Useful websites, local and overseas

Interviews with Renée (1929-2023) on RNZ plus a lecture and her blog

Mia Farlane.

Are you okay - a talk by Mia Farlane

Recording of a talk at LILAC on 25 March 2021 by Mia Farlane on PrideNZ.com. Mia spoke about writing and researching her next novel Parallel Hell and read excerpts from it. Mia writes darkly humorous literary fiction re flailing relationships, failed intimacies and mental health. Her first novel Footnotes to Sex is available at LILAC.

Lil O'Brien.

So no one told you life was gonna be this GAY - interview with Lil O'Brien

  • An interview with Lil O'Brien, author of Not that I'd kiss a girl, an account of her experience growing up lesbian in New Zealand. The interview is a long read but excellent - as is the book which is available at LILAC.
  • A Spinoff Sunday essay by Lil O'Brien about writing, editing and the publication of her book.

Interview with Julie Glamuzina about Dr Hjelmar von Dannevill

Dr Hjelmar von Dannevill.

PrideNZ.com has a podcast of author and researcher Julie Glamuzina talking about the extraordinary life of Dr Hjelmar von Dannevill. The doctor arrived in New Zealand in 1911 with little documentation and began working in a health home in Miramar. During WW1 von Dannevill was investigated and then imprisoned on Matiu/Somes Island in Wellington harbour.
Julie gave a talk at LILAC on 26 February 2020 about Hjelmar von Dannevill and research for her biography of her.

Sappho.

Dead Lesbian Poets: A Meditation in Six Parts

This article by Julie R. Enszer on the Lambda Literary website discusses lesbian poets from Sappho to contemporary American poets from several decades and locales - including the active and vibrant lesbian literary scene in Chicago during the 1970s and later, Michigan in the 1980s and 1990s, and San Francisco from the 1960s.

From the Auckland Writers Festival 2015 - 2019:

Book lists, book reviews, bibliographies, blogs

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Online magazines

  • Lesbian News Aotearoa - formerly in print as the Tamaki Makaurau Lesbian Newsletter; online publication suspended in Janaury 2019.

Digitisation projects

  • Dyke, a quarterly, published in New York City 1975-1979 - an annotated archive of issues, letters, ephemera and some side trips
  • Broadsheet - New Zealand's feminist magazine published 1972 - 1997. Plenty of lesbian content and lesbian authors
  • Sinister Wisdom, a multicultural lesbian literary & arts journal. Published since July 1976; digitisation project completed to no. 73 Sept 2008 [Feb 2019]
  • Spare Rib, feminist magazine with significant lesbian content, published in the UK 1972-1993
  • Strange Sisters - (an archive) of lesbian paperback artwork from the 50s and 60s. LILAC has the book Strange sisters : the art of lesbian pulp fiction 1949-1969 by Jayne Zimet, shelved at 700 in the nonfiction section.
  • Trouble & Strife, radical feminist magazine with significant lesbian content, published in the UK 1983-2002 [issues scanned but not digitised]
  • Lesbian magazines that burned brightly, died hard, left a mark - a brief history 38 American magazines, from Autostradle.com
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Lesbian history


... and some New Zealand women's history

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Interviews with (and about) authors

  • Val McDermid interviewed by Kim Hill on Radio New Zealand (14 Sept 2019)
     
  • Patricia Highsmith was the subject for LILAC's book group in February 2018. There is lots of great Highsmith material on You Tube. This includes a recording of the BBC Desert Island Discs interview from 1979, comments by lesbian authors Alison Bechdel and Terry Castle and a discussion with her biographer Joan Schenkar. There are also lots of recordings related to the 2015 movie "Carol"
  • Black Scottish author Jackie Kay interviewed by Nicola Sturgeon ... and there are a few other videos of her on youtube.
  • A 1962 TV interview with Natalie Clifford Barney (1876-1972). Filmed at her home in the Latin Quarter of Paris, she talks about her life and the great writers and personalities she met and entertained in her salon. There is more information about her on wikipedia.
  • 1975 TV movie The Writer in America: Janet Flanner - Janet Flanner (1892-1978) wrote a weekly column for The New Yorker for 50 years, under the pen name "Genêt". As well as being one of the "women about Paris". (running time 29:16)
  • Jane Rule. An interview with Jane Rule (1931-2007) in which she talks about her work as a writer, the effects of that work on a larger audience, the film adaptation of 'Desert of the Heart', motherhood (which often appears as a theme in her work), her move from the US to Canada, teaching, art, loneliness, and much more.

Same Same But Different

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Queer libraries, archives & museums

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Local queer websites

Book shops!!


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