The New Lesbian Pulp (Feminist Press), a short story collection edited by two Brooklyn editors, revives the overlooked lesbian pulp genre of the ’50s and ’60s by showcasing lost works and current writers that together reimagine lesbian history.
There are 20 authors from the present and past, whose works range from a fictionalization of a real-life diary from 1920s Greece to a short story where witches in Brooklyn go to kink parties in search of their human sacrifice. They’re simultaneously outrageous and honest, an authentic look at lesbian life from history and today.
The project was conceived in 2019 after editors Sarah Fonseca and Octavia Saenz met as Twitter mutuals and discussed their dissatisfaction with lesbian representation in fictional media at the time.
“Just two women in a story who look at each other across the room and maybe hold hands once,” said Saenz. “And nothing ever happens, which reminded me of the original pulp novels where they could never actually end up together.”
Upon realizing that connection, they both came to one conclusion: “We needed to bring back pulp, but bring it bigger and better and raunchier and more aggressive,” Saenz said.
The stories from contemporary authors combine old-school pulp tropes with modern-day settings. They may take place in Ginger’s Bar in Park Slope instead of a 1950s Greenwich Village gay bar, but they still emphasize lesbian pulp’s signature melodrama and sexuality.
Highlights include Anna Dorn’s Palm Desert, in which an actress kidnaps her ex-lover after faking her own death, and Nadine Santoro’s Jouissance, where a woman’s former high school bully commits a murder for her. The two tales showcase how current authors who aren’t beholden to censorship laws of the past are allowed to let their queer characters stay together. It allows for the camp sensibilities of the genre, but not at the cost of taking away the characters’ agency.
Alongside modern tales are open source short stories and excerpts, ranging from renowned writers like playwright Lorraine Hansberry to poet and journalist Alice Dunbar-Nelson. These older stories, having been lost to time or through translation, put the authors in a new light, according to Saenz and Fonseca.
“For example, Lorraine Hansberry is a vulnerable person, because we always see her as this indomitable, serious playwright who passed too soon,” said Fonseca. “But there was also this undercurrent of yearning.”
Similar to the censorship that lesbian pulp authors dealt with decades ago, Fonseca and Saenz say they are facing parallel challenges. Publisher Feminist Press had their $35,000 National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) grant rescinded this summer.
Since then, Fonseca and Saenz have been fundraising on their own to pay their contributors.
“We're really focused on just doing right by our local people,” said Fonseca, who so far has raised $1,000 to pay a contributor in full through a reading and panel discussion.
