Most editors don’t believe that anybody reads lesbians except lesbians, although they believe that lots of people want to read gay men, particularly gay white men. They certainly don’t believe that people want to read people of color. So there are all these personal biases, and their inability to be imaginitive with marketing, with developing audiences, keeps the market pretty small.I mean, when I was looking for a publisher originally for my novel The Gilda Stories in the early 90’s, I had a very reputable literary agent who sent my novel around to all the big houses, and it was rejected by everyone. And my agent said, “Do you really want to see anything?” and I said, “You can tell me the highlights of what they had to say.” One of the letters was “well, we published our black woman this year” and another one was “well your main character is black, she’s a lesbian, she’s a vampire, that’s too complicated.” And all I can say is, 20 years later she’s still in print because a feminist press took a chance on publishing it. I feel like the very limited intellectual and imaginative capabilities of the mainstream often leave writers like me out in the cold.
Some of my current favorite creations on my fridge by various people
