Paula Martinac

Last updated

Paula Martinac
Born (1954-07-30) July 30, 1954 (age 70)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
OccupationWriter
NationalityAmerican
Genrefiction, non-fiction
Notable worksOut of Time, Home Movies
PartnerKatie Hogan

Paula Martinac (born July 30, 1954) is an American writer. [1] She is most noted for her novel Out of Time, which won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction at the 3rd Lambda Literary Awards in 1991. [2] The novel was also a finalist for the ALA Gay and Lesbian Book Award.

Contents

Background

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Martinac was educated at Chatham College and the College of William & Mary. [2] She worked for the West Virginia State Museum and Prentice Hall before joining the editorial collective of WomaNews in 1982. [2] She became production director of The Feminist Press in 1985, joined the editorial collective of the feminist literary magazine Conditions in 1988, and became cochair of the board of New York City's Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in 1990. [2] She was editor in chief of Q Syndicate, an LGBT syndication company, from 2001 to 2009.

Writing career

Her first book, an anthology of short stories shared with Carla Tomaso titled Voyages Out One, was published in 1989. [3] The book was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Debut Fiction at the 2nd Lambda Literary Awards.

Out of Time, her debut novel, followed in 1990. [1] She followed up with the novels Home Movies (1993) [4] and Chicken (1997). [5] Home Movies was a Lambda finalist for Lesbian Fiction at the 6th Lambda Literary Awards.

She published a number of non-fiction works in the 1990s, including a 1996 biography of k.d. lang, [6] The Queerest Places: A National Guide to Gay and Lesbian Historic Sites (1997), [7] and The Lesbian and Gay Book of Love and Marriage: Creating the Stories of Our Lives (1998). [8] From 1997 to 2005 she wrote the biweekly column "Lesbian Notions", which was syndicated to LGBT publications across the United States. [2] She has also written a number of stage plays that were produced in Pittsburgh, New York, and D.C.

In 2014 Martinac moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, where she teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. [9] The Ada Decades, her first novel since 1997, was published in 2017 [10] and was a finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction. Her fifth novel, Clio Rising, was published in April 2019 and won a Gold Medal in the 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards. [11] Two historical novels followed in 2021: "Testimony" and "Dear Miss Cushman," both published by Bywater Books. [12]

Works

Fiction

Non-fiction

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lambda Literary Awards</span> Award for published works that celebrate or explore LGBT themes

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Schulman</span> American writer (born 1958)

Sarah Miriam Schulman is an American novelist, playwright, nonfiction writer, screenwriter, gay activist, and AIDS historian. She holds an endowed chair in nonfiction at Northwestern University and is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities. She is a recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award and the Lambda Literary Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lesléa Newman</span> American author, editor, and feminist

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.

Steve Berman is an American editor, novelist and short story writer. He writes in the field of queer speculative fiction.

Martin Bauml Duberman is an American historian, biographer, playwright, and gay rights activist. Duberman is Professor of History Emeritus at Lehman College in the Bronx, New York City.

Ellen Galford is an American-born Scottish writer. She was born in the US and migrated to the United Kingdom in 1971, after a brief marriage in New York City. She came out in the mid-1970s. She has lived in Glasgow and London and now lives in Edinburgh with her partner. She is Jewish. Her works include four lesbian novels:

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."

Karin Kallmaker is an American author of lesbian fiction whose works also include those originally written under the name Laura Adams. Her writings span lesbian romance, lesbian erotica, and lesbian science-fiction/fantasy. Dubbed the Queen of Lesbian Romance, she publishes exclusively in the lesbian market as a matter of personal choice.

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.

Lucy Jane Bledsoe is an American novelist. She has received many awards for her fiction, including two National Science Foundation Artists & Writers Fellowships, a California Arts Council Fellowship, a Yaddo Fellowship, the American Library Association Stonewall Award, the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize, the Saturday Evening Post Fiction Award, the Sherwood Anderson Prize for Fiction, two Pushcart nominations, and the Devil's Kitchen Fiction Award. She is a six-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and a three-time finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award.

Lambda Literary Awards are awarded yearly by the United States-based Lambda Literary Foundation to published works that celebrate or explore LGBTQ themes. The awards are presented annually for books published in the previous year. The Lambda Literary Foundation states that its mission is "to celebrate LGBT literature and provide resources for writers, readers, booksellers, publishers, and librarians—the whole literary community."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amber Dawn</span> Canadian writer

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nina Revoyr</span> American novelist

Nina Revoyr is an American novelist and children's advocate, best known for her award-winning 2003 novel Southland. She is also executive vice president and chief operating officer of Children's Institute, Inc., which provides clinical, youth development, family support and early childhood services to children and families affected by trauma, violence and poverty in Central and South Los Angeles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raziel Reid</span> Canadian writer (born 1990)

Raziel Reid is a Canadian writer whose debut young adult novel When Everything Feels Like the Movies won the Governor General's Award for English-language children's literature at the 2014 Governor General's Awards. The novel, inspired in part by the 2008 murder of gay teenager Lawrence Fobes King, was published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2014. Its launch was marked with a national book tour with Vivek Shraya, who was simultaneously promoting her new book She of the Mountains. In 2015, Reid became adjunct professor of Creative Writing for Children and Young Adults at the University of British Columbia.

Judith Frank is an American writer and professor. She has been a two-time Lambda Literary Award nominee, winning in the Lesbian Debut Fiction category at the 17th Lambda Literary Awards in 2005 for her novel Crybaby Butch, and being a shortlisted nominee in the Gay Fiction category at the 27th Lambda Literary Awards in 2015 for All I Love and Know. She is Jewish.

<i>Sub Rosa</i> (novel) 2010 queer novel by Canadian Amber Dawn

Sub Rosa is a 2010 queer novel by Canadian Amber Dawn published by Vancouver-based Arsenal Pulp Press. The novel was Dawn's debut novel, and is a work of speculative fiction that touches on topics of sex, work, imagination, and survival. It narrates the story of "Little," a teenage girl who cannot remember her real name and ends up involved in the dark world of Sub Rosa, "a fantastical underground community of sex workers", where she enters the company of ghosts, magicians, and magical Glories. Sub Rosa won the Lambda Award for Lesbian Debut Fiction in 2011.

Cris Beam is an American writer. She is the author of nonfiction books on transgender teenagers, the U.S. foster system, and empathy, as well as a young adult novel and a short memoir.

Bisexual literature is a subgenre of LGBTQ literature that includes literary works and authors that address the topic of bisexuality or biromanticism. This includes characters, plot lines, and/or themes portraying bisexual behavior in both men and women.

Stagestruck: Theater, Aids, and the Marketing of Gay America is a non-fiction book by lesbian writer Sarah Schulman. The book examines the similarities between her novel People in Trouble and Jonathan Larson's award-winning musical Rent.

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.

References

  1. 1 2 Liz Gaist, "Paula Martinac Fills in the Pages of Lesbian History". The Advocate , December 4, 1990.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Tina Gianoulis, "Martinac, Paula (b. 1954)". Glbtq.com, 2006.
  3. Kevin Roddy, "Voyages Out 1: Lesbian Short Fiction (Book)". Library Journal , December 1, 1989.
  4. Jane Troxell, "Into the light". The Advocate, July 7, 1993.
  5. Erika Lopez, "Love, sex and other terrors". Lambda Book Report, December 1997.
  6. Sue Norkeliunas, "Junior high up: Nonfiction". School Library Journal , November 1996.
  7. Pauline Klein, "The Queerest Places: A National Guide to Gay and Lesbian Historic Sites". Library Journal , July 1, 1997.
  8. Akilah Monifa, "Like a horse & carriage?" Lambda Book Report, September 1998.
  9. Conversations: Paula Martinac, "The Ada Decades". Kansas Public Radio, June 21, 2017.
  10. Terri Schlichenmeyer, "‘The Ada Decades’ is engaging, queer-themed coming-of-age novel". The Washington Blade , June 9, 2017.
  11. "2020 Regional".
  12. "Martinac, Paula Archives".