Reno is a city in the northwest section of the U.S. state of Nevada, along the Nevada–California border. It is the county seat and most populous city of Washoe County. Sitting in the High Eastern Sierra foothills, in the Truckee River valley, on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada, it is about 23 miles (37 km) northeast of Lake Tahoe. Known as "The Biggest Little City in the World", Reno is the 80th most populous city in the United States, the fourth most populous city in Nevada, and the most populous in Nevada outside the Las Vegas Valley. The city had a population of 264,165 at the 2020 census.
Danielle Fernandes Dominique Schuelein-Steel is an American writer, best known for her romance novels. She is the bestselling living author and one of the best-selling fiction authors of all time, with over 800 million copies sold. As of 2021, she has written 190 books, including over 140 novels.
George Harry Bowering, is a prolific Canadian novelist, poet, historian, and biographer. He was the first Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate.
A Bond girl is a character who is a love interest, female companion or (occasionally) an adversary of James Bond in a novel, film, or video game. Bond girls occasionally have names that are double entendres or sexual puns, such as Plenty O'Toole, Holly Goodhead, or Xenia Onatopp. The female leads in the films, such as Ursula Andress, Honor Blackman, or Eva Green, can also be referred to as "Bond girls". The term Bond girl may also be considered as an anachronism, with some female cast members in the films preferring the designation Bond woman.
Sarah Ann Waters is a Welsh novelist. She is best known for her novels set in Victorian society and featuring lesbian protagonists, such as Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith.
Jane Vance Rule was a Canadian-American writer of lesbian-themed works. Her first novel, Desert of the Heart, appeared in 1964, when gay activity was still a criminal offence. It turned Rule into a reluctant media celebrity, and brought her massive correspondence from women who had never dared explore lesbianism. Rule became an active anti-censorship campaigner, and served on the executive of the Writers' Union of Canada.
Lesbian pulp fiction is a genre of lesbian literature that refers to any mid-20th century paperback novel or pulp magazine with overtly lesbian themes and content. Lesbian pulp fiction was published in the 1950s and 1960s by many of the same paperback publishing houses as other genres of fiction, including westerns, romances, and detective fiction. Because very little other literature was available for and about lesbians at this time, quite often these books were the only reference the public had for modeling what lesbians were. English professor Stephanie Foote commented on the importance of lesbian pulp novels to the lesbian identity prior to the rise of organized feminism: "Pulps have been understood as signs of a secret history of readers, and they have been valued because they have been read. The more they are read, the more they are valued, and the more they are read, the closer the relationship between the very act of circulation and reading and the construction of a lesbian community becomes…. Characters use the reading of novels as a way to understand that they are not alone." Joan Nestle refers to lesbian pulp fiction as “survival literature.” Lesbian pulp fiction provided representation for lesbian identities, brought a surge of awareness to lesbians, and created space for lesbian organizing leading up to Stonewall.
Theresa Lynn Ann Evelyn Ivens is an American actress and author. She is best known for her roles as Simone Torres in the soap opera All My Children (2001–2007) and Orchid in the digital series The Bay (2012–2020), the latter of which earned her a nomination for the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Digital Daytime Drama Series in 2018.
Ann Weldy, better known by her pen name Ann Bannon, is an American author who, from 1957 to 1962, wrote six lesbian pulp fiction novels known as The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. The books' enduring popularity and impact on lesbian identity has earned her the title "Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction". Bannon was a young housewife trying to address her own issues of sexuality when she was inspired to write her first novel. Her subsequent books featured four characters who reappeared throughout the series, including her eponymous heroine, Beebo Brinker, who came to embody the archetype of a butch lesbian. The majority of her characters mirrored people she knew, but their stories reflected a life she did not feel she was able to live. Despite her traditional upbringing and role in married life, her novels defied conventions for romance stories and depictions of lesbians by addressing complex homosexual relationships.
Marijane Agnes Meaker was an American writer who, along with Tereska Torres, was credited with launching the lesbian pulp fiction genre, the only accessible novels on that theme in the 1950s.
Desert Hearts is a 1985 American romantic drama film directed by Donna Deitch. The screenplay, written by Natalie Cooper, is an adaptation of the 1964 lesbian novel Desert of the Heart by Jane Rule. Set in Reno, Nevada in 1959, it tells the story of a university professor awaiting a divorce who finds her true self through a relationship with another, more self-confident woman. The film stars Helen Shaver and Patricia Charbonneau with a supporting performance by Audra Lindley.
Barbara Farrell Vucanovich was an American Republican politician who was the first woman from Nevada elected to the United States House of Representatives, in which she served representing Nevada from 1983 to 1997.
Lesbian literature is a subgenre of literature addressing lesbian themes. It includes poetry, plays, fiction addressing lesbian characters, and non-fiction about lesbian-interest topics. A similar term is sapphic literature, encompassing works that feature love between women that are not necessarily lesbian.
Riverside Hotel is a former hotel and casino located in Downtown Reno, Nevada, that sits on the exact location where Reno began in 1859. The building now houses apartments and studios for artists and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives is a 1992 Canadian hybrid drama-documentary film about Canadian lesbians navigating their sexuality while homosexuality was still criminalized. Interviews with lesbian elders are juxtaposed with a fictional story, shot in fifties melodrama style, of a small-town girl's first night with another woman. It also inserts covers of lesbian pulp fiction. The film presents the stories of lesbians whose desire for community led them on a search for the few public beer parlours or bars that would tolerate openly queer women in the 1950s and 60s in Canada. It was written and directed by Lynne Fernie and Aerlyn Weissman and featured author Ann Bannon. It premiered at the 1992 Toronto Festival of Festivals and was released in the United States on 4 August 1993. It was produced by Studio D, the women's studio of the National Film Board of Canada.
Ian Fleming: Where Bond Began was a 2008 documentary presented by Joanna Lumley which explored the life of the author Ian Fleming and the origin of his character James Bond. It was first broadcast on BBC One at 6:10pm on Sunday 19 October 2008 and was commissioned to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Fleming's birth and the then forthcoming release of the film Quantum of Solace.
Edie & Pen, also known as Desert Gamble, is a 1996 film directed by Matthew Irmas and written by Victoria Tennant. It had its world premiere on 10 May 1996 at the Cannes Film Festival and stars Stockard Channing and Jennifer Tilly as the titular Edie and Pen, two women who make a connection in a Vegas bar. The film was later given a cable release on HBO starting in July 1996 and was also released on DVD by Image Entertainment in 2003.
Nevada: A Novel is the debut novel from author Imogen Binnie, released by Topside Press in 2013. Nevada follows the story of Maria Griffiths, a trans woman living in Brooklyn, who embarks on a road trip headed towards the West Coast where she meets James, a Walmart employee questioning his gender. The novel was not an initial success, but gained an online following and was reissued in 2022. In the years following its release, it has been credited by literary critic Stephanie Burt as having started a transgender literary movement and inspiring authors such as Torrey Peters and Casey Plett.
Naomi Royde-Smith (1875–1964) was a British writer who published nearly four dozen novels, biographies, and plays. She was the first woman literary editor of the Westminster Gazette and in that capacity published the early work of such writers as Rupert Brooke, Graham Greene, Elizabeth Bowen, and Rose Macaulay.
Ann Geraldine Mary Fleming was a British aristocrat and socialite. She had three husbands: Lord O'Neill, Lord Rothermere and Ian Fleming.
