Interview with Eleanor Medhurst on Unsuitable: A History of Lesbian Fashion

Georgie Marsh interviewed fashion historian Eleanor Medhurst at the Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive in Edinburgh during her book tour for Unsuitable: A History of Lesbian Fashion. You can read Lavender Menace’s portion of the interview here, where our community co-ordinator Keava McMillan asks Eleanor about her experiences working with archives as a fashion historian and how it influenced her work. You can also read Darla Tejada’s WSLR review of Unsuitable here. My interview is more focussed on fashion and lesbian style, particularly femme fashion history.
Eleanor described the journey she’s been on with her career, which began with posts on social media, including Instagram and TikTok, and her blog Dressing Dykes. On these social media platforms, she posts accessible snippets of the research she shares on her blog. This began after she did an undergraduate degree in Fashion and Dress History and a Master’s in History of Design and Material Culture. Aware of the gaps in the research, Eleanor did a lot of work during her Master’s related to lesbian and queer fashion in history. She started the blog to share the research that she did during her studies, which included looking at clothes worn by historical lesbian Anne Lister and at lesbian slogan t-shirts. Describing herself now as very much an independent researcher, Eleanor’s studies led to the publication of her book, Unsuitable.

Georgie Marsh: Do you have a personal style icon?

Eleanor Medhurst: My personal style icon! Honestly, I don’t really know if I have any one particular style icon. I wear a lot of pink, as you can see, and that’s just something I’ve been doing for many, many years now. I notice that I do bring influences in from my research, and I do consciously try and incorporate things into my own wardrobe and my own outfits. Someone who I do admire and who appears in my book is Natalie Barney, who was a very wealthy lesbian. She was an heiress and a writer, and she dressed in whatever she wanted at any point, which I think is just so fun. One of the stories that appears in the book is her housekeeper talking about how she would wear these white couture Madeleine Vionnet dresses. She would host her literary salons and would exist in the centre of these very lesbian-centric spaces wearing these fabulous white dresses; always different, but always a white Vionnet dress.

Georgie: Do you consider yourself to be someone who dresses for the female gaze, as opposed to the male gaze?

Eleanor: Yeah, definitely, I’ve never dressed for men in my life. I think that a lot of the subtleties that many queer women in particular do with their clothes, especially when dressing in more feminine ways, are things that women in general might pick up on. For example, I think women are more likely to see a woman dressed completely in pink and wonder why they are doing that, whereas, obviously it’s a bit of a generalisation, but I don’t think many men would look at it in this way. They’re more likely to just think, “well, she clearly likes pink.” So, definitely, yes, I’m only ever dressing for women! I’m also reminded of a quote by Mabel Hampton when she talks about her partner Lilian Foster, who was a very feminine lesbian. There are two quotes that go together; one is, “she was a feminine type of woman, she loved to dress” and the other is, “she never cared for men,” and I think those go hand in hand.

Georgie: Was there a particular person you found the most fun to write about in your book?

Eleanor: Natalie Barney, who I mentioned, was so fascinating to write about and again, any of the stories told by Mabel Hampton, just because they had so much personality behind them. I really loved writing about Stormé DeLarverie—I’ve got a whole chapter on her. She had such a fascinating life and the clothes she wore illustrate her life, but at the same time, they aren’t at the centre of it, which I think is an interesting way to look at lesbian fashion. Gladis Bentley is another male impersonator I loved writing about.

Georgie: Do you have a favourite moment in femme fashion history?

Eleanor: A favourite moment in femme fashion history! I’m not sure, I do think that the typical femmes of the mid-century bar scene deserve some more recognition on their own. I’ve got a whole section in the middle of the book about butch and femme, but I do think that often you’re looking through the lens of butch and femme together. From a lesbian perspective, we often look at butches and butch fashion because those are the people who were dressing in ways that were different and that they were often socially persecuted for. For this reason, I think that that’s a really important area to look at, because these butches in the wider world don’t get that recognition, especially in fashion. But I think that the clothes that femmes were wearing during that period and the ways that they were very intentionally styling themselves as part of a lesbian community, again for female gaze, is really important. It wasn’t just dressing in a conventionally feminine way; in many cases it was dressing in a lesbian feminine way—there were often specific codes of feminine dress that were in use in particular contexts in particular bars. I think that’s a very important area of femme fashion history.

Georgie: I know last night [at your book launch event] you mentioned wanting to research more into colour symbolism, which I’m really interested in as well. I wondered if there were any other specific areas that you had in mind for research in the future?

Eleanor: As you said, I’m starting to do some research into queer colour in general and queer uses of colour just because colour comes up so much in queer visual culture and fashion. Something that I really would like to do going forward is to look at lesbian fashion from more of a global perspective, and look at the ways that lesbian—or ‘lesbian-adjacent,’ to use a term that I use in the book—identities have been styled in so many other contexts across the world. This is something that I really want to commit to researching going forward because it will take a lot more time. I need to know about the context of a particular time period in a particular country in a particular community and it takes a lot more background research. I also need to find out about what was going on for lesbians, or whatever kind of identity or label people might be using, and then what was going on in fashion in general, so there are many more steps, but it’s something that I want to commit to researching going forward and hopefully reaching out to other people who might be looking at similar areas and working with them.

Georgie: So, have you started working on your new book?

Eleanor: Yes, but not very much. I haven’t written anything yet; I’ve been doing some research and working on it. I’ve written a proposal for it but I haven’t written any of the book, but I had to put that out of my head when I started doing the book tour. I finished the proof edits for this book in January, so I had a little bit of time to do some more research and do some other things. Since then, I’ve been doing book events, and I can’t think about anything else currently as I don’t have any space in my head!

Georgie: Do you have any advice for people who want to experiment more with how they present themselves but are a bit less confident? Secondly, what advice would you give to queer women specifically who felt that they had to reject conventional femininity when they came out to feel queer enough (which I felt a little bit at first), but now they realize that they want to embrace their femininity a bit more?

Eleanor: My advice for anyone who wants to experiment with dressing in any way that they don’t necessarily feel super comfortable in is to dress that way in a space that you feel safe or secure in to start with. I think that’s also something that’s reflected in lesbian history as well, with people bringing their preferred outfits to a club or a party for example, when they didn’t feel safe wearing them on the street. I think that especially if you’re going somewhere you feel safe and there are people who you’re friends with in a particular space, they’re more likely to hype you up and say, “yeah, I love this look!” which helps to slowly build your confidence.

For queer women who maybe felt like they had to dress in less of a feminine way—that’s also something that appears time and time again in lesbian history. Anyone who’s feeling like that is very much not alone in it. I think that it’s important to feel comfortable in what you’re wearing and feel like you’re representing yourself in the way that you want to be represented. I think it’s just important to remember that femmes, feminine lesbians, and feminine queer women have always existed, have been really important members of the community, and have been appreciated for the ways that they have dressed and presented themselves. You’re just as queer as anyone else!

Georgie: Thank you so much! Is there anything you’d like to add or something you hope people will ask you?

Eleanor: I just enjoy talking to different people and hearing different questions that people have, because ultimately we all have to choose what we’re wearing—we all have to get dressed—and we all have such a personal relationship to the clothes that we wear, which is why I think it’s such an important lens to view social histories and marginalized histories with, because it says so much about the kind of people wearing the clothes. So it’s really nice to have discussions about clothes and fashion history and lesbian fashion history with different people whose questions are coming from different places!

Georgie Marsh conducted this interview on April 7, 2024.

Georgie Marsh is an English graduate and current MA student in Sexual Dissidence based in Brighton. In her spare time, she writes blogs for LGBT Health & Well-being and volunteers with the digital community archiving project Queer Heritage South. She loves animals, reading, Chappell Roan, and drag shows.

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.

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.

Sarah Horner Interviews Dianna Hunter
Dianna Hunter’s Work and Its Ties to Midwestern Lesbian Culture

Sarah Horner: The Midwest is seldom perceived as a place where LGBTQ+ culture is preserved and cultivated, but your work and life prove otherwise. What is it about the Midwest that encouraged you to live, write, and teach here?

Dianna Hunter: The Midwest is a diverse place, with braided histories that include labor and civil rights organizing, farmers’ co-operatives, Indigenous sovereignty, feminist organizations, LGBTQ activism, and more. I grew up in a working-class home in Minot, North Dakota. Mom and Dad were union members, liberals, and DIYers in the 1950s and 1960s. They worked for wages, and they allowed me to be what people now call a “free-range” kid.

Most of my friends free-ranged. We wore jeans, got our hands dirty, and roamed the town on our bikes. Some of us played softball. That’s one place you could find lesbians, even in Minot. We had an Air Force base and missile silos that made us a nuclear target, but Mom chose to warn me about “queers” on a women’s softball team that I admired. She meant to shelter me, but she unknowingly alerted me that some women loved other women—not that I knew what to do with the information back then. Heterosexist programming had most of us mystified.

I didn’t wake to my sapphic identity until college. The expense of sending me to a liberal arts school in Saint Paul stretched my parents’ budget, but they let me go. I found feminism and lesbian identity there. One of my history teachers gave me a copy of the “Redstockings Manifesto,” where I first encountered the concepts of female oppression and male privilege. This set off a progression of discovery. I found the original Amazon Bookstore Co-op in Minneapolis and, along with it, women’s liberation and lesbian writing. I taught a course on feminism as a student and came out in 1971. A friend started the Lesbian Resource Center in Minneapolis the next year, and after trying to farm on women’s land for eleven years, I moved on to graduate school, college teaching, and writing.

Sarah: You have a new novel, Clouded Waters, that follows a journalist searching for a missing environmental scientist while mourning the loss of her wife. How did this project begin?

Dianna: Before the virus arrived, I’d been working on a mystery novel. I had a rough draft, but I wasn’t satisfied with it. When Covid came along, the shutdown gave me time to catch up on my reading. I wanted to know more about an environmental controversy that was (and still is) going on here in northeastern Minnesota. Three companies—all tied to international mining conglomerates—want to mine for copper and nickel. So far, none of them has managed to get through all of the legal and regulatory obstacles, and locals are split between the promise of prosperity and concern for the environment. The ore deposits run through sulfide rock that can leach sulphuric acid and heavy metals into the environment when exposed to water. We’re a wet state, and our watersheds drain to Hudson Bay, the Mississippi River, and the Atlantic by way of Lake Superior. In other words, they drain to the world, so there’s a lot to be concerned about.

I started asking myself, “Why not connect the story to these issues? Why not make the main character the publisher of a small, multi-generational newspaper? Why not make her a mature person, balancing grief for her wife and loneliness for their grown kids against her need to keep that struggling newspaper alive in the age of disinformation and political corruption? Why not have her personal struggle happen at a time when her community is also struggling over this potential new mine? Why not connect the crime to the controversy? Oh, and why not add a little romance to the mystery and have a new woman come to town?” The answers led to the story I tell in Clouded Waters.

Sarah: Clouded Waters features Indigenous and Métis (mixed racial ancestry) characters. Why was it important to you to include them in your book?

Dianna: Clouded Waters makes clear that the place we now call the Mesabi Range of Minnesota was home to the Dakota and Anishinaabe (also known as Ojibwe or Chippewa) before SB’s [SB is Susan B. Ellingson, the protagonist of Clouded Waters] people arrived, but it goes deeper than a land acknowledgement. The characters cross binaries, borders, and bloodlines, and we learn through their stories that people have been doing this for a long, long time.

The Indigenous people have not vanished from this place, and they are still enacting their own personal and cultural histories. SB keeps all of this in mind as she tries to work out her responsibility to her community, the earth, and her deceased Indigiqueer wife’s (Ramona’s) people, including the children she and Ramona raised together. In real life, by federal treaty, the Anishinaabe are guaranteed rights to hunt, fish, and gather across their homelands in northern Minnesota. When environmental degradation threatens to harm water, plants, and wildlife, they have unique legal standing to fight in court for the earth and water, and they have played a major role in holding off multinational mining corporations and oil pipelines.

In Anishinaabe culture, women are traditionally the water protectors. Their work has been spiritual, cultural, political, and effective, and Indigenous people are doing this dangerous work around the world. That’s why, in Clouded Waters, I have Ramona’s mother, Alberta Desjardin, leading a group of water-protecting grandmothers who protest against the environmental dangers posed by the mine. Without her, the story would be incomplete.

Sarah: How have your own experiences with back-to-the-land life influenced your fiction writing, particularly Clouded Waters?

Dianna: As a writer, I’ve been able to draw on my experiences, failures, and successes, and there have been plenty of all three. In my twenties, I lived with other lesbians on farms in Wisconsin and Minnesota. To make ends meet, I got a job working with dairy farmers and often stayed overnight with farm families so that I could collect milk samples at evening and morning milkings. Later, I bought my own dairy farm and worked as a farmer’s advocate, trying to help my neighbors keep their land during the Reagan-era farm crisis. I’ve met a wide variety of people, taken it all in, and used it in my fiction—filtered, transformed, and tied to made-up events through invention and imagination.

In Clouded Waters, I created a mid-sized town like, and yet also unlike, towns that exist on the Mesabi Iron Range. I filled it with the kind of villains, heroes, ne’er-do-wells, and everyday, well-meaning people you could meet in a mining town. The main character, SB Ellingson, runs a multi-generational newspaper that’s on the verge of going broke, as so many actual small-town newspapers have already done. She refuses to accept failure and decides to seek the truth about the proposed new mine and a missing water scientist. As she investigates, she mourns her dead wife, Ramona, a Two-spirit Anishinaabe/Ojibwe person. SB returns to the natural places they experienced together and is reminded of the ongoing relevance of their conversations about identity, land ownership, white accountability, and corporate environmental destruction.

Sarah: How do you perceive the connection between lesbians and the land/environment?

Dianna: In my memoir Wild Mares, I tell my own nonfiction story of living several years with lesbians in experimental land projects in the 1970s. We saw the land as a place to connect with nature, grow wholesome food, remake ourselves, and live sustainably. We wanted to get free of misogyny and gender oppression. That meant living just with women, becoming self-sufficient, and exploring our love and passions for one another. Most of us had few financial resources, so we tried to invent ways of living together that bridged private ownership and collective responsibilities.

It wasn’t easy, and the sustainability of lesbian land and lesbian community continues to be a point of discussion, struggle, and mentoring. I’m skeptical of some kinds of lesbian woo-woo, but I’ve been taking myself to nature and grounding myself in wild spaces since I was a child. That’s where I’ve found the sacred and recognized my roots. It’s complicated because my ancestors farmed, gardened, foraged, and hunted on this continent as immigrants, colonizers, and settlers.

It has to be said that we appropriated the lands we love from Indigenous people—Lakota, Dakota, and Anishinaabe, in my case. We have to find a way to account for land theft and help the Indigenous Land Back movement. And yet, the natural world still speaks to us and through us. As a young lesbian, I took myself to the land to heal and grow, and at seventy-four, I still look to nature for these gifts. My duty as a writer is to give back, to contribute to the restoration of the earth and to help foster a just and loving human community.

Sarah: As a college student and intern for Sinister Wisdom, I’ve learned a lot about lesbian history and how writing has allowed generations of lesbians to express and feel confident in their identity. From your perspective, what does writing/literature do for the LGBTQ+ community?

Dianna: Writing is a tool for reshaping the world. Besides giving enjoyment, one of the main uses of literature is teaching empathy. A writer creates a world for the reader to step into and experience through the eyes of others—that is, the characters the writer has created. It’s hard to enter another’s world so deeply without gaining insight and a sense of commonality. In our case, as lesbians and other queer-identified people (and even as women, for those of us who identify that way), we’ve found our true selves in literature by writing ourselves into it. Like BIPOC people, we were misrepresented in the old white male canon, and without accurate representation, no one is truly seen. Representation is a necessary condition for shaping a more empathetic world. So is the unmediated voice. We need to speak for ourselves and represent ourselves, not just for the sake of accuracy (though that’s part of it), but to make ourselves be seen as plausible, strong, primary characters, not just sidekicks, buddies, neighbors, and villains. We need to tell our own stories.

Sarah: Who are some of your own personal lesbian literary heroes/inspirations?

Dianna: There are so many to choose from! Where do I start and end? Patricia Highsmith, Jane Rule, Rita Mae Brown, Pat Parker, Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, Rosemary Keefe Curb and Nancy Manahan, Audre Lorde, Paula Gunn Allen, Starhawk, and Emma Donoghue—to name just a few in a long and cherry-picked list. Most recently, I appreciated Emma Donoghue’s novel Learned by Heart, a searingly emotional re-imagination of Eliza Raine’s first love with the diary-writing Anne Lister (subject of the TV series Gentleman Jack) at their girls’ boarding school in the early 19th century.

Sarah: How does your work fit into the larger conversation of lesbian representation and/or environmentalism?

Dianna: My work fits somewhere between ‘eco-feminist lesbian writing’ and the literature people are calling ‘Queer Ecology’ or ‘EcoQueer.’ My novel is a genre-crosser that normalizes the blurring of binaries and borders. It’s a whodunit, a romance, and a serious exploration of what a small collection of strong women, lesbians, genderqueer people, and allies do to uphold each other when their community breaks down in the face of economic desperation, industrial greed, racism, homophobia, and the threat of environmental ruin. My memoir tells the nonfiction story of actual young lesbians in the mid-1970s pioneering our own real-life versions of the kind of eco-feminist, speculative, back-to-nature community Sally Gearhart imagined in her 1978 novel, The Wanderground.

Sarah Horner is a writer, a recent graduate of the University of Minnesota, and an intern at Sinister Wisdom. Her poetry and fiction are published or forthcoming in places such as Across the Margin, The Minnesota Review, Defunkt Magazine, and The Bitchin’ Kitsch. She lives in Minneapolis with her cat Goose.

Dianna Hunter is a writer, lesbian, farmer, and educator based in Duluth, Minnesota. Hunter’s experience growing up in rural North Dakota informed her memoir, Wild Mares: My Lesbian Back-to-the-Land Life, a finalist for the 2018 Minnesota Book Award. She has taught writing and gender studies at four universities, including the University of Wisconsin-Superior. Hunter’s recent novel, Clouded Waters, is described as “an environmental thriller/whodunit/Sapphic romance.”

Ella Stern Interviews Penny Mickelbury
Part One: Politics and the World Today

Ella Stern: Can you start by giving me a rundown of what your career has been like, both in journalism and out?

Penny Mickelbury: I wanted to be a reporter since I was very young and recognized the impact that newspapers had on my parents. I grew up in Atlanta in the bad old days. And the editor and publisher of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Eugene Patterson and Ralph McGill, started writing in the 1950s, saying to Southerners that, “We have to change, we have to stop. We cannot continue the way we’ve been going.”

And morning and evening, before anything, [my parents said], “Let’s see what McGill and Patterson have to say today.” I [thought], “Wow, I want to do that. I want to be able to have a positive impact on people’s lives.” As a child, I didn’t fully understand the danger that they were putting themselves in because they were saying to white Southerners in the ’50s, “You guys gotta cut this crap out. We’ve got to stop it. We can’t keep treating people like this. We can’t keep living like this.” And it was not well-received any more than it’s well-received today.

But I wanted to do that. I thought that that was just about the best thing that a person could do. In Atlanta, there was a Black daily, the Atlanta Daily World. And then there were two weeklies. That was at a time when most cities had two newspapers: a morning and an evening daily. And people subscribed to them. Now, we have no newspapers in the country. [In high school] I knew the editor of one of the weeklies, and I asked him if I could work there, and he said sure. So [in the] summers, I went to work there. I thought I was going to be writing, but no, I was learning layout. I taught journalism at a middle school in Los Angeles many years later, and I was able to teach layout to the students because it makes a difference where you place a story.

I was the first Black reporter at the Athens Banner-Herald [in] Athens, Georgia. [Earlier,] I had applied for a job there, and the publisher didn’t hesitate to tell me, “No, you can’t be a reporter here.” So, I got a job overnight copy editing and rewriting during my senior year. And then, the guy called me into his office one day. He said, “Okay, you can have a job as a reporter now.” And I said, “Really? Why?” Students were demonstrating. There was a lot of demonstrating going on, and I used to participate until I started working. He said, “They said they’re going to burn down my newspaper if I don’t have a Black reporter, and you’re the only one I know.” And that’s how I got a job as the first Black reporter at the Athens Banner-Herald.

And then, after almost a year of doing that, I got a call from the Washington Post. Eugene Patterson had been following my career. And he said, “You want a job at the Washington Post?” Well, hell yeah, I want a job at the Washington Post!

So that’s how I got to the Post. Just from knowing from my parents’ reactions to what these men were saying and the changes that were beginning to be fomented in the South then, [I knew] that I wanted to be able to have that kind of impact on everything, everybody—righting wrongs. Journalism to me was a place to right wrongs.

I look at journalism now, and I don’t recognize it as the same profession that I worked at. But we took that stuff seriously. The Fourth Estate is given protections under the Constitution. So I think we have an obligation to that. Now, you got members of Congress and on the Supreme Court who don’t know what the Constitution is. They don’t know what it says. And they certainly don’t take seriously the oath that they rose their hands and swore to uphold, to protect and defend the Constitution. They don’t even know what that means. But we took that stuff seriously.

Ella: What has it been like for you to see how much journalism has changed and declined in the decades since you were working as a journalist?

Penny: Painful. It’s painful. I have just resumed trying to watch the news. I recently canceled my subscription to the New York Times—and I’ve been a subscriber for over 50 years—because they have normalized the behavior of that fool who was the former president and all his sycophants. And I was on the verge of canceling my subscription to the Washington Post. But lately, it seems like they’ve grown a pair. I’ve been reading some stories, and it’s like, “Wow, is somebody really paying attention?” And so they really seem to be. I read the LA Times, but then the LA Times just fired all of its Black and brown reporters, so I don’t know how much longer I’m going to keep that up. I am horrified, I am terrified because a country where the press doesn’t respect what it means to have the power and the authority that the press has frightens me because who’s going to tell us what we need to know if it’s not the Fourth Estate? Yeah, I’m scared. I’m really scared.

PBS is about the only news that I can listen to on a regular basis and get some truth, some understanding of what’s going on. There’s a part of me that is glad I’m old. I’m glad that I don’t have to live through another 15 or 20 years of this. I’m not trying to die, mind you, but I’ve been here longer than I will continue to be here. And if this country keeps going the way it’s going, I can say I won’t cry when I have to leave here.

Ella: What have been some of the biggest changes that you’ve seen over your lifetime? In politics, in human rights, in anything?

Penny: The biggest change is in people’s willingness to ignore the truth. I don’t think that, even in the middle of the civil rights movement, the most virulent racist would have said, “Oh, well, that didn’t happen to them. There was no slavery.” They knew it happened. Their parents were there. Their parents were the slave owners. They would never have tried to say it didn’t happen. And now you have this rewriting of fact, of truth. You have people banning books from libraries. My mother was a librarian, and I am truly glad that she did not live to see this. It’s something I never would have thought possible. How do you ban a book? And not just a book, but a whole collection of books? You don’t like what they say, so [you say] we’re not going to teach it. Or, “My kid didn’t like this book because it made him ashamed to be white.” That really ranks among the stupidest things I’ve ever heard in my life. “It made him ashamed to be white.” No it didn’t. It may have made him think, “Oh my goodness. Do my people really do this?” Yes, son, they do. But you can stop it. You can make sure they don’t.

And I think we all have those things happen to us. We were just listening to whatever happened in the Super Bowl in Kansas City. And they have arrested some people. I would be willing to accept somebody saying they were probably Black. They probably were. And that hurts me to my heart. But I would never say, “Oh no, they weren’t Black.” Sure they were. I don’t like that that’s the truth. And I don’t like what is happening to young Black men in America. And it needs to stop. But to say that, “Oh, well, they’re not doing these things.” Yeah, they are. Somebody’s sons and grandsons who look like me are doing these things, and we gotta stop it.

Those are the things that upset me, that make me not feel so good, and that have me questioning really and truly what I do next. I’m going to keep writing books, but I want to feel like I’m doing something useful in my community. And I don’t know what that is. I don’t know at this point, and I’ve been discussing it with friends, all of us of a certain age. And I don’t have the answer. And if you have any thoughts, I’m happy to hear them.

Ella: What are some of the things you’ve talked about with your friends about what you can do and what you can’t do?

Penny: Well, one of my dearest friends [suggested having] Black history taught from Black churches? Because nobody can go into a Black church and go, “Oh, you can’t teach Black history.” They sure can. Try to stop them. I think that is as good an idea as I’ve heard. Now, we’ve got to figure out how to implement it. And you start with one church at a time, but you start with the churches that have been on the forefront. For instance, Abyssinian Baptist Church or Ebenezer—that’s in New York, that was Adam Clayton Powell’s church. Martin Luther King’s church in Atlanta. These places where the ministers made a difference. Teach Black history, and goodness knows there are enough teachers who will go in and teach those things and teach children. And all of these books that have been banned? Let’s go get them and let’s make them available in the Black churches. Nobody can tell them, “Oh, well, you can’t have any gay books in there.” Sure they can. They can do anything they want to do. And people can teach children what these things mean. Because there are gay people everywhere, and it ain’t a shock or a surprise, and it shouldn’t be. And if you don’t know any, you just think you don’t, maybe, you probably do. But [we need to teach children] how you interact with people. And you don’t call people names. No matter what the name is, whether it’s a racial or sexual epithet, you don’t talk to people that way. And that’s one of the best ideas I’ve heard. I don’t know how to make it happen, but I talk to people about it. I’ve mentioned it to several people, and everybody says, “Oh yeah, that’s a good idea. How do we do it?” I don’t know. So, Ella, if you got a thought about how we do this, I’m all ears.

Ella: I agree that it’s a great idea. And it seems, like you said, like something that would have to be each church at a time, but it seems like something where if you went and talked to a church in your community, then they would probably be able to pass it on among other churches that they’re affiliated with.

Penny: A church at a time. And maybe you pick a couple of cities. Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York City, Atlanta, where there are these very strong Black communities. And then, get entertainers involved because the civil rights movement was full of entertainers, singers, and writers, and people listened to them. Can you imagine if Beyoncé said, “Okay, I’m going to give a concert at Ebenezer Baptist Church,”—you wouldn't be able to get down the block. Because it's Beyoncé! I don’t know what she knows about history, but she could certainly be an advocate. Or whoever the hip-hop people are. You know, you get people involved.

Ella: Yeah, absolutely.


Part Two: Gay Rights, Writing, and Sinister Wisdom

Ella Stern: You talked a little bit about the banning of gay books. Can you talk to me about how you’ve seen queer rights change throughout your lifetime and where you think things are going in terms of queer rights?

Penny Mickelbury: Well, let’s start from the fact that when I was your age, we didn’t have any rights. And you did well to keep your sexual preferences and orientations to yourself. You could lose your job. Not “could”—you would lose your job, get kicked out of school. Some kids—and more than a few—got kicked out of their homes. There were no rights.

And there certainly weren’t any books. And I think that’s one of the most important differences. There was no place to learn about who you were. I knew I liked girls, but there was nobody to tell it to. Until, as I got older and left Atlanta and moved to Washington, I met other women like myself. But it was still just this small group of people. And it was to our advantage to keep that information to ourselves because we could all lose our jobs. We’d all be fired and there was nobody to talk to. There was no information.

And then, I learned about Lammas bookstore. The women’s bookstore; it was on Capitol Hill at that time. And I was sort of intimidated and afraid to go in there. I mean, I loved bookstores and I loved books, but how do I ask them, “Where are the books for those of us who love women?” Well, half the books in that store were books [for those of us who love women]. And the women who owned and ran the store offered information and help. I was out of college, I was working, and that was the first time I knew that there was a place to go.

And it has evolved to what we have now. Now, you say “LBGTQA” and some other stuff, [but] we didn’t know all that stuff. There were boys, and there were girls. And then there was another category, and we all knew who these people were, who were what we would now call transgender. We didn’t have a name [for that back then]. They just were as they were. And some of us were part of a social network that included those people, and some of us knew that there were places where they absolutely were not included or tolerated. And so we had our own discrimination within our own group. There were people that we discriminated against because they weren’t—and this is going to sound weird—they weren’t normal. What was normal? We’re not normal to most people. I mean, [are you] going to go to your job and go, “Oh, excuse me, would you like to meet my girlfriend?” I don’t think so. “Can I bring my girlfriend to the office Christmas party?” I don’t think so.

And so the change that exists now, we never could have imagined. We never could have imagined being able to be open and accepted in many places. Elected officials, gay judges and lawyers—what? We never would have [imagined] it. And being called, being able to say “queer” without it being a provocation, without it being a slam. You didn’t call anybody queer, you know? But within our community, we appropriated that term. I personally don’t like it for myself. I am a lesbian. But I’m not going to get mad at somebody because he says, “Okay, you go here with the queer people.” Okay, if I must, I will, but I’d much rather be where the girls are, you know, where are all the women? That’s where I want to be.

Ella: And what do you think are some of the most important things for society to keep doing in terms of gay rights? What are the places where we most need improvement?

Penny: Well, people have got to stand up en masse against this book-banning crap. And people have to not be afraid to normalize those people in their communities who are same-gender loving. Nobody said you had to be gay. You don’t have to. You don’t have to do anything. But you can’t stop me. And that’s what I think needs to happen: people need to stop being afraid, stop worrying about what somebody else thinks.

And this whole evangelical crap is just another way of giving people permission to discriminate against everybody—and they hate everybody. People need to start standing up [against] that. We [need to be] saying, “No. Not where I live. Not on my watch. No, I do not accept your position on this.” You can believe what you like, but you don’t have the right to inflict it on other people. I don’t care where you go to church, but you don’t get to preach your thing as a blanket, “This is the way because God said.” To whom? God told you of all the people God could tell something to? I don’t think so. Whatever God you believe in, she didn’t tell you. There were some other people she might have told, but not you. Everybody says we can’t criticize it. [But] we can, and we must. We’ve got to stop letting people get away with that crap. Because then it becomes normal. It’s the same thing as Trump and those fools. We have normalized this evangelical whatever-they-are. Ain’t nothing normal about that. What you believe is your business; I don’t want to hear it. I’m not trying to convert you to Buddhism. I'm a Buddhist, but that ain’t nobody’s business but mine. I’m not trying to convert you.

Ella: Yeah, absolutely. People who are using their religion to hate others are not using it right.

Penny: Absolutely. And there’s nothing normal about that. Why is religion in this conversation anyway?

Ella: Exactly. And you talked about the importance of fighting against the banning of LGBTQ+ books. Especially given that, how does it feel to be working on this Lesbian Stories edition of Sinister Wisdom?

Penny: There are times when I feel a little bit out of my element because all of these wonderful women that I’m working with have tremendous experience as editors. I’m comfortable holding my own among writers, but I’m not an editor. However, I can say that I have been edited by some of the best, so I know what it’s supposed to look like. Katherine Forrest was my first editor, and I am never too far away from her advice. And the editor that I have now at Bywater, Fay Jacobs—I would walk to Delaware [where she lives] if she said, “Look, we need to have a meeting, and I need for you to walk here.” That is how unwavering I am in my belief in her ability. She does what a good editor is supposed to do, which is help a writer make a better book. And I have Rachel and Katherine and Judith to guide me along the way if I feel like I’m out of my element. I am very, very happy to be a part of this effort.

Ella: This issue of Sinister Wisdom centers on how lesbians of different ages are building off of each other’s work and stories. How do you feel about that? What excites you about it?

Penny: I think it’s brilliant because that may be the best way, maybe even the only way, for me to access young lesbian writers. I don’t know any. And I certainly am not likely to encounter them in a social setting. We don’t hang out with the same people, not because we don’t like the same people, but they don’t hang out with people my age, and I don’t hang out with people your age. Even my nieces are older than you are. And the great-nieces are too young to be hanging out with anybody right now. And I think I can speak for my contemporaries [in that we would love to be introduced to and meet with young women writers.]

I’m excited about being able to read the writings [in Sinister Wisdom]. I want to know what [young writers] are thinking, if it’s any different than what I thought in my 20s. I’d love to be able to communicate with them, but in this format, most of my communicating will be with Catherine and Judith and Rachel because we will be talking about the work and what it’s saying. I have no idea what to expect. But I’m open to it, as are we all. We’re all of a different generation, but we love writing. And we were once 20- and 30-something, so we know how it felt to have somebody’s eyes on your work and [be] waiting for the judgment. I don’t think any of us have gotten so old that we have forgotten that, you know?

Ella: Yeah. And people of my generation don’t [often] get to talk to any older gay people, so it’s always really special to be able to do that and thank your generation for everything you did that gets us what we have today. I think there’s not nearly enough intergenerational communication about that sort of thing.

Penny: There isn’t. And I love hearing that from you. And I’m going to speak for myself, but I think I can also speak for Catherine and Judith: reach out. You know how to find us. And then ask us who else we know. “I know you know some more writers. Introduce me to some.” Happy to do that. Because it’s important for us to know that all that stuff, all those years, didn’t just vanish, evaporate. That people still read it, that young people are still reading and going, “Wow, that’s a pretty good story. Even if it is written by somebody older than my grandmother, [it’s] still a pretty good story.” So reach out, talk to us, let us know what you need to know.

Ella: That’s awesome. And one last conversation topic before we wrap up: can you tell me more about your career writing books? I feel like we’ve been circling around it this whole time.

Penny: Oh, my. My career writing books. I left journalism because it had become the news business and not the profession of journalism. Well, that ain’t what I signed up for. But writing has always been a part of my life. I mean, I’ve always written, always. So I’m going to try to write a book. And a friend of mine said to me, “Well, write a mystery because you read them all the time.” And I did. My parents read mysteries; I’ve been reading mysteries since I [was young]. So I said okay. And the first lesbian mystery I read was a Katherine Forrest book. I didn’t know lesbians wrote mysteries. And [from] the women’s bookstore in Westwood [called Sisterhood], [I] got a bunch of books by lesbians. I was like, “Holy crap. I didn’t know this existed.” And I have been at it ever since.

I've got 15 or 16 novels published, most of them lesbian-focused and lesbian-centered. But I know I am not everybody’s cup of tea. I don’t write romances, and I don’t write the easy way out because life just ain’t that easy for so many people. And people have told me they don’t want to talk [or hear] about this stuff. Okay. But it’s what I write. I was talking to a friend recently who was being published by one of the big lesbian presses that wrote a lot of romances, but she couldn’t get her book published because she was told—by the editor—that nobody wanted to read about young Black girls finding themselves as lesbians, as youngsters. And it didn’t bother her to say that to a Black writer. Well, there are lots of people who want to read about this.

I love writing it; I love reading it. When I used to teach, I loved teaching it. And I’m always on the lookout for a good writer. It’s like, “Where’s this story that I haven’t read, for somebody to give me?” That’s one of the reasons I’m really looking forward to this process. What are young people thinking about? What do you think about? What do you want to write about? And, [I know this] because I do it, you write about stuff you’d like to read about. So I’m looking forward to it.

Ella: Is there anything else you wanted to add?

Penny: I really do hope that you and the other young people in this program will reach out to us, that you will access us when you think we can be helpful. As I said before, I think I can speak for Catherine and Judith—and Rachel, although Rachel sees you guys on a regular basis because she teaches you—[in saying that] we not only want to hear from you, we need to hear from you. Most of us don’t have children and grandchildren. Unless we teach, we have no idea what you all are thinking, or what you’re feeling, or what you’re reading, or what you think about what we write. I’d love to know what you think about what I write. The issues that I write about [are faced by] everybody in this society. But if you’re not feeling represented, I’d love to know that. I really would. And tell your friends. If I’ve written a book and there’s a young person [in it] and you think I don’t know anybody who acts like this, please tell me. I’d like to know. I appreciate the opportunity to interact with young people and I miss being able to do it. I used to teach, [but] I don’t do that anymore. So I’d love to have the experience.

Ella: I’m hoping to read some of your books because I’ve been looking for more mysteries to read, so what better place to start?

Penny: Okay, well, mysteries I write, and historical fiction. That’s what I do now, is historical. So please read them, and let me know.

Ella: Awesome. I will. Thank you so much for your time. It’s been incredible to talk to you.

Penny: You’re very welcome. And please feel free to reach out anytime.

Ella: I will.

Ella Stern conducted this interview on February 14, 2024.


Penny Mickelbury is the author of 15 novels, a collection of short stories, and a contributor to half a dozen short story collections. She is a Lammy and Goldie finalist. She is the 2020 recipient of the Alice B Medal. She was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame in 2019.

Ella Stern (she/her) is a first-year student at Macalester College in St. Paul. She is interning for the upcoming “Lesbian Stories” issue of Sinister Wisdom. Ella loves writing, interviewing, intergenerational communication, and lesbians, and she has loved incorporating all of these into this project.

Mikayla Hamilton Interviews Ben Negin (Benadryl)


Q: How did the Boone Barbies come to be?

A: The Boone Barbies was founded in November 2021 after Molly Pocket and Benadryl met at SAGA’s [Appalachian State University’s Sexuality and Gender Alliance] amateur drag show. We were both new to drag at the time and quickly fell in love with the art form. However, there were not many drag opportunities or events in town at the time, so we founded the group to bring more drag to the area. We’ve since put on over 50 shows and have been able to work with so many amazing performers. Our first show ever was at Lily’s Snack Bar, which continues to be our central venue. However, we have also performed at Legends, App Theatre, Coyote Kitchen, Lost Province, Bayou Smokehouse, Wildwood Community Market, with various grounds on campus, Boone and Greensboro Pride, and many more!


Q: What drives you to perform?

A: I am driven to perform because it serves as an outlet for creativity, expression, activism, and emotions. In terms of creativity, I love dyeing and styling my own wigs, making most of my own outfits, painting unique makeup looks, and putting together my numbers. When it comes to expression, when I am able to perform in drag, I am at my purest and fullest level of self-expression. When I am in drag, it feels like I am showing who I am to the fullest extent. I also use drag as activism. Money is donated from as many shows as possible, our social media accounts are used to promote civic engagement, and my performances often hold a political message as well. I combine my drag activism with other activism, such as working with App State admin on policy issues. For example, through my student activism, I worked to change the App Card policy to allow people’s correct names to be displayed and then raised money for students to get a new card for free at a show. Lastly, I bring what I am going through at the time into my performance. Whether going through a breakup or celebrating a law school acceptance, it is all on the table when I perform.


Q: What would you say is the goal of the Boone Barbies?

A: The goal of the Boone Barbies is to create queer spaces for performers and audience members alike. To give opportunities to drag performers and make sure that they are paid for their work and their art. To raise money for charity and raise awareness of political issues. To build community centered around love for all. Molly Pocket and I are both moving this summer, so we also are aiming to leave the Boone Barbies behind to the next generation, so drag will stick around in Boone forever.





Q: Have any of you grown up in the South? If so, would you say that the social environment of the region had an effect on your self-discovery? If not, does working or living in the social environment of the region have an effect on you?

A: I was born in New Jersey but moved to Greensboro, NC, when I was 3. I then moved to Boone for college when I was 19. Growing up mostly in the South has definitely had an impact on my self-discovery. From HB2 to the current anti-LGBTQIA+ pieces of legislation, it is hard to be yourself, let alone be yourself in drag on a big stage. Other things that come along with the South are being harassed verbally and physically for being queer, facing discrimination at work and in school, and being told over and over again who you are and that who you are is bad. Overall, the main impact that all of this has is a growing trauma that accumulates over time. I often feel defeated that when all we do is work hard and strive to be the best people we can be, it can be reduced to hatred so quickly. However, I also take it as a motivator to never stop and to make sure that I prove myself against these small-minded people.


Q: The South definitely has a reputation, and rightfully so, of being not very inclusive of the queer community. Can you speak on the importance of safe spaces for the queer community in areas like Boone?

A: It is important to have queer spaces in Boone in order to combat the anti-LGBTQIA+ actions that are all around us, like water. It can serve as an escape from that. Queer spaces are also very important to have in Boone in the sense that it is a large college town. For many young queer people, it is their first time away from a dangerous home life. For these people to have something like a drag show to come to, it sends the message that they are going to be okay. That in the life they now get to build for themselves, there is going to be a space that is safe and fun and accepting for them. Queer spaces can be the first time in people’s lives that who they are is not taken as a negative thing.


Q: What are some positive changes you have seen in the community as a result of the work you do?

A: The queer community, and its allies, have definitely become closer in the wake of the Boone Barbies being created. This can be seen in the crowds that frequent our events or even in looking at the growth of something like our Instagram account. Also, many people have been able to experience drag for the first time, both as performers and as audience members. For me, and for these people, discovering drag changes someone's life for the better. It can make people more hopeful, more tolerant, and more aware of the issues that queer people and gender-nonconforming people face. Money has been poured back into the community through show proceeds and even events fully for charity. Both App State and Town of Boone policies have become more inclusive. Overall we have been able to show that queer strength overpowers hate any day of the week.


Q: How do you hope to be remembered by the queer community?

A: I hope to be remembered by the queer community as a trailblazer in the area. Molly Pocket and I, as well as Yutell Mi and many other amazing drag performers, have put in so much hard work to build the drag scene in Boone up stronger. Many came before us, and many will come after, but for our time in Boone, we have truly been able to create something so special. I hope to be remembered for this hard work and commitment to my community. I hope to be remembered as an example of what can happen when you turn ideas into reality, saying yes to whatever comes your way, and building a queerer world through the power of drag.

This interview was conducted remotely by Mikayla Hamilton on February 14, 2024.
Photo 1 by Kyla Willoughby, 2023 and Photo 2 by Liv Ernest, 2023.


Mikayla Hamilton is an intern at Sinister Wisdom. She holds a BA in English and Creative Writing from Lees-McRae College. In her work, she strives to highlight the many different forms individuality can take. You can find more from her in The Salisbury Post and Ragweed, the student literary journal of Lees-McRae College.