By Claire L. Heuchan, author, essayist, and award-winning blogger. She's the Founder & Chair of Labrys Lit Lesbian Book Group. She tweets as @ClaireShrugged and blogs as Sister Outrider.

Today I am very proud to announce Labrys Lit’s reading list for 2023. Here’s what our international lesbian book group will be reading next year:

• The Girl on the Stairs, by Louise Welsh (January)

• The Secret of You and Me, by Melissa Lenhardt (February)

• Butter Honey Pig Bread, by Francesca Ekwuyasi (March)

• Stone Butch Blues, by Leslie Feinberg (April)

• Afterlove, by Tanya Byrne (May)

• Free to Be Me, by Jane Traies (June)

• What Goes Around, by Emily Chappell (July)

• Tipping the Velvet, by Sarah Waters (August)

• Leaving isn’t the Hardest Thing, by Lauren Hough (September)

• Tall Bones, by Anna Bailey (October)

• The Last One, by Fatima Daas (November)

• The Price of Salt/Carol, by Patricia Highsmith (December)

I couldn’t be more excited to read these wonderful stories with our members; to hear women’s perspectives on the plots, themes, ideas, characters, and style of these texts. Every single month, the insight and imagination of women in this group blow me away. Their participation in Labrys Lit is wholehearted and enthusiastic. And I take my responsibility to these women – as Chair and Curator of our reading lists – very seriously. So, for the sake of public accountability, I will describe the methodology and ethos that go into selecting our books.

Since Labrys Lit’s inception I have felt conscious of and driven by the responsibility to showcase works that represent the plurality of lesbian community. Labrys Lit is committed to celebrating lesbian stories and voices. And lesbians around the world are diverse in both background and thought. Though this vision was clear from the start, it has taken a lot of trial and error for me to learn how to fully realise it. Every month I learn something new, and every month we edge closer to the most elusive of pinnacles: best practice. 

Labrys Lit grew from a seedling of an idea into a blossoming group in the space of a month – thanks, in no small part, to the support of FiLiA. This was highly exciting. But it was also a logistical nightmare in terms of choosing books, contacting authors, and inviting them to join us with relatively short notice. This problem led to what I consider by far my biggest failure during Labrys Lit’s first year: though we read books by women of colour in 2021, every author who attended and spoke about her own work that year was white. The language barrier, childcare issues, and a fully booked schedule meant that none of the women of colour featured as Author of the Month could be with us.

As 2022 approached, I knew this had to change. I also felt it was only fair to our members that they be informed of what we’re going to read a minimum of three months in advance, so that they could order books together and save on postage. Forward planning was the obvious solution to our problems. Once the book group was firmly established, I found the necessary space to leave survival mode and start laying the foundations for our future. And this is how that framework operates.

From next year onwards, Labrys Lit will be reading 12 books annually – in 2021 and 2022 we haven’t set a book in December to avoid clashing with Christmas or Boxing Day. But, at risk of sounding like the Grinch, I’m delighted that the festive season will no longer stand in the way of us sharing sapphic stories.

In choosing these twelve books, I strive to meet certain commitments. For example: I try to set at least one translated book per year, because there are many fantastic lesbian authors who write in languages other than English, and we cannot offer anything close to a complete view of lesbian culture while ignoring those women’s voices.

At present I also try to set at least three books by working-class authors, and three books by women of colour every year. I’d like to increase those numbers in future. But this is not without challenge – because publishing is saturated with white, middle-class authors. Of the lesbian books published every year, the vast majority are by white and/or middle-class women. Disabled lesbians are underrepresented not only in our reading lists, but in the number of books published around the world. And while Labrys Lit can certainly uplift the work of marginalised women, there’s not much I can do to resolve the inequalities that define the publishing industry.

Additionally, I try not to set two consecutive books of the same genre. Though that doesn’t always work out. Owing to authors’ schedules, we read memoirs in August and September 2022. Both of these books were excellent and led to fruitful discussions, but I get the impression that our members enjoy more variety in genre – and have planned our next year accordingly.

With these criteria in mind, I created a document for Labrys Lit’s future reading lists. Every potential book – whether it was chosen by me or recommended by one of our members – is listed by title and author. In parenthesis, I add the book’s genre, a relevant detail about the author’s background, her nationality, and the country where the book is set. For example:

·       Butter Honey Pig Bread, by Francesca Ekwuyasi (novel, literary, Black, Canada, Nigeria)

·       Stone Butch Blues, by Leslie Feinberg (novel, classic, working-class, Jewish, North America)

You get the idea. Then I shuffle every book around the document until we have diversity in genre, author background, and setting. If I get stuck – which does happen – I colour code whichever characteristic is over or underrepresented. Going into reading lists for future years up to 2027 has proven freeing rather than restrictive or overwhelming, because it gives more room to shuffle books around. This strategy is also useful because it allows me to make plural representation a certainty in Labrys Lit’s future.

That’s not to say our future reading lists are set in stone – far from it. As Curator, I have a responsibility to incorporate books recommended by our members. And every month new lesbian books are released. Books can be swapped in and out as needed, brought forward or pushed back to later years. But having a plan in place, being conscious and intentional in choosing what will be read when, puts us in a much stronger position.

From 2023 onwards I aim to announce the following year’s books in September – a good compromise between keeping the list of set texts flexible and giving women sufficient notice of what we’re going to read (as well as giving myself time to read the books in advance and contact their authors!).

Our only criteria are that books must be written by a lesbian, and the author isn’t one whose work we’ve read together inside the last three years. When I founded Labrys Lit, I said that I’d choose our first few books out of necessity. I had planned to turn at least some months over to a vote. But this raised a lot of logistical questions:

·       Would the vote be between two books, or multiple choice?

·       Who would suggest the books to be voted on – me or our members?

·       What platform would ensure the maximum number of our members voted?

·       How would I be able to approach the selected authors in adequate time?

·       Where would I find the time to read and vet two or even three times as many books?

And, most importantly:

·       How could I uphold that core commitment to plural representation when I cannot predict the outcome of each vote?

Just thinking about how to balance all of those concerns gives me a headache. Perhaps in time, when I have grown in knowledge and experience, there will come a point when our book choices become more democratic. But – as things stand – I have to admit that I can’t cope with all of the extra work this change would generate.

Labrys Lit is run purely in a volunteer capacity. This whole thing is a labour of love, so I’m glad to read and pick our books; plan our book list; contact authors; run our social media pages; prepare discussion points; facilitate our meetings; do the admin (like writing our mailing list communications). I find fulfilment in all these things. But they are pretty time consuming. Time that could, hypothetically, be spent on writing my own books or more articles. So, I can’t realistically commit myself any further.

We can only do so much. And I think it’s better to be honest about my own capacity for doing than overextend myself reaching for an unrealistic goal, get burned out, and give up running the group. In Curating and Chairing Labrys Lit, I have learned a lot – and will no doubt learn more in the future. I hope that some of the lessons I’ve learned in sustaining and improving this book group will be useful to anybody else who is responsible for curating the content of any creative project.

One person – not a member of Labrys Lit, it’s important to note – asked me why I spend so much time on what they termed “diversity”, implying that because I’m Black I could reasonably get away with not bothering. But I refuse to offer my own body up as an excuse for representational laziness. As a Black lesbian writer myself, I know how hard it is to find the same opportunities and audience as straight, white peers. With Labrys Lit I have the ability to open doors for talented writers pushed to the margins of our field, connecting authors with an inquisitive and receptive audience that has the potential to grow into a loyal readership.

The most visible writers are often the most privileged, thus the least in need of support or the intervention of a corrective cultural group like Labrys Lit that exists to challenge the side-lining of lesbian writers. And sure, a commitment to this ethos undeniably increases the amount of time and energy required to sustain Labrys Lit from month to month. But it is absolutely worth that investment of resources, to accurately reflect a broad spectrum of lesbian community.

Feedback from our members consistently indicates that women find joy and fulfilment in reading a wide range of lesbian books. Women regularly get in touch to say that they’re delighted to be reading books they’d never previously heard of; that they’ve been pleasantly surprised to enjoy genres or styles of writing they previously assumed were not for them; that they find it rewarding to read outside of their own experiences. And this is the beauty of literature. Through reading books, we grow in empathy, knowledge, and awareness.

To join Labrys Lit, sign up here. Membership is strictly lesbian-only.

Follow us on Twitter @LabrysLit

Browse the 2023 Labrys Lit book list on the FiLiA Bookshop.