I know the last post was harsh, pointing out the bad and the ugly. To be fair I’ve decided to create a whole post of covers I found both visually attractive and relevant to the stories inside. Consider this my top dozen covers (in no particular order).
Thank God e-Readers save us from bad cover art!
30 years ago finding lesbian fiction at all was near impossible. You would have to travel to a big city with a large gay and lesbian community and then seek out that lone feminist bookstore. A place filled with incense and macrame, multicolored painted shelves and more Georgia O’Keeffe art on the wall than you’d ever seen before. Somewhere past the aisles of serious feminist tomes you’d find a few shelves of lesbian fiction.
How I discovered lesbian fiction
When I came out there was nothing it seemed for lesbians beyond dry books you’d find in a Women’s Studies class. There were of course the “classics” of lesbian literature, books I found preachy and decidedly un-sexy. Somewhere around the second year my girlfriend and I were together she kept wanting to watch Xena. I was reluctant, not because I wasn’t all swoony over Xena, but because the show seemed so hokey I didn’t know if I could enjoy it. As with most things, what the girl wants… so we watched Xena. Being the good computer nerd I was, I was all over the internet finding Xena information (ok mostly looking for hot wallpaper of Xena and Gabrielle) and I came across something I’d never heard of… Xena fan fiction. I was intrigued.