OutWrite: The Speeches That Shaped LGBTQ Literary Culture

by Julie R. Enszer (Editor), Elena Gross (Editor)

Running from 1990 to 1999, the annual OutWrite conference played a pivotal role in shaping LGBTQ literary culture in the United States and its emerging canon. OutWrite provided a space where literary lions who had made their reputations before the gay liberation movement—like Edward Albee, John Rechy, and Samuel R. Delany—could mingle, network, and flirt with a new generation of emerging queer writers like Tony Kushner, Alison Bechdel, and Sarah Schulman. 
 
This collection gives readers a taste of this fabulous moment in LGBTQ literary history with twenty-seven of the most memorable speeches from the OutWrite conference, including both keynote addresses and panel presentations. These talks are drawn from a diverse array of contributors, including Allen Ginsberg, Judy Grahn, Essex Hemphill, Patrick Califia, Dorothy Allison, Allan Gurganus, Chrystos, John Preston, Linda Villarosa, Edmund White, and many more. 
 
OutWrite offers readers a front-row seat to the passionate debates, nascent identity politics, and provocative ideas that helped animate queer intellectual and literary culture in the 1990s. Covering everything from racial representation to sexual politics, the still-relevant topics in these talks are sure to strike a chord with today’s readers.

Genres: Nonfiction, LGBT, Research

342 pages, Paperback

First published March 18, 2022

About the author

Julie R Enszer is a scholar and poet. Her scholarship is at the intersection of U.S. history and literature with particular attention to twentieth century U.S. feminist and lesbian histories, literatures, and cultures. By examining lesbian print culture with the tools of history and literary studies, she reconsider histories of the Women’s Liberation Movement and gay liberation. Her book manuscript, A Fine Bind: Lesbian-Feminist Publishing from 1969 through 2009, tells stories a dozen lesbian-feminist publishers to consider the meaning of the theoretical and political formations of lesbian-feminism, separatism, and cultural feminism.

Enszer is the author of two collections of poetry, Sisterhood (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013) and Handmade Love (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2010). She is editor of Milk & Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2011). Milk & Honey was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Poetry. She is the editor of Sinister Wisdom, a multicultural lesbian literary and art journal, and a regular book reviewer for the Lambda Book Report and Calyx.

Reviews

[Meike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Between 1990 and 1999, eight national OutWrite conferences assembled diverse queer writers, first in SF, then in Boston, to discuss the state and potential of queer literature. This collection contains 27 of the many speeches held there, given by giants like Allen Ginsberg, Edward Albee, and Samuel R. Delaney. What's special about the texts is how they deal with intersectionality and how minority groups under the LGBTQ+ umbrella view each other, in literature and otherwise, thus pondering ways to strengthen solidarity and visibility.

My favorite texts are those by Dorothy Allison who explains how she processes emotion into literature (and she's a master, just read Bastard Out of Carolina), and by Edmund White who gives us a tour de force through the gay literary canon that shaped him and his work, feat. the likes of Jean Genet, Larry Kramer, Christopher Isherwood, and James Baldwin.

Sure, the quality in such a collection isn't consistent, but checking out the variety of voices and thoughts is well worth it.

[Rebekah Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Learned so much and was also reminded of how hard queer people have fought to exist. My favorite speech was from Essex Hemphill. I have never heard of him until now, but I read Patti Smith’s Just Kids last year, and having that background knowledge of Robert Mapplethorpe was so valuable when reading Hemphill’s speech. The racism in queer communities is tragic and wrong. A lot of people could benefit from reading this book. Your queerness does not come before your whiteness. May we do better because we know better.

[Nancy Sirvent · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this. I attended several of the speeches that are in this book. The time was sad and full of death, but the power of love and protest was intense and inspiring. So many authors here were gone too soon and too painfully. I love so many of them and am delighted that their artistry is preserved in this volume. Thank you, editors.

[Ana Grey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This gave me so much context for the queer writing that was done in the 1990s, and makes me so grateful for the plethora of queer literature that is available to me now.

[Bethany · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an amazing collection of speeches, all of them delivered in the 90s but their messages are still true today. We still are working towards these goals, hopes, dreams and necessities of community, inclusion and understanding.