A few weeks ago, I googled lesfic authors and found a fantastic blog post and page dedicated to lesfic. I reached out to the author and asked her to share about her thoughts on lesbian fiction for I Heart Lesfic. And she agreed!

Lesbian Fiction Has Come a Long Way Baby! by Anne Hagan

I found lesbian fiction the way so many of us did; by way of fan fiction. I was on my computer one evening, looking for the answer to a question I had about a television show. I found LiveJournal which was, twelve years ago, to fan fiction what Wattpad is today to original short stories and serial fiction. LiveJournal (LJ) didn’t have the answer I was looking for. Frankly, I can’t even remember what the question was anymore, so lost did I get in the stories. It was an insatiable reader’s dream come true. So much of it was what was called ‘alt fiction’ or ‘femslash’ then. It was a revelation.

There were so many shows LJ writers created stories for. I read them all, then went in search of more. That’s when I found the Academy of Bards, The Athenaeum, and Passion and Perfection; sites devoted entirely to the femslash I loved.  I was reading short stories and novella length works by authors like Kim Baldwin and Mavis Applewater on those sites.

Kim was the first author I personally knew to publish a lesfic book in paper form, Hunter’s Pursuit. I still have my autographed copy. Lesfic authors publishing in the light of day was, of course, going on before Kim Baldwin published but for me, that was another door opening. I started an LGBT fiction review blog then that I ran for three years and then eBooks really took off and I became overwhelmed with requests for reviews. I had a day job and other commitments. I folded the site.

In June of 2016, I was looking around online for lists of lesbian authors. There are lots of top ten book lists out there for every genre imaginable but few authors lists that would let readers find new to them authors. Frustrated, I decided to create one. I planned to do a list of the top fifty lesbian fiction authors currently publishing.

How do you pick just fifty? By the time my post was ready to publish, I contained the names and website links of 153 lesbian fiction authors. I posted the link to my article on a few lesfic Facebook groups and sent out a couple of tweets about it. That’s when the internet exploded.

My blog post got thousands of hits. Authors and readers commented on the post and emailed me directly, offering up additional names to be added. I researched those and added them to the original list in the post. As the list passed 200 and then 250 names, that got to be unwieldy. Too, readers were clamoring for me to identify the authors by genre.

I did a second post and then a third. I got more and more names to add. When the list went over 300 names, I knew I had to create something that would be easier to add to and maintain. Thus, a dedicated page for the list, housed on my website, was born.

The list is far from complete. There are tons of lesbian fiction authors out there writing away in near obscurity. They don’t have websites. They haven’t claimed their author profile on Goodreads. They’re online existence relies entirely on their publisher’s website or what they do on sites like Wattpad and on social media. Still, it’s the best resource out there for names and links and for a basic idea of the genres an author writes in. Too, it’s a living breathing document. I add to it frequently. It’s the most popular page on my website.

Check it out. Find some new to you authors. Don’t see an author who should be listed? Please comment on the page or email me and let me know. I’ll get them added. This is a resource for us, by us, to use to find our writers for, I hope, many years to come.

About Anne:

Anne Hagan is an East Central Ohio based government employee by day and an author by night. She and her wife live in a tiny town that’s even smaller than the Morelville of her first fiction series and they wouldn’t have it any other way. Anne’s wife grew up there and has always considered it home. Though it’s an ultra-conservative rural community, they’re surrounded there by family, longtime friends and many other wonderful people with open hearts and minds.

Anne and her wife enjoy spending time with Anne’s son and his wife, with their nieces and nephews (and their great-nephews that they’re really still too young to have but, it is what it is) and doing many of the things you’ve read about in her bestselling books or that will be ‘fictitiously’ incorporated into future Morelville Mysteries and Morelville Cozies series books. If you’ve read about a hobby or a sport in one of her books, they probably enjoy doing it themselves or someone very close to them does.

Anne’s latest release: Loving Blue in Red States: Jackson Hole Wyoming

A long-running wild west show brings two women with rocky histories together in an all-out, shootout.

 Liz Ventura is a semi-retired saddle and tack shop owner who just wants to get out of the house, out among people. Friends in community theater convince her to try out for a part in the summer long Jackson Hole Shootout show and she makes the cut. She was even willing to play understudy to the show’s female lead. After all, she thought, Trudy had been playing the role forever and relished it. What could possibly go wrong?

Jessica ‘Jess’ Davenport is a six-year veteran of the show. It’s been the only steady thing in her life for most of those years as she struggled with loss and the effects of addiction. She’s incensed when she finds out the director just handed Trudy’s role to a newcomer to the show; incensed that she wasn’t even considered. When she confronts Liz, sparks fly.

 Both women are living in the past. Can a Shootout show help them find a future together?

Jackson Hole Wyoming is the third short story in the Loving Blue in Red States series by Anne Hagan. It was preceded by, Sweetwater Texas and Birmingham Alabama. Look for other short stories and novellas to come out in this series in the future.

I want to thank Anne for this wonderful and insightful guest post. Also, her list of authors is a fab resource. I encourage all of you to pop over and explore.