AR: I see that a lot in the way writers are pressured to be the CEO of Me.com and have a very specific brand and a narrow list of topics they cover. It also feels like a lot of mainstream publications think that inclusivity means having a gay person responding to equal rights or a black person dissecting the latest racist incident. But that just makes it seem like those issues only matter to those groups.

 

SS: Yeah, and all the power remains in the hands of the same people, but disempowered people are just given a little bit of space to talk.

 

AR: You’ve written a lot about how lesbian fiction has moved in and out of the mainstream. Where do you see it today?

 

SS: It’s in horrible shape. There’s a profound crisis. If you have lesbian protagonists, you can’t have a career. The people who are either the most ambitious or the most talented are coerced into abandoning the primary lesbian content. They go on to succeed in mainstream fiction and stay very far away and don’t give back — Susan Sontag, for example. MFA programs are very bad for people with lesbian content. The craft issues of representing people who haven’t been represented are very complicated. Your professor won’t know anything about it. If they are supportive, they will usually push people into midlist, mediocre voice where they squeeze experiences into pre-conceived narratives.

 

The people who manage to still write it and get it published tend to not have had the kind of craft development that their straight or gay male counterparts have had. You’ll get a lot of writers where you see tremendous energy and passion, but they lack craft. They’re overwriting, they’re underwriting, they’re not being edited appropriately.