Kristyn Dunnion is a Canadian fiction writer and performance artist. [1] She has published four novels and a short story collection to date. Her short fiction appears in literary journals, including Grain Magazine, The Tahoma Literary Review, and Cosmonauts Avenue, as well as in several anthologies. Dunnion is the 2015 Machigonne Fiction prize winner for the short story, "Last Call at the Dogwater Inn," published in The New Guard Volume V. For several years she performed cabaret shows under the name Miss Kitty Galore, and was the bassist in the all-female heavy metal band Heavy Filth (2008-2011). She currently plays bass in the Toronto-based rock band Bone Donor. Her more recent literary work is aimed at an adult audience, but earlier writing was primarily intended for young adult readers. Her writing incorporates aspects of science fiction, punk culture and horror literature, [2] although she has also published several stories in anthologies of adult erotic literature.
Dunnion studied English and theatre at McGill University and the University of Guelph. [1]
Her short story collection The Dirt Chronicles was a nominee for the 2012 Lambda Literary Awards in the category of lesbian fiction. [3] In 2021, she won the ReLit Award for short fiction for her 2020 short story collection Stoop City. [4]
Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the "Lammys", are awarded yearly by Lambda Literary to recognize the crucial role LGBTQ+ writers play in shaping the world. The Lammys celebrate the very best in LGBTQ+ literature. The awards were instituted in 1989.
Laura Antoniou is an American novelist. She is the author of The Marketplace series of BDSM-themed novels, which were originally published under the pen name of Sara Adamson.
Lesléa Newman is an American author, editor, and feminist best known for the children's book Heather Has Two Mommies. Four of her young adult novels have been finalists for the Lambda Literary Award for Children's and Young Adult Literature, making her one of the most celebrated authors in the category.
Julia Watts is an American fiction writer.
Steve Berman is an American editor, novelist and short story writer. He writes in the field of queer speculative fiction.
Cleis Press is an American independent publisher of books in the areas of sexuality, erotica, feminism, gay and lesbian studies, gender studies, fiction, and human rights. The press was founded in 1980 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It later moved to San Francisco and was based out of Berkeley until its purchase by Start Media in 2014. Its founders were Frédérique Delacoste, Felice Newman and Mary Winfrey Trautmann, who collectively financed, wrote and published the press's first book Fight Back: Feminist Resistance to Male Violence in 1981. In 1987, they published Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry by Delacoste with Priscilla Alexander.
Connie Wilkins is an American author of lesbian themed science fiction and fantasy erotica published under the title Wild Flesh. Wilkins is based in Massachusetts.
Radclyffe is an American author of lesbian romance, paranormal romance, erotica, and mystery. She has authored multiple short stories, written fan fiction, and edited numerous anthologies. Radclyffe is a member of the Saints and Sinners Literary Hall of Fame and has won numerous literary awards, including the RWA/GDRWA Booksellers' Best award, the RWA/Orange County Book Buyers Best award, the RWA/New England Bean Pot award, the RWA/VCRW Laurel Wreath award, the RWA/FTHRW Lories award, the RWA/HODRW Aspen Gold award, the RWA Prism award, the Golden Crown Literary Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. She is a 2003/04 recipient of the Alice B Readers Award for her body of work as well as a member of the Golden Crown Literary Society, Pink Ink, and the Romance Writers of America. In 2014, the Lambda Literary Foundation awarded Barot with the Dr. James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist award acknowledging her as an established author with a strong following and the promise of future high-quality work. In 2015 she was a featured author in the award-winning documentary film about the romance writing and reading community, Love Between the Covers, from Blueberry Hill Productions. In 2019 she was named a Trailblazer in Romance by the Romance Writers of America, for her works of LGBTQ+ fiction. In 2021, she was named one of The Advocate's Women of the Year.
Katherine V. Forrest is a Canadian-born American writer, best known for her novels about lesbian police detective Kate Delafield. Her books have won and been finalists for Lambda Literary Award twelve times, as well as other awards. She has been referred to by some "a founding mother of lesbian fiction writing."
Jessica Amanda Salmonson is an American author and editor of fantasy and horror fiction and poetry. She lives on Puget Sound with her partner, artist and editor Rhonda Boothe.
Zoe Whittall is a Canadian poet, novelist and TV writer. She has published five novels and three poetry collections to date.
Lee Lynch is an American author writing primarily on lesbian themes, specifically noted for authentic characterizing of butch and femme characters in fiction. She is the recipient of a Golden Crown Literary Society Trail Blazer award for lifetime achievement, as well as being the namesake for the Golden Crown Literary Society's Lee Lynch Classics Award.
Amber Dawn is a Canadian writer, who won the 2012 Dayne Ogilvie Prize, presented by the Writers' Trust of Canada to an emerging lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender writer.
Alix Ohlin is a Canadian novelist and short-story writer. She was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, and lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is a recipient of the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Literature for her short story collection, We Want What We Want.
Dena Hankins is an American novelist and short story author, best known for queer and transgender erotic romance. Her short stories have been published in several erotica anthologies, including Best Women's Erotica of the Year, Volume 8 edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel. Her non-fiction articles about sailing, electric motors for sailboats, and DIY boat repair have been published by the trusted British magazine Practical Boat Owner and she edited several editions of the boater's cruising guides published by The Waterway Guide.
Casey Plett is a Canadian writer, best known for her novel Little Fish, her Lambda Literary Award winning short story collection, A Safe Girl to Love, and her Giller Prize-nominated short story collection, A Dream of a Woman. Plett is a transgender woman, and she often centers this experience in her writing.
Carellin Brooks is a Canadian writer, whose debut novel One Hundred Days of Rain won the Edmund White Award in 2016 and the ReLit Award for Fiction in 2017.
Jae is a German author of lesbian fiction. Her work is published in English as well as in German.
Frances Boyle is a Canadian writer from Ottawa, Ontario. Her debut short story collection Seeking Shade, published in 2020, was nominated for the 2021 ReLit Award for short fiction and the 2021 Danuta Gleed Literary Award.
Jess Wells is an American author of modern realism, historical fiction and magical realism. She blogs on under-represented women in history. Wells participated in the foundational years of lesbian and feminist publishing during the time of second-wave feminism in the 1980s and 1990s.