Creating lesbian history through fiction: Reading from novel in progress and discussion of challenges in writing lesbian historical fiction

According to Terry Castle, lesbian lives have been “ghosted – or made to seem invisible” throughout history. The considerable gaps in the historical record in relation to women’s lives in general and female same-sex desire in particular have proved a significant barrier in attempting to represent the previously unknown history of lesbian lives. Historical fiction provides an alternative means of narrating a lesbian past. Drawing on my own work researching 1920s lesbian lives, I will discuss the boundaries and tensions between historical fact and historical fiction and the challenges, freedoms and ethics inherent in narrating across gaps and silences. I will also read from my novel in progress, As a Lover, a fictionalised account of the publication and subsequent banning of Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness.