Category: Blog
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Book Review: Waiting on a Friend by Natalie Adler
Lavender Menace volunteer Katie Marson reviews Waiting on a Friend by Natalie Adler, which will be published by Quercus Publishing later this year. Natalie Adler’s Waiting on a Friend is a heartwarming, heartbreaking, triumph of a debut. It is both a celebration of queer culture and history, and a creative condemnation of the capitalist systems…
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Reimagining the Archive with Mae Diansangu and Shane Strachan
You can now watch the recording of this event online Last year, we welcomed Mae Diansangu and Shane Strachan to the Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive for an afternoon of readings and discussion on how to reimagine archives. We explored representation in archives through an intersectional lens and interrogated how we can ensure queer stories are preserved.…
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Archiving Queer Futures: Eman Abdelhadi in conversation with Nat Raha
You can now watch the recording of this event online. Lavender Menace hosted an online discussion between two activist scholars on imagining and archiving queer futures. Dr Eman Abdelhadi is an academic, activist and writer who thinks at the intersection of gender, sexuality, religion and politics. She is an assistant professor and sociologist at the…
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Homophobia: A 20th Century Classic
How can 20th century novels help us understand homophobia? No matter how brilliantly written, many celebrated novels have homophobic elements.
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At the World’s End
Meggie’s Journeys by Margaret D’AmbrosioPolygon, 1987 A few days ago, #ReclaimTheseStreetsPorty, one of the groups formed after the abduction and presumed murder of Sarah Everard in London, attached a series of posters and banners to a fence at Portobello Beach in Edinburgh. ‘Our Bodies Our Minds Our Power’, said one. Others said, ‘Educate your sons.’…
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Unsung: the queer books that tell our story – the video
As part of this year’s LGBT History Month, Bob and Sigrid took part in a live webinar conversation on 24 February with Chris Creegan about how queer books tell our story. The conversation ran long over time with thought-provoking questions and comments from those who attended virtually – and their enthusiasm for the books, writers…
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Du Maurier’s Rebecca and Queer Culture
Why has Rebecca always had a reputation as a queer novel? Generations of gay men have declaimed the first line, spoken by Joan Fontaine in the 1940 film: ‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again’. But for most of its 82 years in print, critics dismissed it as an ordinary gothic romance. It…
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Murder in the Collective
Murder in the Collective by Barbara WilsonWomen’s Press, 1984ISBN 0704339439 ‘Safe spaces’ in 1984 were thin on the ground ‘Safe spaces’ for queer people were rarely heard of in 1984. This mystery by a lesbian writer explores the idea of ‘safe’ and ‘dangerous’. In a liberal, wealthy city, challenging the system isn’t supposed to lead…
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Maybe the Moon
Maybe the Moon Bantam Press 1993, a division of Transworld Publishers LtdISBN 0593 027655 The Lavender Menace LGBT+ Archive has been growing for about a year now. One of our books was rescued from a remainder shop – Maybe the Moon by Armistead Maupin, a hardback novel published in 1993. On the front is a…
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Welcome to our blog
We’ve already started blogging about the books in our growing archive – found in our own and friends’ collections and secondhand shops. And we invite you to join us.
