Barbara Grier was an American writer and publisher most widely known for co-founding
Naiad Press and writing and editing
The Ladder under the pseudonym
Gene Damon died from cancer he was 78..
(November 4, 1933 – November 10, 2011)
Early life
Born in Cincinnati to Dorothy Vernon Black, a secretary, and Philip
Strang Grier, a doctor, Grier grew up in several midwestern US cities.
She claims she came out as a
lesbian at 12 years old and spent her life finding as much information about female
homosexuality as she could.
[1]
Her parents divorced when she was 13 years old. Grier went to the
library to discover more about lesbians after noticing her own behavior
patterns were different from her friends. She told her mother that she
was homosexual, and her mother replied, "No, because you're a woman,
you're a lesbian. And since 12 years old is too young to make such a
decision, let's wait six months before we tell the newspapers."
[2] She began collecting books when her mother gave her a copy of
The Well of Loneliness by
Radclyffe Hall when she was 16 years old.
[3] She describes her collection of lesbian-themed books as
Lesbiana, a collection that was fueled by a "love affair with lesbian publishing."
Shortly after Grier graduated high school in 1951, she met Helen
Bennett in a public library. They spent 20 years together living in
Denver, Colorado while Bennett went to library school, then moving to
Kansas City where both worked in public libraries.
[2]
The Ladder
Grier began writing book reviews in
The Ladder, a magazine edited by members of the
Daughters of Bilitis,
soon after subscribing to it in 1957. She used multiple pen names in
her writings including Gene Damon, Lennox Strong, Vern Niven, most often
writing to review literature in which lesbians were characters or a
plot device.
Grier took over editing
The Ladder in 1968 with the goal of expanding the magazine to include more
feminist
ideals. The magazine gained a more professional and sleeker layout and
increased to more than 40 pages from the 25 average under previous
editors and tripled in subscriptions. She described her roles in editing
the magazine, ""In 1968, I became editor of The Ladder, and I had to
write three hundred letters a week, edit the magazine, run a staff of
fifteen people spread all over the world, work a part-time job, keep
house, read the books, and write my 'Lesbiana' column."
[4]
Grier also removed the word "lesbian" from the front cover, after being
placed there in 1963, in an attempt to reach more women. Grier's tenure
took place at a time when the Daughters of Bilitis were in conflict
about the direction of the organization. DOB founders tended to
encourage a more
assimilationist
stance for the organization and came in direct conflict from more
radical separatist lesbians, including Grier. When the DOB folded in
1970, Grier, who was editing the magazine from Kansas City, planned with
DOB president Rita LaPorte to take the only two copies of the
subscription list from the printer and the DOB headquarters in order to
keep
The Ladder alive. LaPorte took both copies to the ignorance of DOB founders
Phyllis Lyon and
Del Martin, and relocated the magazine to Reno, causing an uproar.
The Ladder
ran for two more years before it outgrew its finances and folded in
September 1972. Said Grier about her role in the controversy, "You have
to understand that none of these things were done with malice
aforethought or with intention to damage. I mean I was just as much a
light-eyed maniac then as I am now in terms of the mission. The mission
is that the lesbians shall inherit the earth, you see."
[5]
Naiad Press
Grier had been in a relationship with Helen Bennett for 20 years when
librarian Donna McBride fell in love with her. Grier left Bennett for
McBride and claims it was the only decision she ever agonized about.
Grier and partner Donna McBride began running Naiad Press at the support and urging of two editors of
The Ladder, Anyda Marchant and Muriel Crawford in 1973.
[3] Their first published work was
The Latecomer written by Marchant under the pen name
Sarah Aldridge. Naiad was run from Kansas City until 1980 when it relocated to
Tallahassee, Florida. Both women continued to work full time until 1982 when they dedicated all their time to the publishing company.
Authors represented by Naiad include
Valerie Taylor,
Katherine V. Forrest,
Jane Rule,
Ann Bannon's reprinted
Beebo Brinker Chronicles, and
Gale Wilhelm, whom Grier spent several years attempting to locate to bring out of obscurity. One of the most controversial of these was
Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence, a work of non-fiction that was banned in
Boston and criticized by the
Catholic Church.
[6] Penthouse Forum ran a series from the book and it made Naiad an internationally-known publishing name.
[1]
Grier used her extensive lesbian literature collection, what she
termed "Lesbiana" at Naiad. By 1994, the company had a staff of 8 and
projected sales of $1.8 million US. In 1992, Grier and McBride donated
Naiad's entire collection to the
San Francisco Public Library, which consisted of a tractor trailer full of 14,000 books estimated at $400,000 US.
[7] What began as a search became a self-described obsession for Grier. She worked with
Jeannette Howard Foster and
Marion Zimmer Bradley to compile the largest collection of books with lesbian themes in the English language, they called
The Lesbian in Literature.
[2]
Books were rated from A to D referencing how important lesbian
characters were to the plot, or T, indicating the book was "trash".
[4]
In 1985 Grier earned the President's Award for Lifetime Service from the
Gay Academic Union.
In 1991, Grier and McBride, representing Naiad Press, was given the
Lambda Literary Award for Publisher's Service. Grier and McBride were
given the Lambda Literary Pioneer Award in 2002. Grier and McBride sold
the Naiad backlist to
Bella Books in 2003.
Death
Barbara Grier died of cancer in Tallahassee on November 10, 2011.
[8] She was 78.
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