Today's Out Spotlight is writer Katherine V. Forrest
Born in Windsor, Ontario on April 20, 1939. She lost her parents at age 16. She was educated at Wayne State University in Detroit, and UCLA. She became an American citizen in 1976.
Forrest has played a major role in bringing lesbian fiction to the forefront of the mystery and science fiction genres. Citing women writers such as Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, and Josephine Tey as her inspiration, she began her writing career at age 40. She has since written numerous mystery and science-fiction books, and edited several anthologies.
Forrest knew that she attracted to women, recalling at 5 she was falling in love with female friends, but it wasn't until she was 40 that she was truly accepting of herself and who she was. Coincidentally it was the same time that she began writing. Spending many years growing up in repressing her sexuality, and self denial she burned through relationships. But even coming out, and entering relationships with women, she stilled struggled, "I remained essentially in the grip of all the early shame and my own powerful homophobia. Until I was forty years old."
Forrest published her first novel, a romance entitled
Curious Wine, in 1983. Known for its breakthrough candor in its depiction of lesbian eroticism, it is her most commercially successful book to date. It has sold over 300,000 copies, and has become established as a classic of lesbian fiction and is the most popular lesbian romance novel of all time.
Speaking about Curious Wine, Forrest is quoted this way
"To explain where the book came from, a requirement is sort of just understanding the time, because it was 1983 when it was published, and at that point I had read all of the lesbian literature I could find. There was just no book out there that conveyed, for me, the passion and the beauty of our love and how absolutely beautiful women are together. So I wrote the book I wanted to read, and evidently a lot of other women wanted to read it too (laughs). In the writing of the book I found that I just more fully embraced my own identity and celebrated it, and so that’s why it remains to this day an incredibly beautiful experience for me, and a book that means a lot to me…."Just over a decade later, an audio recording of
Curious Wine was released, which is reputed to be the very first audiobook based on a lesbian novel.
With her next book Amateur City in 1984, she launched her popular police procedurals featuring lesbian homicide detective Kate Delafield. The eight books in the series have been well received by reviewers and readers alike. They provide entertaining reading as well as a realistic, intelligent portrayal of lesbian life. Delafield, a former Marine and Vietnam vet, is a confident, capable member of the Los Angeles Police Department, who finds herself forced to deal with a homophobic atmosphere.
One of her Delafield mysteries,
Murder at the Nightwood Bar has been optioned for a film several times, but no film is currently in progress.
Her science fiction book
Daughters of a Coral Dawn published in 1984, became lesbian cult classic. In 2002, Alyson Books her long-awaited science fiction novel
Daughters of an Amber Moon, the sequel to Coral Dawn. She continued the series with
Daughters of an Emerald Dusk.
Her other novels
An Emergence of Green and
Flashpoint have become classics as well.
Forrest has also worked as an editor, collaborator, and has also written short stories as well. Her non-fiction work includes
Lesbian Pulp Fiction: The Sexually Intrepid World of Lesbian Paperback Novels 1950-1965She has won of the Lambda Literary Award for Best Mystery twice first for The Beverly Malibu and the other for Murder by Tradition. She is also the recipient of the 1998 Pioneer Award of the Lambda Literary Foundation.
Her latest release is a Delafield mystery, entitled Liberty Square, which finds the favorite detective this time in Washington, DC.
Longtime resident of California, she currently lives in San Francisco with her partner, Jo Hercus. In addition to writing she teaches writing in the Bay area.
On July 15, 2008, she and Jo were married in San Francisco in the private chambers of California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno, one of the four justices who voted in favor of the historic decision that legalized same-sex marriage in California.
Jo and Katherine,with Ann Bannon and Gail Lang
