perfume and Pain, Anna Dorn both pays homage and gives new life to a classic queer genre, lesbian pulp fiction of the 1950s. Author Astrid Dahl attempts to revive her career after she finds herself in a situation that leaves her slightly canceled. While trying to rejoin a writer’s group she co-founded, she temporarily loses sight of her goal and finds herself enmeshed in several steamy, flirty detours, creating significant distractions.

Perfume and Pain takes us through Astrid’s life mid- and post-cultural reckoning. One of the key challenges she navigates is balancing flirty encounters with two scintillating women: one grad student and one neighbor. The neighbor, Penelope, is a painter, whom Astrid finds slightly off-putting but also irresistible. Astrid and Ivy, the graduate student, begin to date, leaving Astrid to navigate many conflicting feelings.

Astrid is then presented with the surprising professional opportunity to adapt one of her novels for television. She considers the possibility that this might resurrect her career, but the pressure is at times too much to bear. Wrapped up in a series of conflicts, Astrid confronts clashes internally and with those around her.

By many accounts, Astrid is not a woman that an audience would rush to champion. Yet author Anna Dorn writes her as deeply human with brutal honesty, providing exciting and transparent views into the character’s world.

Los Angeles and the greater Southern California region are also main characters in the novel, providing a rich and bright background for compelling action, as well as characters’ behaviors that are less savory. The issues Dorn explores within the Los Angeles region include: love and attraction that borders obsession; the joy and fun of professional success that can sour with fame, power, and access; the raw heat of both the climate and relationships that can burn out as quickly as they began.

Perfume and Pain is rich—full of energy, wit, and humor. The characters are unapologetically feminine, desirous, hot, creative, imperfect, and blunt. Through the entirety of the novel, Perfume and Pain scarcely ever drags, and Dorn trusts the reader to grasp the complex characters she crafts. The novel negotiates the conflicts among these characters until the very last page, providing an ambiguous yet satisfying end.

Kelsey McGarry is a Sinister Wisdom intern and volunteer based in Los Angeles, CA. She is interested in queer history and archiving, scheming, and being outside.

Interview with Judith Barrington on the Publication of Virginia’s Apple: Collected Memoirs

Mimi Wheatwind: Virginia’s Apple is your eighth book, published in your eightieth year! Trying to Be an Honest Woman was published in 1985, followed by another poetry book, History and Geography. In 1997, you gave us THE book on memoir, Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art. In 2000, your memoir Lifesaving came out to much acclaim (Lambda Literary Award and finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir). Three more books of poetry followed: Horses and the Human Soul, The Conversation, and Long Love: New and Selected Poems, along with more awards and honors. You have not only enriched our lives with your literary work, you have also devoted a good deal of your life to supporting women writers with Flight of the Mind, a summer writing workshop for women that ran for seventeen years, and then with Soapstone, which, for many years offered a writing retreat for women in the Oregon Coast Range and now has been wonderfully reconceived to celebrate women writers. I want readers to know about them. They transformed so many lives.

Judith Barrington: Thank you, Mimi. I can’t tell you how astonished I am to have a new book just after turning eighty.

Mimi: The title chapter, “Virginia’s Apple,” is full of many landmarks visited in the UK over your adult years, including the monuments, former homes, and gravestones of important women in literary and feminist history. It’s also about the growing love between you and your soulmate, Ruth Gundle. You describe times with her as “brighter, clearer, more profound,” but also, in the early years, the “creeping awareness of how different you are” and how it will be a long time before you each “come to understand that [y]our different sensibilities could be a gift that gave each of [you] another set of eyes with which to look at the world.” The metaphor of an apple from a tree, plucked by Ruth and offered to you from Virginia Woolf’s garden, is a crisp, sweet moment, but one which caused you to be “embarrassed and irritated.” Can you say more about how your mutual love of literature may have helped to bridge the differences between you and Ruth and helped you through some of the difficult times in your early life together?

Judith: We’ve been together forty-five years now, something we couldn’t have imagined that day at Monk’s House in 1982. Certainly, our love of literature was a bond even through rough periods. Also, feminist activism. But probably most of all, simply our love and respect for one another. This is a subject better suited to poetry than prose. I recently came across Jane Hirshfield’s “For What Binds Us” and sent it to Ruth. Hirshfield says it beautifully.

Mimi: Was it your decision or the publisher’s to name your memoir Virginia’s Apple?

Judith: I chose the title. To me, it reverberates throughout the book in various ways. The apple is obviously a potent symbol—the story of Eve was one of the first that feminists rewrote or perhaps reinterpreted. But I was thinking specifically of Judy Grahn’s The Highest Apple, a brilliant book about lesbian literature starting with Sappho. Judy wrote: “…we can reach our long-held apple, the one Sappho held back on the highest branch for us. This is a profoundly feminist and a profoundly poetic and a profoundly Lesbian idea.”

In the story that is titled “Virginia’s Apple,” Ruth and I are searching for places in England connected to the women we admire from the first wave of feminism. At that time, in the early eighties, that history was just being written by feminist historians, and we were devouring it. Places were seldom marked. Monk’s House, for example, was not yet open to the public. Jane Austen’s grave in Winchester Cathedral didn’t mention that she was a writer. As you said, the incident with the apple from Virginia Woolf’s garden is about our relationship. My life with Ruth is one of the threads that runs through the stories; it’s another reason I chose Virginia’s Apple for the title. And finally, I loved having Virginia in the title. She pops up throughout the book.

Mimi: Can you say something about how significant Virginia Woolf’s writing (including her diaries and letters) was to you? When did you first become aware of Woolf as a writer? Did you read her work in school, or out of curiosity because she was a “famous neighbor?” Did you read her diaries and letters after reading her novels and essays?

Judith: Virginia Woolf is one of the most important writers of my life—writing life and other life. (The “Flight of the Mind” writing workshop name comes from one of her essays.) I had read some of her personal writings in the diaries and letters even before I read Adrienne Rich’s “Women and Honor.” The Rich essay and Woolf’s work pushed and encouraged me to confront and write about difficult subjects. As you know, Virginia and a small group of friends formed a memoir group in which she wrote about being sexually abused by her half-brother. In the diary she wrote of almost wishing she hadn’t done it—it was so hard.

I did not read Woolf’s work in school; I doubt we read any women novelists. I had long ago left home when I realized she had lived in Rodmell, a village in Sussex, not far from where I grew up. From childhood on, I had a strong love of the landscape of Sussex, particularly the Sussex Downs, where I rode my pony. Virginia also loved those Downs and walked on them while composing her work in her head. She was not a “famous neighbor” when I lived there; it was only with the Second Wave that she was reinstated as a major literary figure—and it was American feminist literary critics who brought her back to us. By the time I was moving in feminist circles, she was much revered as a novelist and feminist theorist. It was then that I started reading her work.

Olivia DelGandio: In Lifesaving, you describe being “frozen by the spare room window” after hearing of your parents’ death. I felt similarly after hearing about the death of a loved one, and when I think back on that morning, my body remembers exactly how I was feeling in that moment. What was it like to go back to recreate it in writing? Towards the end of Lifesaving, you talk about the understanding that tragedy and loss happen quickly and unexpectedly, something people don’t see clearly when they haven’t experienced grief. How does writing about your grief interact with this idea? How does this connect to your flatmates getting you a dog after your parents’ death as you write about in Virginia’s Apple?

Judith: It was hard to go back there, to write about that moment, even though it was decades later. In Virginia’s Apple, I describe how I became physically ill as well as thrown totally off balance writing the end to Lifesaving. But grief is part of life—and I have been drawn to write stories from my life, so it’s inevitable that they will include that story and the long aftermath of grief. Writing the story of my parents’ deaths opened me up to more grief—mine and other people’s, as well as other people’s attempts at being sympathetic, as in “The Condolence Dog.” I wasn’t looking for catharsis. I write because I love sentences, the sound of language, the rhythms of both poetry and prose. And, as Mark Doty said, “We make art to make meaning out of our mortality, to counteract its brutality with beauty. Every creative act is an act of consolation for our transience, for our despair about our transience.” By beauty, he doesn’t mean surface beauty but something more like profound truth artfully expressed.

Mimi: In one of your essays describing a night of feminist graffiti messages on billboards, you briefly allude to driving past a building in London named for the Esperanto Society, and mention that your grandfather translated Shakespeare into Esperanto. This is an impressive tidbit of information! Can you say more about how your linguistic curiosity might be connected to this relative or how your later accomplishments might be linked to other people in your family who influenced your literary and poetic talents?

Judith: My maternal grandfather, Daniel Lambert, whom I never knew, was an Esperanto enthusiast (as well as a lawyer and amateur astrologer), an eccentric character in an otherwise conventional family. He translated works of Shakespeare into Esperanto; when I once visited the Esperanto Society the people there were excited to meet me. Perhaps I inherited an interest in languages from him; I always enjoyed learning French and Spanish at school, and have been eternally grateful for having to take Latin.

In my family, it was my mother’s side that influenced me, from this grandfather down to my mother, who was musically talented and very word-oriented. She was a big reader and, like my sister, a regular master of crosswords. My sister, Ruth Rolt, chose music as her profession and studied at the Royal College of Music, where she became a Bach specialist on the piano and later devoted herself to chamber music, playing harpsichord and fortepiano. She provided for me a model of a woman making an artistic career her priority. I admired her for winning out against our father, who thought it ridiculously impractical.

Olivia: There are stories that appear in multiple places of your books, both poetry and prose. For example, in “Villanelles for a Drowned Parent,” you mention the cupboard under the stairs, which is also mentioned in Lifesaving. How do you see your books existing in relationship to each other, as opposed to each book standing as an individual work?

Judith: I want to write good stories, but a memoir isn’t just the subject matter. It’s the language, the angle it’s told from, how it’s structured, what the writer makes of it, etc. It’s meant to give the reader pleasure in the reading and also, ideally, a window into a world that’s new to them and hopefully, too, a flash of self-recognition. The same events can appear in many different stories and, indeed, in poetry as well.

Lifesaving is focused on the three years after my parents drowned when I lived in Spain; it ends just after I moved to Oregon when I was beginning to deal with the grief I’d denied for such a long time. “Nicolette” in Virginia’s Apple was written during the time I was working on Lifesaving but I didn’t include it, partly because people were still alive for whom it would have been distressing, but mainly because I thought it would distract from the story I was trying to tell—it’s such a punch of a story itself, I worried that it would introduce another major theme. I wanted Lifesaving to be an accumulation of small stories ruminating on grief and loss, building—as it turned out—to my terror of getting close to the reality of my parents climbing down the ladder into the night sea.

The strongest narrative thread in Virginia’s Apple is about being a lesbian before the women’s movement and during the early years, and later. Being a lesbian is alluded to in Lifesaving but never developed, just as my grief over my parents’ drowning pulses beneath the surface in Virginia’s Apple but is not developed.

I’d be happy to know that someone especially enjoyed reading Lifesaving and Virginia’s Apple together. They pair well! And why not throw in Long Love, my most recent poetry book?

Mimi: I love the video for Long Love with photos and hearing a poem from each of your books in your voice. And I know that people have been loving the photos you’ve been posting on instagram, @jbarrington77, with short clips from Virginia’s Apple.

Mimi Wheatwind and Olivia DelGandio conducted this interview throughout spring and summer 2024.

Marie-Elise Wheatwind has published poetry, interviews, articles, flash prose and fiction in various journals and magazines. She holds MA degrees from UC Berkeley [English], University of New Mexico [Special Education], and University of Arizona [Library Science]. Some of her work has garnered awards, including a PEN Syndicated Fiction prize. She was a regular contributor to the Women’s Review of Books for three decades. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Olivia DelGandio is a socially engaged artist, writer, and educator based in Portland, OR. Her work manifests in various forms, including a queer newspaper, memory-based installations, and intergenerational collaborations. She received a BA in Sociology and Gender Studies from New College of Florida and holds an MFA in Art + Social Practice from Portland State University.

Judith Barrington is a celebrated writer who has published five poetry collections, two poetry chapbooks, a prizewinning memoir, and a bestselling text on writing literary memoir. Her work includes Long Love: New and Selected Poems and Lifesaving: A Memoir. A passionate feminist activist since the early 1970s, first in London and then in Portland, Oregon, Barrington co-founded The Flight of the Mind Writing Workshops for women and is one of the founders of Soapstone, an organization supporting women writers. Her work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Lambda Literary Award and The PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the art of the memoir. Her latest work, Virginia’s Apple: Collected Memoirs, is set for release in September 2024.

poyums
Len Pennie
Canongate Books, 2024, 128 pages
$22.00

Reviewed by Allison Quinlan

Len Pennie (or @misspunnypennie as she’s known on Instagram) is a Scottish poet specializing in the Scots language, one of the indigenous languages of Scotland. Her collection covers several topics of varying weight, from descriptions of and experiences with abuse to lighthearted poems on daily life. As a survivor, she boldly uses her platform to shine a light on abuse and empower survivors. Her work is moving in its honest depictions of life during and after abuse. She describes the power each individual holds within themselves to persist on the long road to recovery. I had the pleasure of hearing her read her poetry live; you can hear her emphatic voice in writing as much as in her voice on the stage–her words and her power are her own. She writes, “This story is mine” (91).

Continuing the theme of identity, Pennie pens “Ouroboros.” The poem provides a succinct description of responsibility in abuse. She writes, “And I get it, but there’s not one single excuse / That absolves an abuser of giving abuse: / Not the alcohol, drugs or the childhood or me; / Not your grief for the man that you thought you would be” (50). The entire poem grapples with identity through abuse, the importance of placing responsibility for abuse solely on abusers, and the power Pennie’s poetry brings her.

Part of the experience of reading poyums comes from Pennie’s phenomenal use of Scots. poyums provides readers the opportunity to delve into the beauty of the language at every turn of the page. She not only introduces readers to an inside view of survivorship but also introduces many to a vulnerable language. Pennie’s writing in poyums places the language directly in the hands of those unfamiliar with Scots, which is not widely used in written form outside of some regions of Scotland. Notably, there is no glossary showing the exact meaning of the words, so readers must take the time to explore the language on their own. Curious readers can watch her ‘Scots Word of the Day’ online to learn more about some of the words frequenting her writing.

One great use of Scots is in her poem “Chattin Shite,” where she writes, “Awright, hen, hope you don’t mind, A couldnae help but see / A conversation taking place that didnae involve me; / Never fear, sweet gentle lass, A’m here tae set that right, / Cause aw a lassie needs tae hear is a men there chattin shite” (26). Her use of language aptly portrays the frustration she felt with a man inserting himself into a conversation that doesn’t involve him. Pennie has faced notable backlash online for her feminist work, receiving extensive misogynistic abuse, which she cleverly responds to through a number of her poems. She sets out clear guidance for those who have treated her unacceptably: “If ye didnae want the poetry, dinnae fuck over a poet” (14). Speaking out against abuse, even when confronted with various forms of it so often, is an act of profound courage and defiance that chips away at oppressive structures, empowering others to join the fight for equality and justice.

poyums is an exceptional work, powerfully describing survivorship and offering a connective balm to all who share the experience. For many, poyums is a declaration of ‘you are not alone in this.’ For many more, it provides a window of empathy for survivors’ realities that helps us connect, support each other, and work to prevent abuse. I truly cannot express enough respect for Len Pennie and poyums.

Allison Quinlan (they/she) volunteers as a copyeditor for Sinister Wisdom. They manage a non-profit in the UK that supports survivors of abuse. They also ghostwrite and illustrate part-time.

A Bookshop of One’s Own: How a group of women set out to change the world
Jane Cholmeley
Mudlark, 2024, 384 pages
$21.99

Reviewed by Michaela Hayes

It is easy to forget that accessing lesbian and feminist literature was once incredibly difficult. Or rather, for me, it is hard to even imagine. I work for a lesbian literary magazine and have completed both a BA and an MSc in literature. I have lived in a world where reading feminist literature isn’t only easy, it’s encouraged. Reading A Bookshop of One’s Own by Jane Cholmeley, I’m reminded that I’ve been incredibly lucky. This book serves as a timely reminder as well, as book bans are surging in both the US, where I’m from, and the UK, where this book is set and where I currently live.

A Bookshop of One’s Own is Jane Cholmeley’s account of Silver Moon, a feminist lesbian bookshop she opened with her partner-turned-best-friend (very lesbian indeed), Sue Butterworth. The shop was on Charing Cross Road, a street in central London renowned for its specialist bookshops. Silver Moon was opened with substantial help from the Greater London Council (GLC), a government-funded program that ran from 1965 to 1986. According to Esther Webber of BBC News, the GLC was created in response to a disjointed and disorderly London still reeling from World War II, with the aim to promote prosperity among the population. To the GLC, this included cultural pursuits, which led it to subsidize rents and provide loans for institutions deemed culturally important, such as Silver Moon Women’s Bookshop: “As well as giving greater support to the arts in general, the GLC wanted to give a voice to the unheard, the disregarded, the disadvantaged” (43).

A Bookshop is a sweeping account of Silver Moon from start to finish—Cholmeley covers the inception of the idea for the bookshop, the trials and tribulations of operating a feminist business in a capitalist world, the changing tides of politics in Britain during Thatcher’s reign, and the forces that ultimately forced the bookshop to close. The strength of the book lies in the details. Cholmeley is a self-professed ‘numbers guy’ and, as a result, leads the reader through the nitty gritty of feminist bookselling that might otherwise remain unknown to us. It is one thing to know in theory that Thatcher had a disastrous effect on feminist and justice-oriented endeavors and another entirely to understand the mechanics. Cholmeley makes clear through facts and figures that the shuttering of Silver Moon was due to a confluence of factors, nearly all of them tracing back to the rapid privatization of public services.

Cholmeley’s humor threads through the book and binds it together. Though she recognizes that Silver Moon became an invaluable and world-renowned feminist institution, she makes clear that she and her team weren’t thinking about glory or legacy:

“. . . we were much more concerned with survival and laughter. I want this to be our record. A record of the joy—of seeing favorite authors prosper; the awe—of welcoming a heroine superstar author to the shop; the fun—of thinking up subversive merchandise or rewarding ourselves with outrageously boozy Christmas dinners; the anger—of having to clean the carpet from a wanker’s sperm; the political defiance—as we rainbowed-up the Charing Cross Road and fought Section 28; the daily grind—of learning to run a business; the tensions—around politics, personalities and priorities” (3).

With this book, Cholmeley succeeds in her mission; indeed, A Bookshop of One’s Own makes plain all of the above while also shedding light on the rapidly changing political landscape of Britain under Thatcher. Silver Moon closed in 2001, but its legacy lives on in ways that we will never know the extent of. However, this book helps to fill in some of the blanks. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the history of feminist bookselling, especially younger people such as myself who have a hard time imagining the world pre-internet when access to information was far more restricted. This book is especially relevant today as, unfortunately, right-wing governments intent on erasing queer and racial history surge all over the world.

Michaela Hayes is a writer, researcher, and, above all, a reader. She’s currently living in Edinburgh, where she just finished a master’s in Literature & Modernity, in which she focused on posthuman feminism. She’s currently gearing up for another winter in Scotland, so if you have gay book recommendations, send them to Michaelahayes225 at gmail dot com.

Felt in the Jaw
Kristen N. Arnett
Split/Lip Press, 2017, 220 pages
$16.00

Sarahland
Sam Cohen
Grand Central Publishing, 2021, 208 pages
$15.99

Rainbow Rainbow: Stories
Lydi Conklin
Catapult, 2023, 256 pages
$16.95

Reviewed by Grace Gaynor

Felt in the Jaw by Kristen Arnett, Sarahland by Sam Cohen, and Rainbow Rainbow by Lydi Conklin are short story collections linked by their representations of lesbian and queer identities through varying narrative styles and contexts. Each collection invests in a thorough examination of themes such as exploration, self-discovery, transformation, isolation, and connection. These common investigations build bridges between each of these vibrant collections, allowing their stories to stand out as unique examinations of identity.

Within each collection, exploration and self-discovery are represented through literal and figurative journeys. In Sarahland, characters are constantly searching for and finding new ways of expressing themselves and understanding the world. Readers are invited on this exploratory expedition through the lush, second-person narration of “Dream Palace,” the fourth piece in the collection. The narrator of “Dream Palace” places the reader within the story by simply stating, “Now you are Sarah. Here you go, driving down the highway…” (91) and later saying, “You’re running away, untethered, a girl and her car and a thousand dollars you’ve saved from tips. You want to start over you think and why not do it this way” (91). As we travel within the enormous building that is the Dream Palace, we are oriented to the experiences of a Sarah, becoming intrinsically embedded in the world of Sarahland. Similarly, “Playing Fetch,” from Felt in the Jaw uses the second-person to send the reader on the journey of coping with grief. As the characters discover life after loss, the reader is required to adjust at the same pace, as the narrative seamlessly immerses readers into the life and perspective of Danielle, the narrator.

Self-discovery is a central theme in Rainbow Rainbow, particularly in the story “Pioneer.” Coco, a fifth-grade student who has always felt inherently different from those around her, experiences moments of clarity as she goes through a simulation of the Oregon Trail with her classmates. Though she may not have the exact words to describe her realizations, the story culminates with Coco’s understanding that her journey of self-discovery is just beginning: “Really, the end of the simulation was just the beginning. Coco knew that now. Not even Ms. Harper could help her. She pulled away and turned to face the yellow field, the milkweed, the curved path of cones. The sun was a low white hole in the sky. She would go on her journey now. She would set off” (108). In this moment, Coco realizes that her survival depends on her willingness to explore the reality of her gender nonconformity and identity. She understands she must embrace the things that disconnect and differentiate her from her peers.

Connection and isolation are explored at length in each collection, as these themes often serve as the foundation of narratives centered on lesbian and queer identities. In one instance, Felt in the Jaw’s “Blessing of the Animals” depicts the difficulty of isolation as Moira is severed from her church family and lifelong dream of a large, conventional wedding when her pastor casually refuses to perform a traditional ceremony for her and her partner. The narrative quietly represents the feelings of loneliness and isolation that come with embracing queer identity, while emphasizing the value of gaining sustenance from acceptance and connection through images of Moira’s supportive partnership.

This theme of sustenance through connection is similarly explored within “Pink Knives,” the third story in Rainbow Rainbow. The narrative opens with the following images: “We meet in the plague. Your gray roots have grown out four or five inches into the red—we’re that deep in. We sit on opposite hips of a circle printed on the grass in a crowded public park in San Francisco” (57). The narrator, after describing the circumstances in which the two main characters meet, discusses those around them in a swirl of connection, at odds with the aforementioned “plague”:

Around us are first-date kisses, teens huddled dangerously close together on tarps, techies dancing to rubberized jewel-toned radios. Everyone massing into Dolores Park for whatever they need: sex, friendship, family, work meetings, chess lessons, air, rigorous jump rope, letting their toddlers scream like wolves, pudgy arms extended, anticipating a fall (57).

Against a backdrop of isolation imposed by uncertainty and illness, the main character makes connections that provide them with new insight into the reality of their gender identity. In this way, Rainbow Rainbow’s “Pink Knives” is a story about queer survival and the ways isolation and connection, though often at odds with each other, might work in tandem to provide us with self-knowledge.

Connection is further explored in Sarahland’s “Exorcism, or Eating My Twin,” as Cohen explores the formation of an intense bond between two characters. The narrator, Sarah, speaks intensely about her “twin,” whom she has renamed Tegan: “It turned out, of course, that we’d both been solitary children, obsessed with Stephen King and Tori Amos. We’d both grown up lying on quilted girlbeds biting our cuticles and feeling an intense sense of missing, of pining for a twin” (70). These perceived similarities between the two characters escalate Sarah’s feelings of attachment and dependence. When the seemingly sudden severance of the connection forces her to exist on her own once again, she struggles to make a life outside of her relationship with Tegan. The emphasis placed upon this struggle makes this narrative a contemplation of the ways isolation and connection work together to create charged relationships imbued with unwieldy power.

Each collection also explores the way long-term relationships and the people within them transform over time. Felt in the Jaw’s “Aberrations in Flight” depicts a growing distance between two partners set against a backdrop of death and the complications associated with house renovation, which magnify the tedium within the relationship. As the story comes to a close, the narrator, Amber, realizes that her partner, Elizabeth, is no longer the person she fell in love with and asks: “How do you reconcile loving two different versions of a person?” (188). The first story in Rainbow Rainbow, “Laramie Time,” seeks to answer this question in the context of the uncertainty and doubt embedded in their struggling relationship. Leigh, the story’s narrator, is torn between continuing her difficult relationship or coping with the pain of leaving a person she loves, a turmoil represented when she says: “This person had lied to me. She was happier than she could admit; she was thriving. My heart lifted for her joy, even if it was separate from me” (28). In the end, the dissolution of the partnership allows the story to stand out as a meditation on the impact of insurmountable change on a relationship.

“Becoming Trees,” the eighth story in Sarahland, opens with a line that centers on the pressure associated with transformation: “It began in the season when everyone was changing” (155). The narrator discusses the tension related to this overwhelming sense of change, noting that “it seemed like everyone was wrapping themselves in chrysali and having late-in-life emergences as different kinds of creatures, and what this made clear was that we weren’t becoming anything. We felt like caterpillars who didn’t know that being a caterpillar wasn’t the endgame” (155). This lack of becoming dramatically impacts the narrative’s main couple, Jan and Sarah, who feel inadequate in their lives and relationships as normal people. Soon, they make the decision to trade in their physical bodies and become trees, hoping to strengthen their relationship and escape the expectations of a rigid society. In the same way, the stories within Sarahland transform and shift the expectations associated with traditional narrative structures and systems. Retellings, recastings, and refusals support the queer power of this collection.

Each of these story collections hold valuable perspectives on human experience, most notably in the context of identity and connection. The experience of reading these collections comparatively might allow readers to gain new understandings of themselves and others.

Grace Gaynor is a writer from Louisville, Kentucky. She earned her BA in English from Hollins University and is currently an MFA student studying creative writing at Virginia Tech. She is a Sinister Wisdom intern and serves as an editor for the minnesota review and SUNHOUSE Literary.

Still Alive
LJ Pemberton
Malarkey Books, 2024, 290 pages
$19.00

Reviewed by Rae Theodore

LJ Pemberton’s Still Alive is a raw, evocative exploration of love, self-discovery, and the relentless quest for meaning against the backdrop of a fractured American landscape. The novel traces the tumultuous journey of V, a bisexual temp worker whose life is intricately entangled with Lex, a butch painter. Pemberton’s narrative deftly captures the poignant complexities of V’s relationships and personal growth, weaving a story that is both deeply intimate and widely resonant.

From the moment V meets Lex at an underground punk show, their chemistry ignites a whirlwind romance that drives much of the novel’s emotional core. “We’re waiting and she says her name is Lex. The x trips off like every other name is lacking without it” (17). Pemberton’s prose is both lyrical and incisive, capturing the dynamics of love, heartbreak, and obsession. I found myself going back and re-reading sentences to let the words roll around on my tongue a little longer.

Lex, with her artistic flair and strong presence, becomes a central figure in V’s search for stability and identity. “There was poetry in the way she carried groceries from the store. There was meaning in the way she ignored responsibility. I wanted her. I wanted to be her. I barely knew myself,” V acknowledges (22).

However, their on-again, off-again relationship is far from idyllic, punctuated by the dysfunction of V’s family, which looms over her like a specter. “The problem is I know how it all ends, in blood and quiet, and I learned that final lesson when I was too young to know what was routine and what was unusual and how everyone mixes up the two,” V says (276).

In parallel, the novel examines V’s relationship with Leroy, her gay best friend, who has chosen a more serene rural existence. Leroy’s peaceful life serves as a foil to V’s restless pursuit of meaning, highlighting her internal conflict and dissatisfaction. Pemberton skillfully portrays V’s inability to find contentment, whether in the structured routines of temp work or the conventional expectations of mainstream life.

Pemberton’s narrative is not merely a chronicle of V’s romantic entanglements and family discord–it’s also a profound meditation on the search for personal freedom and authenticity. V’s restless journey across the United States from New York City to Portland to Los Angeles symbolizes her broader quest for self-fulfillment and a life defined on her terms.

Still Alive is a modern-day Rubyfruit Jungle that will resonate with anyone who has ever grappled with finding their place in a world that seems perpetually at odds with their true self. If you’ve rarely found yourself represented in a book, you just might catch a glimpse of yourself in Pemberton’s.

Rae Theodore (she/they) is the author of the memoir collections Leaving Normal and My Mother Says Drums Are for Boys and the poetry chapbook How to Sit Like a Lesbian. She is the story curator for the new anthology Swagger: A Celebration of the Butch Experience.