We’ve made it to another Friday and it’s time to celebrate!
Find out the top 3 sapphic books with the most clicks this week, 5 Random Things about sapphic author Karin Kallmaker, women loving women book freebies, and an adorable pup to get your weekend off to a wonderful start!
TB and Miranda are so relieved that Flight Plan is with the editor! Now, it’s time to take a moment to breath. Tomorrow is TB’s birthday, meaning it’s going to rain because it always rains. Miranda will be celebrating Mother’s Day this weekend since she had to shove it off a week to meet the deadline. One thing you learn when you write for a living, deadlines come first. You have to be willing to adjust certain aspects in life. Besides, it’s better to have celebrations when you aren’t freaking out about getting words on a page.
Tomorrow is the 6th Anniversary of IHS!
Six years ago, (on her birthday so she wouldn’t forget the date) TB launched I Heart Lesfic. Last year at the five-year anniversary, we changed the name to I Heart SapphFic. To learn more about why we changed the name, click here.
Six years ago, TB was living in Dublin, Ireland. Since the site launched, she has had two major moves, first to the UK and then back to the US.
It’s not just her location that changed over these years. IHS has become a community of readers and authors. It’s been such a lovely journey and it warms TB’s heart to see so many people come together to celebrate sapphic fiction.
TB is old enough to remember when it wasn’t so easy to find books with lesbian, bisexual, and other women loving women characters and themes. She came out during a fraught time in Colorado. It was 1992 and her state was voting on Amendment Two. This was a law that sought to prevent municipalities (Denver, Boulder, and Aspen, for example) from enacting anti-discrimination laws protecting gay, lesbian, or bisexual people.
On her college campus, the quad was flooded with hateful people. Many held signs saying things like: God made Adam and Eve, Not Adam and Steve. Sometimes the signs had depictions of hell, and the people holding the signs would be screaming that TB was heading to fiery damnation. At the time, TB was 18 years old. For weeks she had to wade through these haters just to attend her college classes.
Much to her dismay, voters, (including many people in TB’s own life), passed the amendment. For a while, Colorado became known as the “Hate State.” It was beyond deflating. Thankfully, in 1994, the Supreme Court ruled this amendment to be unconstitutional.
Several years later, TB stood at a candlelight vigil outside the hospital where Matthew Shepard was taken after he was attacked, and where he died from his injuries. With Amendment Two and Matthew Shepard, her home state was in the spotlight for LGBTQ+ rights in the 1990s. This had a profound impact on TB and she knew she could never look away from threats to those rights.
Sadly, three decades later, the LGBTQ community is still battling for basic human rights and hate is rising. Our rights, dignity, and safety are under threat again. Ask yourself, would today’s Supreme Court rule that Colorado’s Amendment 2 was unconstitutional?
This is why TB and Miranda work so hard on I Heart SapphFic. It’s our way to fight back and to ensure our community’s voices are not stifled. Back in 1992, neither TB nor Miranda had ever heard of a book with a sapphic character, let alone read one. Today, when someone is looking for a sapphic read, we can direct them to over 3,500 choices in the BookFinder!
Whether it’s seeing yourself in a favorite character or gaining an appreciation for someone who is different than you, books are a powerful weapon against hate. Why else would so many people be trying so hard right now to ban them? More than anything, we want to make it easy for readers to find the sapphic books they desire.
It’s our sincerest hope that when a new generation of sapphic readers looks back on our present times from thirty years in the future, they will do so from a place of true equality. We know that it will take relentless dedication from countless individuals to get there. All we can hope is to play some small part in shining a light and spreading love along the way so that hate won’t win. We can’t thank all of you enough for supporting this website as we work toward that goal.
Now for Friday Fun!
Please remember that sale prices listed in today’s post are valid for a limited time only and may change without notice. International prices may vary. Always check the price in your local marketplace before purchasing.
