- Harriet Desmoines and Catherine Nicholson, “Notes to a Magazine,” Sinister Wisdom, [July 1], 1976, 1; Ibid.
- For more about lesbian-feminist print culture, see Alisa Klinger, “Writing Civil Rights: The Political Aspirations of Lesbian Activist-Writers” in Inventing Lesbian Cultures in America, ed. Ellen Lewin (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), Kate Adams, “Built Out of Books—Lesbian Energy and Feminist Ideology in Alternative Publishing,” Journal of Homosexuality 34, no. 3 (1998), and Trysh Travis, “The Women in Print Movement: History and Implications,” Book History 11 (2008): 275–300.
- Alice Echols’s history of radical feminism, Daring to Be Bad, frames the focus of the WLM as New York City, as do recent popular histories by journalist Gail Collins (When Everything Changed) and journalist and historian Ruth Rosen (The World Split Open). For works that document WLM histories outside of New York City, see Anne Valk’s Radical Sisters: Second-Wave Feminism and Black Liberation in Washington, DC (2008), Anne Enke’s Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism (2007), Judith Ezekiel’s Feminism in the Heartland (2002), and Nancy Whittier’s Feminist Generations: The Persistence of the Radical Women’s Movement (1995). Katarina Keane’s dissertation, Second-Wave Feminism in the American South, 1965–1980 (University of Maryland, 2009), and La Shonda Mims’s dissertation, Lesbian History in Charlotte and Atlanta (University of Georgia, 2012); Jennifer L. Gilbert, “Feminary” of Durham-Chapel Hill: Building Community Through a Feminist Press (Master’s Thesis, Duke University, 1993); “1970s North Carolina Feminisms,” an online exhibition, accessed August 19, 2012, http://sites.duke.edu/docst110s_01_s2011_bec15/.
- Tamara M. Powell’s article, “Look What Happened Here: North Carolina’s Feminary Collective” (North Carolina Literary Review no. 9 [2000]: 95–98), provides an excellent history of Feminary; the same issue of the North Carolina Literary Review also contains Cherry Wynn’s “Hearing Me Into Speech: Lesbian Feminist Publishing in North Carolina,” which discusses Feminary and the careers of Minnie Bruce Pratt, Mab Segrest, and Dorothy Allison; Research Triangle Women’s Liberation published its first newsletter in 1969. In 1975, the newsletter was retitled A Feminary, after a concept in Monique Wittig’s Les Guérillères. In 1976, the energy behind the Feminary Collective waned and the journal became moribund. Two years later, at the Southeastern Gay and Lesbian Conference, Susan Ballinger, Mab Segrest, Minnie Bruce Pratt, and Cris South agreed to revitalize Femi-nary and turn it into a lesbian journal. Feminary thrived for five years between 1978 and 1983. Then a strong collective of lesbian-feminists, including Pratt, Segrest, South, Ballinger, Helen Langa, Deborah Giddens, and others, produced Feminary. Within the pages of Feminary, the collective articulated “contemporary southern lesbian feminist theory” (Powell, 91); For Hogan’s account of the history of Carolina Wren Press, see http://carolinawrenpress.org/about/supporters; Kathi Gallagher, “Lollipop Power,” in off our backs 12 (June 1982): 15, 17. Lollipop Power continued publishing through 1986, although the volume of sales decreased dramatically during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1986, Carolina Wren Press assumed the titles from Lollipop Power when the organization folded.
- The alternate spelling, womyn, was embraced by many lesbian-feminists to express a consciousness of women autonomous from men. The other womyn’s music distributor, Goldenrod, was founded in 1975.
- Facsimile copies of Sound and Living are housed online at the Lesbian Poetry Archive, www.LesbianPoetryArchive.org; Alicia Ostriker, Stealing the Language (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), 10.
- Minnie Bruce Pratt, The Sound of One Fork (Durham, NC: Night Heron Press, 1981), 9.
- Ibid., 12.
- Ibid., 29; Ibid., 35; Ibid., 36; “The Woman-Identified Woman” by Radicalesbians was initially published and circulated by women in New York in 1970. Know, Inc. of Pittsburgh, PA published it as a small pamphlet in 1970. The full text of “The Woman-Identified Woman” is available online at http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/wlmpc_wlmms01011/; Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Signs 5 (Summer 1980): 631–60; Elly Bulkin, Minnie Bruce Pratt, and Barbara Smith, Yours In Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and Racism (Brooklyn, NY: Long Haul Press, 1984).
- Mab Segrest, “I Live in a House,” in Living in a House I Do Not Own (Durham, NC: Night Heron Press), unpaginated.
- Segrest, Living, 11.
- Ibid., 2.
- “Grant application,” folder “Fund for Southern Communities application for Night Heron Press, 1982–1983, Box 36, Minnie Bruce Pratt Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.
- Ibid.; Ibid. The third book was never published. Saralyn Chesnut and Amanda C. Gable, [End Page 55] “‘Women Ran It’: Charis Books and More and Atlanta’s Lesbian-feminist Community 1971–1981,” in Carryin’ on in the Lesbian and Gay South (New York: New York University Press, 1997); “July 9, 1981 letter to Elizabeth Knowlton,” folder “Knowlton, Elizabeth, 1979–1994,” Box 55, Minnie Bruce Pratt Papers, Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University; Minnie Bruce Pratt moved to the Washington, DC area in 1983; she continued to write and publish poetry, notably winning The Lamont Prize in 1989 for her second collection, Crime Against Nature (Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1990). Mab Segrest worked with North Carolinians Against Racist and Religious Violence from 1983 until 1990; her book Memoir of a Race Traitor (Boston: South End Press, 1994) documents this experience.
- Letter to Elizabeth Knowlton, folder “Knowlton, Elizabeth, 1979–1994,” Box 55, Minnie Bruce Pratt Papers, Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University; Ibid; Ibid.
- Ibid.; Ibid.
- Ibid.; August 10, 1981, letter to Ben Weaver, folder “1981 (1 of 2),” Box 61, Minnie Bruce Pratt Papers, Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.
- January 20, 1986, letter to Sheila, Folder, “1986–1988 2 of 2,” Box 62, Minnie Bruce Pratt Papers. Correspondence between Pratt and South indicates that South produced at least 500 copies as a way to pay off a debt that she owed Pratt (Folders 1–5 “South, Cris, 1978–1979, 1982–1986,” Box 57 & 58, Minnie Bruce Pratt Papers, Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University); Sound sold for $2.00. I estimate that 1,800 copies sold with total revenue of $3,600 and net revenue of $1,200 (September 15, 1982, letter to Nancy Bereano of The Crossing Press, folder “Correspondence 1981–1985 2 of 4,” Box 12, Minnie Bruce Pratt Papers, Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University); Folder “Correspondence 1981–1985 2 of 4,” Box 12, Minnie Bruce Pratt Papers, Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.
- Joy Parks, “The Southern Column,” in Body Politic 97 (October 1983): 36.
- Jewell L. Gomez, “Review of The Sound of One Fork,” in Conditions: Nine (1983): 173–75; “To Our Readers,” Conditions: Nine (1983): 1.
- Segrest’s later collection, Memoir of a Race Traitor, explores her work against racist and religious violence, two themes that are important to both Segrest and Pratt at the time the chapbooks are published, but are muted in their treatments in the collections of poems.
- Cris South, Clenched Fists, Burning Crosses: A Novel of Resistance (Trumansburg, NY: The Crossing Press, 1984).
- Beth Hodges described print as the “medium of our movement” in her address to the Lesbian Writers Conference in Chicago on September 17, 1976; Jan Clausen uses the phrase in her chapbook, “A Movement of Poets” (Brooklyn, NY: Long Haul Press, 1981). Critics Katie King, T.V. Reed, and Kim Whitehead also discuss this idea in their work.
- “Running this old printing press,” folder “Cris South 1978–1979, 1982–1986,” Box 57, Minnie Bruce Pratt Papers, Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. At the bottom of the page, South typed, “Dedicated to Minnie Bruce” and then in handwritten text wrote, “I love you! Chuckle—Cris.”Mab Segrest, Memoir of a Race Traitor (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1994).
- Mab Segrest, Memoir of a Race Traitor (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1994).
- For more on Gumbs, see http://alexispauline.com/.