David Bergman assembles the living VQ members: Andrew Holleran, Felice Picano, & Edmund White
FORTY YEARS AGO, we did not have the Lambda Literary Foundation. We did not have The Gay & Lesbian Review. There were local newspapers and magazines, and The Advocate aspired to nationwide coverage, but the number of gay presses was minuscule ...
To make up for this lack of support, gay and lesbian authors came quietly together to back each other up, to read or hear each others’ works, and to discuss specifically gay literary problems. The Violet Quill was one of these clubs, a mixture of gay male friends and lovers and enemies who came briefly together forty years ago—meeting from 1980 to ’81—to enjoy literary camaraderie. Among the issues the members discussed were how close should their fiction come to autobiography, how to indicate to a reader that the campy “she” is really a male, and how do you keep from confusing the reader when a love scene contains two “he” characters. ... Continue Reading