Joan Nestle

A Fragile Union is the long-awaited collection from feminist historian Joan Nestle. Nestle explores the “fragile unions” of contemporary lesbian life, both personal and historic.

Surveys a decade of the attempt to reconstruct and understand the meaning and value of butch-femme relations for the contemporary lesbian, drawing on oral history, fiction, poetry, and fantasy

A proud working class woman, an "out" lesbian long before the Rainbow revolution, Joan Nestle has stood at the forefront of American freedom struggles from the McCarthy era to the present day. Available for the first time in years, this revised classic collection of personal essays offers an intimate account of the lesbian, feminist, and civil rights movements.

From the most celebrated anthologizers of gay and lesbian writing, here are 30 profiles in camaraderie that reveal the loving, sometimes troubled, but always remarkable relationships between lesbians and gay men. Includes brilliant writings from Paul Monette, Katherine Forrest, Jewelle Gomez, Bernard Cooper, and others.

The bestselling lesbian erotica series in America! Capturing the hottest, freshest lesbian erotica of the year. "For me, the best erotic stories closely resemble the people who make my skin flush hot pink and send my head into overdrive. They're fiercely intelligent, confident and intricate. They can sweep me off my feet or catch me off guard. They are tender and nasty and just a little bit dangerous. They are not always what you expect them to be." ―Tristan Taormino, series editor

The 29 stories in the volume range from the daring and erotic "Eat" by Sapphire to Dorothy Allison's energetic Southern tale "A Lesbian Appetite" to Valerie Miner's suspenseful "Trespassing." Whether its the joy or loss of love, the difficulty of family relations, or the pain of death, these stories bring to life the unique lesbian experience.

Perhaps more than any other issue, gender identity has galvanized the queer community in recent years. The questions go beyond the nature of male/female to a yet-to-be-traversed region that lies somewhere between and beyond biologically determined gender. In this groundbreaking anthology, three experts in gender studies and politics navigate around rigid, societally imposed concepts of two genders to discover and illuminate the limitless possibilities of identity. Thirty first-person accounts of gender construction, exploration, and questioning provide a groundwork for cultural discussion, political action, and even greater possibilities of autonomous gender choices. Noted scholar Joan Nestle is joined by internationally prominent gender warrior Riki Anne Wilchins and historian Clare Howell to provide a societal, cultural, and political exploration of gender identity.

Twenty-eight short works address a range of issues relevant to the lesbian community, such as love and sex, relationships, sexual abuse, and AIDS

The third volume of the Women on Women series features brilliant writing from a generation of women writers, including Kate Millett, Michelle Cliff, and Barbara Smith. From the traditional to the transgressive, this award-winning series presents the best short work by the best writers of the lesbian community.

Contains information on every conceivable aspect of lesbian life and concerns, from abortion to African-American lesbians, lesbian mothers, gay civil rights, women's liberation movement, domestic partnership, older lesbians, and Native American lesbians, to name just a few of the important subjects. The materials consist of clippings, flyers, brochures, conference materials, reports, correspondence, and other printed ephemera. A strength of the collection is its vast scope and national coverage.

A groundbreaking volume from Lamda Award-winning editors Naomi Holoch and Joan Nestle, The Vintage Book of International Lesbian Fiction presents a range of literary voices--from twenty-seven countries spanning six continents--and offers glimpses of lesbian life in unfamilar, often exotic climes. We follow an Irish woman as she travels through time in search of a wronged maiden, and anticipate the harrowing fate of a married Indian woman who pursues pleasure with her female lover under the shadow of her husbands suspicious rage. We meet a teacher in Barcelona who locks herself up in her grandmother's house with her young Columbian student, and witness a Slovenian woman's rendezvous with her long dead lover. This collection includes the work of familiar writers, as well as a number never before published in English. From the West Indies to Eastern Europe, the Middle East to Southeast Asia, Latin America to South Africa, the distinctive stories found in these pages evoke the diverse political, cultural, emotional, and sexual landscapes of each writer's life. A groundbreaking volume from the Lamda Award-winning editors Naomi Holoch and Joan Nestle, who also wrote the introduction, this collections evokes the universal urgency of persistent desire.