[Close Calls cover]

About the Collection

By Susan Fox Rogers

When my editor suggested this collection, my first thought was: Another anthology? Do we need even one more? There has been such a frantic outpouring of lesbian collections from both small presses and New York publishers in the past five years (and I know I have contributed to this) that I felt the last thing we needed was another anthology.

Then I sat back and thought about anthologies. Anthologies have always been a part of our culture, have traditionally been put together to reveal and bring together "lost voices" (as in a black women's or Latin American collection) or to offer "the best." This anthology does not do either. Lesbian voices are far from "lost" -- they are some of the strongest and most exciting new voices in American fiction and are being published in every imaginable venue. And this collection does not pretend to be the "best of" -- this is a selection of twenty-one stories out of many I could have chosen.

The other promise of anthologies is that they are doing something new. This anthology does offer this: there are two writers, Emily Fox and Sue Pierce, whose work has never been in print before; Linda Smukler's "Mainstreet," which reads as a prose poem, experiments with the form of a short story, as does JoNelle Toriseva's "Strip Uno," which shifts into poetic form. Style is played with by Gwendolyn Bikis, who writes in the language of a streetwise black girl. And the subjects here are not all familiar: Zelie Pollon touches on one unspoken aspect of lesbian life, and Rebecca Lavine's "Skin Queen" and Ruthann Robson's "Choices" take us into a world that for many will be unfamiliar. Kathryn Kingsbury rewrites a classic fairy tale from a modern lesbian perspective, and Sharon Lim-Hing offers a futuristic vision -- with a modern twist.

This is not to say that every piece in the collection is experimental. There are many traditional narratives, many rich and satisfying stories as we know stories. The only thing that will not be found here is a classic coming-out story. These are, without doubt, our most loved narrative. But I wanted stories that were not focused on the process of becoming a lesbian, but rather ones that reached beyond this to look at how we live and love as lesbians in this world. This was partly my own literary desire to read something new in plot. But also, even though we each individually still have to come out, as a culture we are collectively far beyond that. I wanted to see what was in this wide-open field.

For what anthologies offer, it became clear that they are important -- for both readers and writers. The enthusiasm for anthologies, and not just within the lesbian and gay community, is perhaps testimony of this. They allow new writers a place to publish for a wide audience and afford readers the opportunity to explore specific ideas or themes (such as writings on the body or on sports) and get to know writers they might not otherwise read.

But within the lesbian and gay community, anthologies really function as our literary magazines, and in them we introduce new writers, experiment with new writing, and celebrate those writers who are more established. The difference is that these books have a longer shelf life than the month or two of a magazine. They will be there for the next generation of lesbian readers and writers (I hope) and so they are more than literary artifacts, they are cultural ones as well.

As such, anthologies are indicators of our cultural lives -- that a large fistful of erotica collections have appeared in the past two years says something. They reveal what we are fascinated with, but they also serve to bring together fragments of our culture, to create a meeting ground for voices or visions. In this sense, these collections are vital to our growth as a community.

This frenzy of gathering stories and publishing is, I feel, a sign of health: we are coming into our voices, exploring the facets of our common lives, creating cultural artifacts. We are, in a sense, rebalancing the scales after years of silence imposed from within and without.

Once I was done exploring these higher literary and cultural reasons for publishing anthologies, I also had to admit my real interest in working on this collection and others I have published: anthologies are fun. They are fun to edit (except when an author disappears or refuses to send back their copy-edited story -- ladies, you know who you are). There is also the pleasure of reading a writer unknown to me, of being surprised by a story, or getting back a revision that is better than hoped for. There is enormous satisfaction in creating a whole out of very disparate parts, to put writers in the company of other writers they might never find themselves next to. Being a part of an anthology offers writers a sense of community of literary lesbians. And the readings held at bookstores and community spaces around the country once an anthology is published are wonderful events, ones where we meet intellectually, creatively, and socially.

One more anthology was not too much. One more anthology was fine, I concluded, and we could certainly have many, many more.

And so it slowly dawned on me that I had been handed a dream project: to read a big pile of lesbian stories and to select those that I thought were good.

I smiled. Then panicked.

What is good? After all, isn't "taste" culturally bound and rather subjective? How should I chose: Style? Content? Theme? Was it important to represent certain political aspects of lesbian life? How PC did this have to be? And, above all, what is a lesbian story? When I twisted out of this literary-existential spin, I decided I would simply watch (or read) and wait: I would see what came to my mailbox and let writers show me what lesbian fiction is.

I was open to anything in form, style, or plot. All I required was a character who was lesbian and a story that was written by a woman. This later point has been hotly debated -- should men be allowed to write "lesbian" stories -- and though I think it's great if they do (please do imagine yourself into our lives), I decided not to include men because I wanted to give more women the opportunity to write and publish. Then I wanted a story that was compelling in some way -- idea, form, character, or plot. But mainly I wanted good writing. And what is that? It was what kept me glued to my seat from beginning to end; it was a story I felt I could read five or six times and not tire of.

I read hundreds of wonderful stories, and I offer twenty-one here that have never been published before. There are several funny stories -- those by Anna Livia, Sue Pierce, and Rhomylly B. Forbes -- that are also at once tender or sad. But I was pleased to be able to read and then offer these gentle jabs at our lives and our ways as lesbians -- because I love to laugh, but also because in being able to laugh I think we show our strength. There are stories of illness and of loss, violence and sex, children and therapy (though not in the same story) -- just a few of the many aspects of lesbian life. I hope that you as readers of this anthology will be surprised and entertained, and that you will join me in supporting and encouraging the writers in this collection so that they will continue to write and to publish.

Selecting stories was incredibly difficult, at times painful, because there were more stories that I wanted to include than I had pages. But one of the unexpectedly hard parts was choosing a title for this literary gathering. I spent hours with my editor musing over what would be right, would set the tone for what lies between these covers. I drove my local country roads, looking for inspiration (No Right Turn, at one point, seemed just fine). And then I found it nestled here among these stories: "Close Calls," the title of Wickie Stamp's provocative tale. There are many "close calls" -- psychological, emotional, and physical -- in these stories, but the collection could have just as easily been titled Mainstreet, because these are stories of women, of life that is not ordinary or mainstream, but a part of the main, what is becoming (I am forever hopeful) a more free society that has plenty of room for our stories.

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