Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive is a Community Interest Company established to promote and benefit the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, non-binary, intersectional (LGBT+) community and their allies. Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive works to create and maintain a free and welcoming community archive space for reading, research, and socialising.
We have a physical archive which is open for visitors every Tuesday and Thursday between 11am and 4pm. The archive space hosts author events, workshops, community groups and book clubs. We also have a digital catalogue of our collection, allowing the community to find out more about LGBT+ books which aren’t typically easy to find in bookshops today.
We have a mission to:
- Bring together the queer community in Edinburgh and beyond
- Celebrate LGBT+ authors and their works
- Collect and preserve LGBT+ books (focusing on those published between 1970 and 2000)
Some background
When Lavender Menace was opened in the 1980s, and 1990s as West & Wilde, we were part of a burgeoning interest in lesbian and gay literature. We had many bestsellers from independent lesbian and gay presses and large publishers began to offer openly lesbian and gay books. It was a vibrant time for both writers and readers – read more about our history here.
Now, over 40 years later, publishers such as Gay Men’s Press, Onlywomen Press and Brilliance Books have closed. Many of the original titles we stocked, once very popular, are hard to find. At the same time, an even larger new wave of queer and LGBT+ books is being published. The titles from all eras are part of our community’s identity. They provide us with a story in a society where we have often been silenced.
After the success of James Ley’s play about our shop, Love Song to Lavender Menace, we decided to return as a queer books archive. Our mission is to collect and conserve LGBTQ+ books, preserve queer history, and provide a space for our community.
Our mission statement:
- To collect a physical archive of queer and LGBT+ books, especially those Lavender Menace Bookshop sold and those which are out of print, in order to keep them alive for readers in a way the publishing industry’s business model makes it difficult to do.
- To create a database of these and other books, both older and newer.
- To make this database interactive on a website with reviews and a blog about queer and LGBT+ books (those by or about queer and LGBT+ people or involved with queer and LGBT+ history).
- To take part in or organise events such as meetings about queer and LGBT+ writing, history and theatre, and run bookstalls, in order to promote queer and LGBT+ writing and bookselling.
- To highlight the collection’s books and (newer queer books) in the archive blog, and on social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, in order to encourage others to read them and write about them.
- To collect ephemera associated with queer bookselling, especially in Scotland.
- To build links with other queer and feminist archives, and heritage groups such as LGBT History Month, in order to promote dialogue and learn about new developments.
- To raise funds to support the archive through grants, crowdfunding donations and sales of queer book-themed products.
- To encourage donations of queer books from individuals and organisations.
- To seek partnerships with institutions to secure the archive’s future as a space for the books, a research facility, and a forum for discussion and events around queer writing.