As a critic and historian, she has delineated a "Lesbian Poetic Tradition" in The Highest Apple (1985), a book dedicated "To All Lovers" (not only lesbians) and examining the work of nine poets--Emily Dickinson, Amy Lowell, H.D., Gertrude Stein, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Olga Broumas, Paula Gunn Allen, and herself--by linking them "in a tradition with Sappho."

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Her Really Reading Gertrude Stein (1989) not only recovers little-known works by this lesbian writer but, as a map of rereading, energetically and profoundly urges readers beyond fascination with her celebrity and into appreciation of Stein's widely admired but little-read texts.

One of the most important lesbian writers of our time, Judy Grahn continues to make vital contributions to audience development and literary production as she beckons each and every reader into a world exhilaratingly rich with common sense.

American lesbian literature prior to Stonewall exploited the "outlaw" status of the lesbian as it moved from encrypted strategies of expression to overt political celebrations of woman-for-woman passion.

Since Stonewall various political agendas have dominated American lesbian literature.

Although the question of homosexual identity is a complex one, it has polarized activists, theorists, and literary critics into two primary camps, essentialists and constructionists, both of which can contribute usefully to an understanding of the gay and lesbian literary heritage.

Since the histories of gay men and lesbians are radically different, the challenge is to describe interrelations in the gay and lesbian literary heritages without blurring them into each other.

Since the 1960s, the general trend in lesbian poetry has been collective and political rather than purely aesthetic.

A set of 78 cards with evocative imagery, the Tarot is often used in fortune-telling, and also for self-discovery, meditation, and intuitive work.

Of mixed Native American, Scottish, and Lebanese heritage, American poet and literary scholar Paula Gunn Allen reinterprets the historic and mythic beliefs of Native Americans from a twentieth-century lesbian-feminist perspective.

Greek-born lesbian poet and translator Olga Broumas writes openly erotic poems that combine ancient Greek echoes and late twentieth-century idiom.

Emily Dickinson's poems and letters to her sister-in-law Susan are both passionate and elusive in their homoeroticism.

The bisexual poet and novelist Hilda Doolittle, who published under the initials H. D., wrote poems and autobiographical prose works that celebrate women's romantic relationships with each other.

The network of independent gay and lesbian bookstores that arose in the 1970s served as incubators for the literary and cultural development of the modern gay rights movement in the United States and abroad.

The work of African-American activist and writer Audre Lord was greatly influenced by her lesbianism.

Much of Amy Lowell's poetry is extremely frank, forthrightly sensual, and often overtly lesbian.

Adrienne Rich, who has aestheticized politics and politicized aesthetics, is America's most widely read lesbian poet.

Admired through the ages as one of the greatest lyric poets, the ancient Greek writer Sappho is today esteemed by lesbians around the world as the archetypal lesbian and their symbolic mother.

In addition to becoming--with Alice B. Toklas--half of an iconic lesbian couple, Gertrude Stein was an important innovator and transformer of the English language.