Pearls: Fiction & Nonfiction

The following authors will be reading excerpts from their work: Catharine Wright, Melanie Mitzner, Estela González, Sue Katz, Chris Stark, and Briona Jones.

• Catharine Wright from Tipton’s Town Clerk,
• Melanie Mitzner from Slow Reveal,
• Estela González from Arribada,
• Sue Katz from The Unexpected Primrose,
• Chris Stark from Carnival Lights,
• Briona Jones “Introduction: No Hand, No Gaze” from Mouths of Fire: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought (nonfiction)

Catharine Wright is an eighth generation Vermonter who teaches courses such as Outlaw Women and Writing Gender and Sexuality at Middlebury College. She has earned several writing prizes and published fiction and poems in magazines such as The Feminist Wire, Blue Mesa Review, Negative Capability, Pleiades, Hurricane Alice, and Narrative Northeast. She has collaboratively written and edited two nonfiction books, Vermonters At Their Craft, and Social Justice Education. She just completed a novel about a town clerk and lesbian mother who leaves her civil union partner to find new love in a small town. For more information about this author and to view book purchase information, visit the Authors page.

Melanie Mitzner’s novel Slow Reveal will be published on May 17, 2022 by Inanna Publications, York University, Toronto. Awarded an Edward Albee Fellowship for her play Personal Effects, her screenplay Dodge and Burn was a finalist in the Writers Guild East Foundation Fellowships. In the Name of Love and Out to Lunch were finalists in the Houston Film Festival Screenwriting Competition. An excerpt of her novel Too Good to Be True was published in Harrington Lesbian Quarterly. She writes for Vol1Brooklyn, Wine Spectator, Hamptons, The Groovy Mind, Society for Curious Thought, Broadcast Week, Millimeter and Video Systems. For more information about this author and to view book purchase information, visit the Authors page.

Estela González writes in English and Spanish about the liminal lives of LGBT individuals, sea turtles, monarch butterflies, and those whose cultures are seen as less. Her novel Arribada, slated to appear in April 2022 with Cynren Press, was a finalist for Feminist Press’s Louise Meriwether award in 2019. Estela’s work appears in magazines and anthologies such as Barcelona Review, Coal Hill Review, La Colmena, Cobalt, Cronopio, Feminine Rising, Flash Frontier, Flyway, Label me Latina, Letralia, Luvina, Resonancias, Revista de Literatura Mexicana Contemporánea, Sinister Wisdom, Solstice, and Under the Volcano. For more information about this author and to view book purchase information, visit the Authors page.

Sue Katz’s business card identifies her as a “Wordsmith and Rebel.” Her writing has been published on the three continents where she has lived, worked, and roused rabble. She has been a martial arts master, promoted transnational volunteering, and partner danced more than her feet could bear. Her fiction books, often focusing on the lives of LGBTQ elders, include A Raisin in My Cleavage: short and shorter stories, Lillian’s Last Affair and other stories, and the novel Lillian in Love. Her short story “The Lipstick Assault in Serene Manor” was recently published by Gertrude Press. For more information about this author and to view book purchase information, visit the Authors page.

Chris Stark is an Anishinaabe and Cherokee lesbian writer, organizer, and trainer. Her first novel, Nickels: A Tale of Dissociation, was a Lambda LIterary Finalist. Her second novel, Carnival Lights, was released recently and is a Minnesota Book Awards finalist. For more information about this author and to view book purchase information, visit the Authors page.

Briona Simone Jones is a scholar of African American literature, Feminist Theory, and Black Queer studies. Jones has published a collection of Black Lesbian writings titled Mouths of Rain: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought, the most comprehensive anthology centering Black Lesbian thought to date. Jones’s forthcoming monograph coins and develops the concept of “Black Lesbian Aesthetics” to demonstrate how literature produced by women of color from 1974-1988 addressed both anti-Blackness in the Women’s movement and sexism and homophobia in the Black power movements. For more information about this author and to view book purchase information, visit the Authors page.