This newsletter erred from its self-appointed schedule last weekend, because I was in Athens, Georgia, where I gave the 30th Annual Andrea Carson Coley Lecture in LGBTQ+ Studies. It was a fantastic experience—apart from the lecture, I visited an LGBTQ+ Studies class and got to meet and dine with a bunch of UGA professors and old and new friends—but I had forgotten how disruptive travel is. Not that I was forever popping back and forth across the Atlantic before the pandemic, but I swear plane seats have gotten smaller and jet lag has gotten worse. Or—just spitballing here—I might also have gotten used to doing all my work sitting at the desk in my apartment, which is a blissfully jet-lag-resistant zone.
We are now about five weeks from the May 28 publication date of the U.S. edition of A PLACE OF OUR OWN: SIX SPACES THAT SHAPED QUEER WOMEN’S CULTURE, and six weeks from the June 6 U.K. pub date, which means I am once again in a kind of limbo.
I’ve come to realize that limbo is a regular part of the publication process. There’s a tense-but-nothing-you-can-do-about-it waiting period after you file the first draft of your book. (That’s the most short-lived “nothing you can do about it” sensation, because once you get your edits, there’s a lot you can do about it!) Another with the revision. And then the big one, when you’ve pretty much done what you can do with the text, and it goes off to potential blurbers and reviewers.
That last stage is the tensest, because even though you don’t know exactly what your editor is going to make of the manuscript, especially since it might well have been a matter of years since you last discussed what you intended to write, they’ve committed to the project and to you, so unless you go off on an unexpected tangent or develop an entirely new writing style, they’re unlikely to rip it to shreds. But when you’re waiting for reviews and to hear what readers think? That could totally happen!
Fortunately, I got amazing blurbs, including from people who have never met me (or ever heard of me in the case of the British blurbers, I am pretty sure), and the early trade reviews have been great. I warn you now that I’m going to pump up my ego by pasting a bunch of those positive takes in this newsletter. Will I be quite so quick to post any not-so-positive reviews I might get down the road? Unlikely!
First, the blurbs, and since the Seal Press marketing team made these fantastic “quote card graphics,” you know I’m going to use them. I hope no one is allergic to pink!
At this point, the only reviews are from trade publications, which publish early—well, in time for bookstores and libraries to make an appropriate-sized order. I really liked the reviews in Kirkus Reviews and the ALA Booklist–mostly because they called out things that were important to me. For example, the Kirkus take concludes:
The history she captures, while told with clear personal fondness and respect, is neither overly romanticized nor nostalgic. Though Thomas found her own community and livelihood embedded within spaces that cater to the LGBTQ+ community, her journalistic sensibility tempers her memories and admiration with a critical awareness of how even lesbian spaces can draw exclusionary race and gender lines. As culture shifts away from the outlines of physical space, Thomas insists on its relevance, granting context and gravitas to the personal freedom and shared history she explores, establishing a legacy of meeting lesbians' needs and desires that future generations and movements can draw on and expand.
An engaging and informative study that defies attempts to erase people or their places.
While Booklist said:
Her work does two invaluable things. First, it preserves detailed history. Thomas researched archives and libraries while conducting extensive interviews to consider these spaces, not generically but specifically, recording names, dates, places, transitions, changes, lawsuits, reorganizations, and actual people. Second, A Place of Our Own offers big-picture observations about the ethics of these spaces and what makes them each unique and distinct (from other spaces and each other). Thomas argues, for example, that while feminist bookstores may not appear successful if evaluated by capitalist standards, they are wildly so if evaluated by their own goals of impacting lives. Thomas also argues that trans-exclusionary spaces are getting it wrong and should change. Thomas’ readable, interesting, and detailed book will be invaluable to lesbians, queer people, and all readers interested in American culture.
A PLACE OF OUR OWN hasn’t yet been reviewed in Publishers Weekly, but it did make it onto TWO PW lists: 10 best new nonfiction summer reads, and 5 new LGBTQ books to read!
I start to do interviews for the book next week, and then—with luck!—there could be reviews in the “regular” press. I know most people reading this will already have pre-ordered, but if you haven’t yet … now’s the time!
RECOMMENDATIONS: I know I banged on about Andrew O’Hagan’s The Secret Life in the last newsletter, but, well, without wishing to turn this into an Andrew O’Hagan fanmag, his new novel, Caledonian Road, is an absolute banger (and the audiobook, read by Michael Abubakar, is fantastic). Oh, and The Belgrano Diary, the London Review of Books podcast he hosted? Also great, G-D it.
EVENTS: I’m glad to say that I have some book events on the calendar.
Monday, June 3: Washington, DC. Politics and Prose, Connecticut Avenue, 7 p.m., in conversation with Christina Cauterucci.
Wednesday, June 5: New York City. P&T Knitwear, Lower East Side, 7 p.m., in conversation with Amelia Possanza.
Friday, June 14: Edinburgh, Topping & Company, 7:30 p.m., with Alison Bechdel.
Sunday, Aug. 4, 2:45 p.m., at Wilderness Festival, Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire, U.K. (Camping alert!)
Monday, Aug. 19: Minneapolis, Magers & Quinn, with Krista Burton, 7 p.m.
Wednesday, Aug. 21: Chicago, Women & Children First, 7 p.m.