Welcome! I am so honored that you've chosen to take this writing workshop with me. Several years ago, I was introduced to the work of Jewelle Gomez in a graduate course, and it literally changed my life. I'd never read stories where the women were like me: Black, lesbian, and middle-class. I grew up in the South, and while I don't believe the folks there are any more homophobic than anywhere else in this country, I do think that representations of Black lesbian life and love were hard to come by. I made it my business to learn more about women like me, and to read and write about them as often as I could. In fact, since learning about Gomez and several of her contemporaries, particularly the struggles they had publishing as Black lesbian writers, I started a small publishing company dedicated to amplifying more of this work. I also co-founded a literary non-profit for Black lesbian and queer women of color writers, and the primary goal of our organization is to help women writers improve their craft.

This class then, is focused on answering two questions:

• What is Black lesbian fiction?
• What can we learn about craft from the work of our Black lesbian literary foremothers, namely, Ann Allen Shockley, author of the first Black lesbian novel, Loving Her; and Jewelle Gomez, author of the first Black lesbian vampire novel, The Gilda Stories?

Gomez and Shockley had vastly different ideas about the work of Black lesbian fiction, and Gomez famously called out Shockley for her flat, stereotypical characters in her essay, “A Cultural Legacy Denied and Discovered: Black Lesbians in Fiction by Women.” Still, the importance of Shockley's work cannot be overstated, she was doing something that no one else prior to her novel had dared to do: Write about the experiences of Black lesbians in the United States.

With that in mind, let's get started. We'll spend a little time getting to know each other and what we like to read, then we'll jump right into the particulars of Black lesbian fiction. The second half of the course is devoted to helping you generate ideas and stories, and the goal is for you to leave this class with a solid piece of writing that can be developed into short story or novel.