Hunting Crabs and Other Poems

by Isabel Miller

50 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1998

About the author

Isabel Miller was the pen name of Alma Routsong, an American novelist best known for her lesbian fiction. She graduated from Michigan State University in 1949 with a degree in art. Her first two novels (A Gradual Joy and Round Shape) were published under her own name, with the later works under the pen name Isabel Miller — a combination of an anagram of “Lesbia” and her mother’s maiden name.

In 1969, Isabel Miller published her best known book, A Place for Us, printed in an edition of 1,000 copies paid for and sold by the author. With this title, based on a true story of a 19th-century couple from New York state, Miller began her career as lesbian novelist. In 1971, the novel won the first annual Gay Book Award of the American Library Association. Under its later title, Patience and Sarah, Miller’s novel became one of the most cherished lesbian love story of all time.

Isabel Miller died in Poughkeepsie, New York on October 4, 1996, shortly before her last novel (Laurel) was published.