No Modernism Without Lesbians

No Modernism Without Lesbians

No Modernism Without Lesbians is out now in paperback in the UK and will be released in the US on 1 May.

Sylvia Beach, Bryher, Natalie Barney, and Gertrude Stein. A trailblazing publisher; a patron of artists; a society hostess; a groundbreaking writer.

They were all women who loved women. They rejected the patriarchy and made lives of their own – forming a community around them in Paris.

Each of these four central women interacted with a myriad of others, some of the most influential, most entertaining, most shocking and most brilliant figures of the age. Diana Souhami weaves their stories into those of the four central women to create a vivid moving tapestry of life among the Modernists in pre-War Paris. [ Read more ]

I began writing books about lesbians in the 1980s. I have twice won the US Lambda Literary Award for best gay writing. In 2014 in the UK I was named a Rainbow List National Treasure in the Lifetime Achievement category… Two of my books, The Trials of Radclyffe Hall and Coconut Chaos, have been broadcast as BBC Radio 4’s ‘Book of the Week’. The Radclyffe Hall book was also shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Mrs Keppel and Her Daughter was a New York Times ‘Notable Book of the Year’ and featured on BBC 4’s ‘A Good Read’. My first book Gluck: Her Biography was recently the basis for a BBC documentary and an exhibition at the Brighton Art Gallery. Among other titles Selkirk’s Island won the Whitbread biography award, Edith Cavell won East Anglia Book of the Year and Murder at Wrotham Hill was shortlisted for a Crime Writers Golden Dagger Award.

Gwendolen
Murder at Wrotham Hill
Edith Cavell
Coconut Chaos
Natalie and Romaine
Selkirk’s Island
The Trials of Radclyffe Hall
Mrs Keppel and Her Daughter
Greta and Cecil
Bakst: The Rothschild Panels of The Sleeping Beauty
Gertrude and Alice
Gluck
A Woman’s Place

I have also written plays for radio and stage. Strip Show, a series of monologues by women, was performed at the Edinburgh Festival and at the King’s Head in Islington. Among my radio plays Prunella Scales starred in What a Saga and Patricia Routledge in A Horse Called Gertrude Stein.