Ann Bannon

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Ann Bannon
Ann Bannon in 1983 a photo taken by Tee Corrine
Born	Ann Weldy September 15, 1932 (1932-09-15) (age 75) Joliet, Illinois, United States
Pen name	Ann Bannon
Occupation	Writer, Professor, Associate dean
Nationality	American
Writing period	1957–present
Genres	Lesbian pulp fiction LGBT history
Notable work(s)	Odd Girl Out, I Am a Woman, Women in the Shadows, Journey to a Woman, Beebo Brinker
Influences Radclyffe Hall[1] Vin Packer[2]
Influenced Audre Lorde[3] Katherine V. Forrest[4] Kate Millett[5]
Official website http://www.annbannon.com

Ann Bannon (pseudonym of Ann Weldy) (born September 15, 1932) is an American writer who wrote six lesbian pulp fiction novels from 1957 to 1962 known as The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. The books' enduring popularity and impact on lesbian identity has earned her the title "Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction".^[6] Bannon was a young housewife trying to address her own issues of sexuality when she was inspired to write her first novel, which became the second best-selling paperback of 1957. Her subsequent books featured four characters who reappeared throughout the series, including her titular heroine, Beebo Brinker, who came to embody the archetype of a butch lesbian. The majority of her characters mirrored people she knew, but their stories reflected a life she did not feel she was able to live. Despite her traditional upbringing and role in married life, her novels defied conventions for romance stories and depictions of lesbians, by addressing complex homosexual relationships positively during the morally repressive era of the 1950s and 1960s.

Although her books shaped lesbian identity for lesbians and heterosexuals alike, Bannon was unaware of their impact. She stopped writing in 1962 and later earned a doctorate in linguistics and became an academic. She endured a difficult marriage for 27 years and as she separated from her husband in the 1980s, her books were republished and she was stunned to learn of their influence on society. They were released again in 2001, and have been adapted as an award-winning Off-Broadway production. They are taught in Women's and LGBT studies courses, and Bannon has been given numerous awards for pioneering lesbian and gay literature. She has been described as "the premier fictional representation of US lesbian life in the fifties and sixties",^[7] and that her books, "rest on the bookshelf of nearly every even faintly literate Lesbian".^[8]

Contents 1 Early life 2 Writing career 2.1 Background 2.2 The Beebo Brinker Chronicles 2.2.1 Odd Girl Out 2.2.2 Fantasies and fears 2.2.3 I Am a Woman 2.2.4 Readers' reactions 2.2.5 Women in the Shadows 2.2.6 Journey to a Woman 2.2.7 Beebo Brinker 3 Rediscovery 3.1 Post 1960s 3.2 Second and third lives of the books 3.3 Longevity 4 Legacy 4.1 Bannon's characters in literature 4.1.1 Stage adaptations 4.2 Criticism and recognition 4.3 In retirement 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Early life

Ann Bannon was born Ann Weldy in Joliet, Illinois in 1932. She grew up in nearby Hinsdale with her mother and stepfather, and the responsibility of taking care of four siblings due to the family's financial problems. A rich fantasy life came to be a comfort for her during this time and she found solace in writing.^[9] She grew up in a house filled with music, particularly jazz. Her family would host musicians giving small recitals for friends and neighbors, one of which became a character in her books: a perennial bachelor named Jack who slung jokes and witticisms at the audiences.^[10]

She attended the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and belonged to Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority^[11] where she befriended a beautiful older sorority sister, "the prettiest I had ever seen", quite popular with men and with women, and witnessed a younger sorority sister's unabashed infatuation with the older sister. She recalls it was an awkward situation, even though the older sorority sister was "unfailingly gracious" to the younger one. In recognizing the younger woman's attractions, she began to suspect her own sexuality.^[12] She said, "I saw a lot of it happening and I didn't know what to make of it. I don't even know how to put it—I was absolutely consumed with it, it was an extraordinary thing."^[13] Another sorority sister was physically remarkable, very tall—almost 6 feet (1.8 m), with a husky voice and boyish nickname, that Bannon imagined was a blend of Johnny Weissmuller and Ingrid Bergman. She recalled entering the communal restroom and seeing the sister, "both of us in underwear, and experienc(ing) a sort of electric shock", and trying not to stare at her.^[12][10] In 1954, she graduated with a degree in French and soon married an engineer whose job made them relocate frequently.^[9]

Bannon was 22 years old when she began writing her first pulp novel. She was influenced by the only lesbian novels she had read, The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall from 1928 and Vin Packer's Spring Fire from 1952, albeit in two different ways: she was unable to relate to the dismal tones in Hall's novel,^[1] but as a sorority girl was more familiar with the plot and circumstances of Spring Fire. Bannon said, "Both books completely obsessed me for the better part of two years."^[2] Although recently married and on her way to having two children, she found the books struck a chord in her life and recognized emotions in herself that compelled her to write about them. In the beginning of her marriage she was left alone quite a lot and said, "I was kind of desperate to get some of the things that had been consuming me for a long time down on paper".^[13]

[edit] Writing career

[edit] Background

In 1950, Gold Medal Books published a fictionalized account of Tereska Torres' experience serving in the Free French Forces called Women's Barracks, in paperback form. The described a lesbian relationship the author witnessed, ending in the suicide of one of the women. It sold 4.5 million copies, and Gold Medal Books' editors were "thrilled".^[14] Its success earned it a mention in the House Select Committee on Current Pornographic Materials in 1952.^[15] Gold Medal Books was a branch of Fawcett Publications that focused on paperback books. Paperbacks at the time were printed on very cheap paper, not designed to last for more than a year, sold for 25 cents in drug stores, train and bus stations, and newsstand kiosks all over the United States. The books made for cheap, easy reading that could be discarded at the end of a trip for very little cost to the customer. Because of the low quality of production, they earned the name pulp fiction.

Gold Medal Books quickly followed Women's Barracks with Spring Fire, eager to cash in on the unprecedented sales, and it sold almost 1.5 million copies in 1952. Vin Packer, whose real name is Marijane Meaker, and Gold Medal Books were overwhelmed with mail from women who identified with the lesbian characters.^[16]

One of the letters was from Bannon, asking for professional assistance in getting published. On writing to Meaker, she said, "To this day I have no idea why she responded to me out of the thousands of letters she was getting at that time. Thank God she did. I was both thrilled and terrified."^[17] Bannon visited Meaker and was introduced to Greenwich Village, making a significant impression on Bannon who called it, "Emerald City, Wonderland, and Brigadoon combined—a place where gay people could walk the crooked streets hand in hand."^[12] Meaker set up a meeting with Gold Medal Books editor Dick Carroll, who read Bannon's initial 600-page manuscript. It was a story about the women in her sorority whom she admired, with a subplot consisting of two sorority sisters who had fallen in love with each other. Carroll told her to take it back and focus on the two characters who had an affair. Bannon claims she went back and told their story, delivered the draft to Carroll and it was published without a single word changed.^[18] While raising two young children, Bannon lived in Philadelphia and took trips into New York City to visit Greenwich Village and stayed with friends. She said of the women she saw in Greenwich Village, "I wanted to be one of them, to speak to other women, if only in print. And so I made a beginning - and that beginning was the story that became Odd Girl Out."^[19]

[edit] The Beebo Brinker Chronicles

[edit] Odd Girl Out

Main article: Odd Girl Out (novel)

The Beebo Brinker Chronicles were six books in all first published between 1957 and 1962. They featured four characters who appeared in at least three of the books in a chronological saga of coming to terms with their homosexuality and navigating their ways through gay and lesbian relationships. The first in the series, Odd Girl Out, was published by Gold Medal Books in 1957. Pulling from Bannon's own experiences, the plot involved a lesbian relationship between two sorority sisters in a fictional sorority at a fictional midwestern university. As was custom with pulp fiction novels, neither the cover art nor the title was under the control of the author. Both were approved by the publisher in order to be as suggestive and lurid as possible.^[18] The main character is Laura Landon, who realizes that she's in love with Beth, her older, more experienced roommate, a leader in the sorority.

Lesbians depicted in literature were relatively rare in the 1950s. It was the publisher's policy in any novel involving lesbianism that the characters would never receive any satisfaction from the relationship. One or both usually ended up committing suicide, going insane, or leaving the relationship.^[20] Marijane Meaker discusses this in the 2004 foreword of Spring Fire: she was told by editor Dick Carroll that postal inspectors would send the books back to the publisher if homosexuality was depicted positively.^[20] The Postal Service relaxed their censorship after the obscenity trial of Allen Ginsberg's Howl in 1956,^[21] which gave Bannon a modicum of freedom in her plots.^[22] Although the ending to Odd Girl Out did not veer too far from the unsatisfactory resolution formula of Spring Fire, Women's Barracks, and The Well of Loneliness, it examined Laura's internal struggle in the realization that despite her femininity, she was deeply in love with another woman, and at the end she embraced it, which was rare in lesbian fiction.

[edit] Fantasies and fears

The characters and their stories served as an extension of the fantasy life Bannon developed as a child. They became her "fantasy friends" whose loves and lives she witnessed and through which she lived her own life vicariously, helping her through a difficult marriage, and a longing for a life she did not feel she was free to live.^[23] "I realized very early that I should not marry, but I was going to make the best of a bad thing, and I was going to make it a good thing," she remembered.^[24] Having no practical experience in a lesbian relationship while writing Odd Girl Out, she set out to gain what she termed "fieldwork experience" in her trips Greenwich Village,^[18] and was successful enough to introduce those experiences into the next book in the series before relocating once more to Southern California. But she explained her fears about staying in Greenwich Village, saying

I would sit there (in a gay bar) in the evenings thinking, 'What if (a police raid) happens tonight and I get hauled off to the slam with all these other women?' I had been extremely low profile, very proper, very Victorian wife. I know that sounds crazy in the 60s, but I was raised by my mother and grandmother, who really came out of that era, and talk about a rigid role-playing crowd! I couldn't imagine living through it. I just couldn't. I thought, 'Well, that would do it. I'd have to go jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.' As easy as it might be if you were a young woman in today's generation to think that was exaggerating, it wasn't. It was terrifying.^[24]

[edit] I Am a Woman

Main article: I Am a Woman

Bannon followed Odd Girl Out with I Am A Woman (In Love With A Woman Must Society Reject Me?) in 1959. I Am A Woman (the working and common title) featured Laura after her affair with Beth, as she finds herself in New York City's Greenwich Village, and meets a wisecracking gay man named Jack, and becomes his best friend. Laura has to choose between a straight woman with a wild and curious streak, and a fascinating new character that proved to be her most popular of the series,^[25] Beebo Brinker, who came to embody the description of a thoroughly butch lesbian. Beebo was smart, handsome, chivalrous, and virile. Once again pulling from what she knew, Beebo was nearly 6 feet (1.8 m) tall with a husky voice and a formidable physique. The personality however, Bannon says, was drawn out of her sheer need for Beebo to exist. After spending time in Greenwich Village and not finding anyone like her, Bannon instead created her.^[10][12] She remembered, "I put Beebo together just as I wanted her, in my heart and mind...She was just, quite literally, the butch of my dreams."^[26] The resolution to I Am A Woman completely flouted the trends of miserable lesbian fiction endings, which made Ann Bannon a hero to many lesbians.^[27]

[edit] Readers' reactions

Letters began to pour in for her from all over the country. There were mostly propositions from men, but the letters from women thanked her profusely and begged her for reassurance that they would be all right. Bannon described the impact her books had from the letters she received from people who were isolated in small towns: "The most important things they learned (from the books) were that 1) they weren't unique and doomed to lifelong isolation, 2) ...they weren't "abnormal," and 3) there was hope for a happy life. They wrote to me in thousands, asking me to confirm these wonderful things, which I gladly did—even though I felt only marginally better informed than they were."^[28] The books were even translated into other languages, which was also quite rare for the brief lives of pulp novels.^[29] Bannon received international and domestic mail from women, saying, "This is the only book (and they would say this about all of them) that I've read where the women really love each other, where its OK for them to love each other, and they don't have to kill themselves afterwards."^[13]

[edit] Women in the Shadows

Main article: Women in the Shadows

Although her husband was aware of the books she was writing, he showed no interest in the subject. He was interested enough in the money she made from them, however, but had forbidden her to use her married surname, not wishing to see it on a book cover with art of questionable taste.^[25] She took the name "Bannon" from a list of his customers and liked it because it contained her own name in it.^[1] But she continued to experience difficulty in her marriage, and in realizing that "not all lesbians were nice people,"^[30] she took these frustrations out on her characters. "I couldn't stand some of what was happening to me–but Beebo could take it. Beebo really, in a way, had my nervous breakdown for me ... I think I was overwhelmed with grief and anger that I was not able to express," she recalled later.^[11] Women In The Shadows was also published in 1959 and proved very unpopular with Bannon's readers. The book examined interracial relationships, self-loathing in matters of sexuality and race, alcoholism, jealousy, violence, and as Laura marries Jack in a very atypical marriage for the 1950s, also explored the intricate details of what it was like to "pass" as heterosexual in an attempt to live some semblance of what was considered a normal life at the time.^[31]

[edit] Journey to a Woman

Main article: Journey to a Woman

Again drawing parallels between Bannon's own life and her plots, with her fourth book in the series, Journey To A Woman in 1960, Beth, of Laura's affair in Odd Girl Out, is living with her husband and children in Southern California. She tries to find Laura again nine years after college, and escapes a deranged woman who has a fixation on her, that reflected a relationship Bannon had with a beautiful, but "very bewildered and unstable person."^[13] Beth writes to an author of lesbian books in New York, and goes to meet her in hope of finding Laura. They have a brief relationship, after which Beth finds Laura married to Jack and with a child, then discovers Beebo as well. A fifth book, The Marriage, that was also published in 1960, again addressed issues of love outside the realm of socially acceptable relationships, although not primarily homosexuality. Jack and Laura are friends with a young married couple who discover they are brother and sister, and must decide if they will stay with each other or conform to societal standards.

[edit] Beebo Brinker

Main article: Beebo Brinker (novel)

Returning to the character she fantasized about the most, the last book in the series, Beebo Brinker in 1962, was Bannon's prequel to Odd Girl Out. It follows Beebo around Greenwich Village ten years prior to her meeting Laura in I Am A Woman, as Beebo literally gets off the bus from her rural hometown into New York City to find a waiting friend in Jack, and discover herself. She begins an affair with a famous and fading movie star, and follows her to California, only to return to be more honest about what she wants in her life.

Bannon also contributed several articles to ONE, Inc., the magazine of the Mattachine Society, in 1961 and 1962, one of them a chapter cut from the final draft of Women in the Shadows.^[32][33][34] She was invited to speak to the Mattachine Society in the early 1960s, but her husband's stern disapproval of her activities began to take its toll. She stated later, "It began to be very painful. So every time I would start to reach out (to the lesbian/gay community), I would get struck down ... In my own life, I couldn't operationalize (my feeling that gays should end the secrecy and take more pride in themselves and their lives). I couldn't find a way."^[11]

[edit] Rediscovery

[edit] Post 1960s

After Beebo Brinker, Bannon said the energy to write about the characters left her, but she got so good at her "obsessive fantasies" that even after the books were written she continued to live internally, and suspected it affected her subsequent relationships. "I realize now that I was in a sort of "holding pattern," a way of keeping my sanity intact while waiting for my children to grow up and the freedom door to open," she recalled.^[35][26] Returning to school, Bannon completed her master’s degree at Sacramento State University and her doctorate in linguistics at Stanford University. She was an English professor at Sacramento State and later became the University’s associate dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and later the College of Arts and Letters.^[36]

[edit] Second and third lives of the books

Ann Bannon's books began to fade away from publishing memory after initial publication, especially after Gold Medal Books went out of business. In 1975, Bannon was asked to include four of her books in Arno Press' library edition of Homosexuality: Lesbians and Gay Men in Society, History and Literature. Then in 1983, Barbara Grier, of lesbian publishing company Naiad Press actively tracked Bannon down, and reissued the books in new covers. Grier discussed her novels, answering the question of who among lesbian paperback authors should be highlighted, "Ann Bannon. Without even a discussion ... In terms of actual influence, sales, everything, Bannon."^[11]

She was shocked to find out that her characters were not only remembered, but that they were archetypes among the lesbian community. Greenwich Village had long since become a place that lesbians recognized as a place they could go to be comfortable. With the books released again, Bannon did not advertise it outwardly in her department at Sacramento State. Not being tenured, she was unsure how the information would be received. However, word got out: "I was jet-propelled out of the closet. People stared at me around campus, and the PE majors all waved. My chairman told me to put the books into my promotion file, and one of my colleagues told me my file was the only one that was any fun."^[37] She often received small recognitions from students and faculty who were pleased and surprised, once getting a bouquet of flowers from a student.^[22] She said of the rediscovery, "I was so ready for something fresh and exciting in my life. It had seemed to me, up to that point, that not only had the books and the characters died, so had Ann Bannon."^[2]

However, following a bitter divorce, and just as the Naiad Press editions of her books were released, Bannon endured a bout with chronic fatigue syndrome, that she connects to repressing herself for so long. "You've got to think that it's connected, somehow. At the time I denied it fiercely, but I really think I beat myself up horribly, in ways I'll never know."^[11]

Bannon's books were featured in the documentary Before Stonewall in 1984 about how gay men and lesbians lived prior to the 1969 Stonewall Riots, where one woman remembered her picking up one of Bannon's books for the first time: "I picked up this paperback and I opened it up...and it sent a shiver of excitement in my whole body that I had never felt before."^[21] She was featured in the Canadian documentary Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives in 1992 recounting women's personal stories living as lesbians from the 1940s to 1960s. The books were selected for the Quality Paperback Book Club in 1995. Bannon also provided the foreword text for Strange Sisters: The Art of Lesbian Pulp Fiction 1949–1969 in 1999, discussing her reaction to the art on her own books and the other lesbian pulp fiction books she bought and read. Five of The Beebo Brinker Chronicles were reissued by Cleis Press again in 2001, excluding The Marriage, with autobiographical forewords that described Bannon's experiences of writing the books and her reaction to their popularity, causing another wave of interest.

[edit] Longevity

In the US, only a handful of books were published with lesbianism as a subject before the 1950s, and even fewer during that period and until 1969 that were not considered pulp novels.^[38] In describing how iconic Bannon's books have become over time, one writer said of the republication of her books, "It not only recovers the historical value of the texts, it recovers an idea of authorship not especially valued by the pulps...(I)t imagines book and artifact in the same horizon, and its foregrounding of the books' importance for lesbian readers in particular imagines these pulps as part of the lesbian literary tradition."^[39]

Her books are remarkable for portraying homosexual relationships relatively accurately.^[40] The continuity of characters in the series also gave her books a unique quality, especially when most lesbian characters during this time were one-dimensional stereotypes who met punishment for their desires. Bannon's characters have been called "accessibly human," and still engrossing by contemporary standards compared to being "revolutionary" when first released.^[41] The relationships between her characters were mostly positive, satisfactory and at times complex depictions of lesbian and gay relationships,^[42] which Bannon attributed to not letting go of the hope that she could "salvage (her) own life."^[26] One retrospective of lesbian pulp fiction remarked on the reasons why Bannon's books in particular were popular is because they were so different from anything else being published at the time: "Bannon was implicitly challenging the prevailing belief that homosexual life was brief, episodic, and more often than not resulted in death...Bannon insisted on the continuity of lesbian love, while everything in her culture was speaking of its quick and ugly demise."^[43]

Bannon set her stories in and among gay bars in the 1950s and 1960s. These were secret clubs and bars: as described in Beebo Brinker, one had to knock on the door and be recognized before being let in. In reality, women were not allowed to wear pants in some bars in New York City. Police raided bars and arrested everyone within regularly;^[44][45] it was a raid on a gay bar that prompted the seminal Stonewall Riots in 1969. Because of the atmosphere of secrecy and shame, little has been recorded about what it was like to be gay during this time, and Bannon unwittingly recorded history from her own visits to Greenwich Village. In 2007, one of the writers who adapted three of the books into a play said of Bannon's work, "I think she rises above the pulp. She wasn’t trying to write trash. There wasn’t any place for a woman to be writing this kind of material...But I just think the writing’s transcended its time and its era and its market."^[46]

[edit] Legacy

[edit] Bannon's characters in literature

References to Bannon's characters were used in later works by Joan Nestle. Kate Millett recalled how she loved her Ann Bannon collection because, "They were the only books where one woman kisses another."^[5] Audre Lorde also references Bannon in her 1983 book Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, as the narrator wandered Greenwich Village wondering if she would run into Beebo Brinker. Lana Turner's daughter Cheryl Crane, in her 1988 autobiography Detour: A Hollywood Story described her experiences as a teenager coming across Odd Girl Out in a drug store and how she identified with Laura (Crane also considered using "Laura" as an alias when she did not want to be recognized). Crane's grandmother eventually burned the book.^[47] Lesbian author Radclyffe described the impact Beebo Brinker had on her at 12 years old, "I found Beebo Brinker by accident but recognized myself within its pages immediately."^[48]

Overwhelming need led me to walk a gauntlet of fear up to the cash register. Fear so intense that I remember nothing more, only that I stumbled out of the store in possession of what I knew I must have, a book as necessary to me as air... I found it when I was eighteen years old. It opened the door to my soul and told me who I was.
Katherine V. Forrest, 2005

Author Katherine V. Forrest claimed Bannon and her books, "are in a class by themselves," and described purchasing and reading Odd Girl Out: "Overwhelming need led me to walk a gauntlet of fear up to the cash register. Fear so intense that I remember nothing more, only that I stumbled out of the store in possession of what I knew I must have, a book as necessary to me as air... I found it when I was eighteen years old. It opened the door to my soul and told me who I was."^[4] Forrest also credits Bannon, quite frankly, with saving her life.^[4]

Bannon's books are frequently on required reading lists for women's and LGBT studies college courses. The person most surprised by this was Bannon herself, who explained she had no such aspirations when she was writing Odd Girl Out, but regarding the longevity of the book, "If I had known, it might well have resulted in a much more polished product, but one that would have been so cautious and self-conscious as to be entirely forgettable. It would never–my best guess–have had the vibrant life it has now."^[2]

[edit] Stage adaptations

In 2007, The Beebo Brinker Chronicles were adapted as a play by an off-off-Broadway cohort called The Hourglass Group in a production that ran for a month. The writers adapted material from I Am a Woman, Women in the Shadows and Journey to a Woman to predominantly positive reviews. It was successful enough to be moved Off Broadway for another ten-week run.^[49] The play's writers commented on the difficulty of lesbian-themed works finding financial success. They were tempted to make it more appealing by turning to camp for comedy. However, one of the writers said, "I just felt like, how can you turn these people into a joke? I mean, these people are real people! Why would I direct a play where I held the characters in some sort of contempt or felt that they were ridiculous? We are allowed to do something else besides camp."^[50] The stage adaptation of The Beebo Brinker Chronicles was produced by Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner,^[51] and it won the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) Media Award for "fair, accurate, and inclusive" portrayals of gay and lesbian people in New York Theater.^[52] In April 2008, Bannon appeared with the Seattle Women's Chorus in a performance called "Vixen Fiction". Bannon read excerpts of her work and discussed the effects of her writing on her own life and the lives of her readers.^[53]

[edit] Criticism and recognition

Since so little information was available about lesbians and lesbianism at the time, Bannon's books, through their far-reaching distribution and popularity served to form a part of a lesbian identity: what lesbians were and were supposed to be. This identity served not only the heterosexual population at large, but lesbians themselves who were isolated and closeted, who saw themselves in her characters, and who were isolated and out, who longed for validation that other lesbians existed and that they would not end up miserable. All five books of The Beebo Brinker Chronicles depict characters trying to come to terms with their ostracism from heterosexual society. Some critics, in retrospect, attest that Bannon's books and characters represent a part of identity where women were unsure if they were gay or straight, man or woman, ashamed or accepting of who they were, and in receiving no clear answers from Bannon herself, left women to try to figure these questions out for themselves. Said one analysis of Bannon's works, "What Bannon did was to provide a range of possible trajectories to lesbianism...Bannon, by constructing fictional biographies for her lesbian characters, produced a new knowledge about how one arrives at a lesbian identity."^[31]

Bannon has received criticism for depicting lesbians and gays in her books as alcoholic, neurotic and self-destructive.^[54] Her depictions of rigid butch-femme relationships have also been criticized by feminists. Bannon addressed these criticisms in the new forewords to the Cleis Press editions, explaining that she simply depicted what she knew and felt at the time.^[10][55][56] Bannon has said she knows the concerns of the women who are uncomfortable with the themes of her books. She said, "I can understand that; they weren't there. To them some of it looks negative and some of it looks depressing. Although I didn't feel that way. I always felt excited when I was writing them."^[13]

Pulp romance novels often followed a contrived formula. One writer likened her work to the Mills and Boon of lesbian literature, but unlike conventional romance novels, her stories never really had neat and tidy conclusions.^[31] Her books have, with the benefit of time, been described in vastly different terms, from "literary works" among pulp contemporaries,^[57] to "libidinised trash."^[58] However disparate Bannon's books are described in feminist and lesbian literary retrospectives, almost every mention accedes the significance of The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. One retrospective writer called Bannon's books "titillating trash, but indispensable reading to the nation's lesbians."^[59]

In the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, Jenifer Levin wrote in 1995, "Know this: Beebo lives. From the midst of a repressive era, from the pen of a very proper, scholarly, seemingly conforming wife and mother, came this astonishingly open queer figment of fictional being, like molten material from some volcano of the lesbian soul."^[60]

In 1997, Bannon's work was included in a collection of authors who had made the deepest impact on the lives and identities of gays and lesbians, titled Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers.^[61] In 2000, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors awarded Bannon a Certificate of Honor "for breaking new ground with works like Odd Girl Out and Women in the Shadows" and for "voic(ing) lesbian experiences at a time when explicit lesbian subject matter was silenced by government and communities." In 2004, Bannon was elected into the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival Hall of Fame. Bannon received the Sacramento State Alumni Association’s Distinguished Faculty Award for 2005.^[62] Bannon received the Trailblazer Award from the Golden Crown Literary Society in 2005, and was honored by having an award named for her, the Ann Bannon GCLS Popular Choice Award.^[63] She was the recipient of the Alice B Award in 2008, that goes to authors whose careers have been distinguished by consistently well-written stories about lesbians.^[64] In May 2008, Bannon was given the Pioneer Award from the Lambda Literary Foundation.^[65] 1990s Queercore band Team Dresch recorded a tribute titled "Song for Ann Bannon."^[66] A UK band named Venus Bogardus^[67] takes its name from a character in the last book in the series, Beebo Brinker.

[edit] In retirement

Ann Bannon retired from teaching in 1997,^[68] but tours the country visiting paperback-collecting conventions and speaking at colleges and universities about her writings and experiences. She has recently been a guest of National Public Radio’s Peabody Award-winning talk show “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross.^[30] She is also featured in Gross’ recent book, All I Did Was Ask, a collection of transcripts from the show. She also speaks at gay-themed events around the country and is working on her memoirs.

In a recent editorial written by Bannon in Curve, she discussed how her books survived despite criticisms by censors, Victorian moralists, and purveyors of literary "snobbery" in writing, "To the persistent surprise of many of us, and of the critics who found us such an easy target years ago, the books by, of and for women found a life of their own. They–and we–may still not be regarded as conventionally acceptable 'nice' literature, as it were–but I have come to value that historical judgment. We wrote the stories no one else could tell. And in so doing, we captured a slice of life in a particular time and place that still resonates for members of our community."^[69]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Cleis Press
• In the Life episode of April, 2006 does a report on Bannon and lesbian pulp fiction
• Before Stonewall at imdb.com
• Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives at imdb.com
• The Hourglass Group, with links to reviews of the Off-Broadway production
• Playbill announcement for The Beebo Brinker Chronicles
• A 2006 review of Odd Girl Out and Beebo Brinker from AfterEllen.com

Persondata
NAME	Bannon, Ann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Weldy, Ann; Thayer, Ann
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Writer
DATE OF BIRTH	September 15, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH	Joliet, Illinois, United States
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH