What we’re about
Meet other fans of Lesbian Literature here in Seattle. Chat about books while meeting fellow queer ladies who like to read and socialize. You can jump in and join anytime!
Meeting Structure: The meetings are structured to discuss the books and get to know each other. We start with introductions, something we thought about the book (longer than a paragraph, shorter than a page), then we launch into discussion. We discuss the book and the issues discussed in the book for about an hour and a half. Then we end with our names again, last thoughts on the book and any activities/events/announcements people want to share with the group.
You are welcome to attend the meeting if you haven't read the book or haven't finished the book, especially if you're trying to determine if it's the right fit for you. We have on average about 20 women at every book club, often more, sometimes less.
Where we meet: We meet at Gay City Health at 400 E. Pine St.
After book club: Many of us head over to Elliott Bay Book Store where we pick up the next month's book. We're an official book club with Elliott Bay, so they have enough books in stock for our group and we get a 20% discount. To get the book, simply go to the front counter and tell them you are there to get the Seattle Lesbian Literature Book Club Book. It's often helpful to know the title of the book. (They usually stock our books one or two months in advance.)
After Elliott Bay: Many of us go out for dinner after we pick up the next month's book. Sometimes during the summer it's just ice cream. We decide together where we go for dinner on the spur of the moment.
Occasional changes to meeting space: In the summer, we may head over to Cal Anderson Park and will discuss the book in the sun. Because Seattle weather is unpredictable, we try to post something a day before about the change in meeting space. We also put a note where we had previously said we would meet and one of the organizers typically meets people at the original meeting space and walks over while the other organizer starts the meeting. Other times of the year, we occasionally have a scheduling conflict with the other events that Gay City puts on, we try to make sure people know about this and the alternative space we are meeting.
Parking Advice: Seattle Central Community College has a lot on Pine and Harvard that is $15 all day and evening, so you don't have to worry about parking meter duration.
Picking Books: We are always on the lookout for for books that might be good. If you have any book suggestions, please fill out this form https://forms.gle/f3i2ikEYXgm62qBq8.
Upcoming events (3)
See all- October Book Club - "Milk Fed"400 E Pine St, Seattle, WA
"Milk Fed" by Melissa Broder
https://www.elliottbaybook.com/item/rPCoGQ_-yAVMDBG1vWJSnQ
Named a Best Book of the Year by Entertainment Weekly, Vogue, Time, Esquire, BookPage, and more
This darkly hilarious and “delicious new novel that ravishes with sex and food” (The Boston Globe) from the acclaimed author of The Pisces and So Sad Today is a “precise blend of desire, discomfort, spirituality, and existential ache” (BuzzFeed).
Rachel is twenty-four, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of existential control, through obsessive food rituals, while working as an underling at a Los Angeles talent management agency. At night, she pedals nowhere on the elliptical machine. Rachel is content to carry on subsisting—until her therapist encourages her to take a ninety-day communication detox from her mother, who raised her in the tradition of calorie counting.
Rachel soon meets Miriam, a zaftig young Orthodox Jewish woman who works at her favorite frozen yogurt shop and is intent upon feeding her. Rachel is suddenly and powerfully entranced by Miriam—by her sundaes and her body, her faith and her family—and as the two grow closer, Rachel embarks on a journey marked by mirrors, mysticism, mothers, milk, and honey.
“A ruthless, laugh-out-loud examination of life under the tyranny of diet culture” (Glamour) Broder tells a tale of appetites: physical hunger, sexual desire, spiritual longing, and the ways that we compartmentalize these so often interdependent instincts. Milk Fed is “riotously funny and perfectly profane” (Refinery 29) from “a wild, wicked mind” (Los Angeles Times).
- November Book Club - "Nevada"400 E Pine St, Seattle, WA
"Nevada" by Imogen Binnie
https://www.elliottbaybook.com/item/f10yIDkbWsuXoGiEUQbwCQ
One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels
Longlisted for The New Yorker Best Books of the Year (2022)"[Nevada] is defiant, terse, not quite cynical, sometimes flip, addressed to people who think they know. It is, if you like, punk rock." —The New Yorker
"Nevada is a book that changed my life: it shaped both my worldview and personhood, making me the writer I am. And it did so by the oldest of methods, by telling a wise, hilarious, and gripping story." —Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby
A beloved and blistering cult classic and finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction finally back in print, Nevada follows a disaffected trans woman as she embarks on a cross-country road trip.
Maria Griffiths is almost thirty and works at a used bookstore in New York City while trying to stay true to her punk values. She’s in love with her bike but not with her girlfriend, Steph. She takes random pills and drinks more than is good for her, but doesn’t inject anything except, when she remembers, estrogen, because she’s trans. Everything is mostly fine until Maria and Steph break up, sending Maria into a tailspin, and then onto a cross-country trek in the car she steals from Steph. She ends up in the backwater town of Star City, Nevada, where she meets James, who is probably but not certainly trans, and who reminds Maria of her younger self. As Maria finds herself in the awkward position of trans role model, she realizes that she could become James’s savior—or his downfall.
One of the most beloved cult novels of our time and a landmark of trans literature, Imogen Binnie’s Nevada is a blistering, heartfelt, and evergreen coming-of-age story, and a punk-smeared excavation of marginalized life under capitalism. Guided by an instantly memorable, terminally self-aware protagonist—and back in print featuring a new afterword by the author—Nevada is the great American road novel flipped on its head for a new generation.
