Ann visiting her brother Chuck in the early 1970s, shortly before completing her doctorate in linguistics.
Gallery of Ann Bannon
1947
Illinois, United States
Ann, age 15, and Cousin Kaly, 14
Gallery of Ann Bannon
1953
Illinois, United States
Ann as a college senior in front of the sorority house.
Gallery of Ann Bannon
1953
Muncie, Indiana, United States
Ann's father and Ann on Thanksgiving Day.
Gallery of Ann Bannon
1954
Illinois, United States
Ann and her mother Jane on Mother's Day at Ann's sorority house.
Gallery of Ann Bannon
1955
Philadelphia, United States
Ann, age 23, as Odd Girl Out was being written.
Gallery of Ann Bannon
1963
Oregon, United States
Ann on vacation with her two daughters, Inga, about three, and Janie, about five.
Gallery of Ann Bannon
1968
United States
Ann with her daughters Inga, 9, and Janie, 11, just after completion of Beebo Brinker.
Career
Gallery of Ann Bannon
1985
United States
Ann onstage at the Castro Theater Premiere of the documentary Before Stonewall with Andrea Weiss and another producer.
Gallery of Ann Bannon
1985
United States
Bannon at a dinner party with the founders of Naiad Press, Donna McBride (left) and Barbara Grier (right), and author Joyce Bright.
Gallery of Ann Bannon
1990
United States
Ann with (left to right) social and political pioneers Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, and Linda Birner, publisher and editor of MGW (Mom Guess What), GLBT Newspaper in Sacramento, at Outwrite.
Gallery of Ann Bannon
2000
Harvey Milk Institute, San Fransisco, United States
Bannon at the Readers and Writers Conference, Harvey Milk Institute, October 2000, with moderator Regina Marler, and Cleis publisher Frederique Delacoste.
Gallery of Ann Bannon
2001
United States
Ann signing books for author Beverly Hickok (Aguinst the Current)
Gallery of Ann Bannon
2002
Seattle, United States
Bannon talking at the Elliot Bay Books Lecture, Seattle, January 2002.
Gallery of Ann Bannon
2002
United States
Ann Bannon talking with David Mixner, a former consultant to President Clinton, at the Democratic National Committee Fund Raiser, "Come Write History," New York Historical Society, September 2002.
Gallery of Ann Bannon
2002
New York, United States
Ann at the dinner with theater folk in New York. From left: The Beebo Brinker Chronicles' director Leigh Silverman; playwrights Linda Chapman and Kate Ryan; theatrical agent Beth Blickers; literary agent Laurie Liss, October 2002.
Gallery of Ann Bannon
2003
New York, United States
Ann Bannon with the cast of the Readers Theater production of The Beebo Brinker Chronicles; from left: Daniel Talbott (Charlie, Burr), David Pittu (Jack), Carolyn Baeumler (Marcie, Lili, Nina Spicer), Addie Johnson (Laura), Kellie Simpkins (Beth), Larry Pine (Merrill), Anna Foss Wilson (Beebo), at the New York Theatre Workshop, September 2003.
Gallery of Ann Bannon
2004
California State University, Fresno, United States
Ann addressing members of the faculty and United Student Pride, at California State University, Fresno, April 2004.
Gallery of Ann Bannon
2004
Berkeley, California, United States
Bannon lecturing in Professor Nealon's class, "Literature and Sexuality," LeConte Hall, U.C. Berkeley, April 2004.
Gallery of Ann Bannon
2004
New Orleans, United States
Ann Bannon with the panelists for the 'Women's-Eye View of the Literary World: A Herstory of Lesbian Publishing': Carol Seajay (author and editor), Jewelle Gomez (poet and essayist), Karin Kallmaker (romance author), Katherine V. Forrest (novelist and editor), an extraordinary panel representing many generations and genres, New Orleans, May 2004.
Gallery of Ann Bannon
2008
37 Arts Theater, New York, United States
Ann Bannon at the backstage with an original Gold Medal copy of Beebo Brinker, at the second premiere of The Beebo Brinker Chronicles, at 37 Arts Theater, New York, February 2008.
Gallery of Ann Bannon
2011
United States
Bannon at the signing table at the 32nd annual Los Angeles Paperback Collectors Show, March 27, 2011: Earl Kemp, legendary publisher and editor, founder of the Greenleaf Press, and mentor to a generation of young gay male writers in the 60s and 70s.
Gallery of Ann Bannon
2011
Seattle, United States
Ann Bannon thanking the cast, crew, and crowd after the last Beebo Brinker Pulp Cabaret, ACT Theatre, Seattle, August 27.
Gallery of Ann Bannon
2012
West Hollywood, United States
Ann talking to the appreciative crowd at the Mazer Archives in West Hollywood, March 25, 2012; poster for Ann's appearance at the Mazer Archives.
Gallery of Ann Bannon
2014
Los Angeles, United States
Ann presiding over a collection of her books at the Los Angeles Paperback Show, March 16.
Gallery of Ann Bannon
1990
Sacramento, California State University
Ann in her office as Associate Dean for Curriculum of the School of Arts and Sciences.
Achievements
Membership
Phi Beta Kappa
United States
Ann is a member of Phi Beta Kappa
Kappa Kappa Gamma
United States
Ann is a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma
Awards
Outstanding Pioneering Contribution to Lesbian and Gay Writing
1990
San Fransisco, United States
Ann receiving an award for Outstanding Pioneering Contribution to Lesbian and Gay Writing, Outwrite Conference.
Ann with (left to right) social and political pioneers Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, and Linda Birner, publisher and editor of MGW (Mom Guess What), GLBT Newspaper in Sacramento, at Outwrite.
Harvey Milk Institute, San Fransisco, United States
Bannon at the Readers and Writers Conference, Harvey Milk Institute, October 2000, with moderator Regina Marler, and Cleis publisher Frederique Delacoste.
Ann Bannon talking with David Mixner, a former consultant to President Clinton, at the Democratic National Committee Fund Raiser, "Come Write History," New York Historical Society, September 2002.
Ann at the dinner with theater folk in New York. From left: The Beebo Brinker Chronicles' director Leigh Silverman; playwrights Linda Chapman and Kate Ryan; theatrical agent Beth Blickers; literary agent Laurie Liss, October 2002.
Ann with fabled pulp paperback cover artist Robert Maguire, who did the cover illustrations used in the Cleis Press editions of Beebo Brinker and Journey to a Woman and later used as the poster for The Beebo Brinker Chronicles play, New York, September 2003.
Ann Bannon with the cast of the Readers Theater production of The Beebo Brinker Chronicles; from left: Daniel Talbott (Charlie, Burr), David Pittu (Jack), Carolyn Baeumler (Marcie, Lili, Nina Spicer), Addie Johnson (Laura), Kellie Simpkins (Beth), Larry Pine (Merrill), Anna Foss Wilson (Beebo), at the New York Theatre Workshop, September 2003.
Ann admiring two papier-mache ladies of lavish endowment, with publisher, editor, writer Kelly Smith of Bywater Books; Carol Seajay, author and publisher of Books to Watch Out For; and Katherine V. Forrest, author of romance, science fiction, and detective novels.
Ann Bannon with the panelists for the 'Women's-Eye View of the Literary World: A Herstory of Lesbian Publishing': Carol Seajay (author and editor), Jewelle Gomez (poet and essayist), Karin Kallmaker (romance author), Katherine V. Forrest (novelist and editor), an extraordinary panel representing many generations and genres, New Orleans, May 2004.
Ann Bannon at the backstage with an original Gold Medal copy of Beebo Brinker, at the second premiere of The Beebo Brinker Chronicles, at 37 Arts Theater, New York, February 2008.
Ann Bannon with (from left): Jon Ginoli, musician and author; Felice Newman, Cleis Press publisher, author, and friend; Brenda Knight, associate publisher, Cleis Press, and Viva; and Dr. Carol Queen, writer, and sexologist. At the Out and Off the Margins Panel Discussion for Gay Pride Kick-Off Event at the San Francisco Public Library, June 1, 2010.
Bannon at the signing table at the 32nd annual Los Angeles Paperback Collectors Show, March 27, 2011: Earl Kemp, legendary publisher and editor, founder of the Greenleaf Press, and mentor to a generation of young gay male writers in the 60s and 70s.
Ann at the evening of authors at the Upper East Side Barnes and Noble. From left, historian and author (Making History) Eric Marcus; organizer, moderator, and author (The L Life) Erin McHugh; publisher and editor (Magnus Books) Don Weise; Young Adult author Nick Burd (The Vast Fields of Ordinary); May 9, 2011.
Grand Ballroom of The Plaza, New York, United States
Ann at the party in the Grand Ballroom of The Plaza with Harriet Leve, Producer of Ann's The Beebo Brinker Chronicles, and scores of great Broadway shows; Dr. Marcy Adelman, Founder and Director of OpenHouse in San Francisco; Robin Waxenberg, Public Relations Executive.
Ann with Richard Lupoff, author of science fiction, mysteries, and The Great American Paperback; and Pat Lupoff, seated; and Michael Kurland, writer of detective and science fiction. Book Collectors’ Show, March 22.
Bannon at the San Francisco Public Library on June 7, 2016, participating in a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the James C. Hormel Center for LGBTQIA Literature.
Ann with friend and mentor Marijane Meaker, who wrote Spring Fire under the pen name Vin Packer.
Friend: Phyllis Lyon
2010
San Fransisco, United States
Ann with friend and legendary social activist Phyllis Lyon, co-founder of Daughters of Bilitis and beloved matriarch of the LGBT community, at Brava Theater.
Friend: Felice Newman
2010
San Francisco Public Library, United States
Ann at the Out and Off the Margins Panel Discussion for Gay Pride Kick-Off Event with (from left): Jon Ginoli, musician and author; Felice Newman, Cleis Press publisher, author, and friend; Brenda Knight, associate publisher, Cleis Press, and Viva Editions; and Dr. Carol Queen, writer, and sexologist at the San Francisco Public Library, June 1, 2010.
(It is a story of a lesbian relationship between two colle...)
It is a story of a lesbian relationship between two college roommates, Beth, older and vivacious, and Laura, a freshman and a person of retiring disposition. The story takes place in the 1950s, a time of restrictions and definite expectations for middle-class white women. Passion and secrecy abound and the story
comes to a dramatic ending when Beth has a change of heart and marries her fiancée.
(Laura is in New York City, where she is introduced to the...)
Laura is in New York City, where she is introduced to the homosexual subculture by Jack, a gay man. She makes a life for herself and falls in love a few times before she meets Beebo Brinker, a young “butch” woman with whom she shares an apartment.
(In this book we can see the dissolution of Beebo and Laur...)
In this book we can see the dissolution of Beebo and Laura's relationship and Laura’s subsequent marriage to Jack. They have a child together by means of artificial insemination.
(The book reintroduces Beth to the story. Unhappily marrie...)
The book reintroduces Beth to the story. Unhappily married and the mother of children, she flees her home and lands in New York City. She and Laura resume their old relationship, but it does not last. Instead, Beth forms a bond with Beebo.
(Ann Bannon was designated the “Queen of Lesbian Pulp” for...)
Ann Bannon was designated the “Queen of Lesbian Pulp” for authoring several landmark novels in the ’50s. Unlike many writers of the period, however, Bannon broke through the shame and isolation typically portrayed in lesbian pulps, offering instead characters who embraced their sexuality. With Beebo Brinker, Bannon introduces a butch 17-year-old farm girl newly arrived in Beatera Greenwich Village.
(In 1969 the police raided the Stonewall Inn, leading to t...)
In 1969 the police raided the Stonewall Inn, leading to three nights of rioting by New York's LGBT community. With this outpouring of courage and unity, the gay liberation movement had begun. Newly restored, Before Stonewall pries open the closet door, setting free the dramatic story of survival, love, persecution, and resistance experienced by LGBT Americans since the early 1900s.
Ann Bannon is an American academic, author of a series of five lesbian pulp novels, which comprise The Beebo Brinker Chronicles and earned her the title "Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction." Her novels were published at a time before the gay rights movement existed.
Bannon was featured in the documentaries Before Stonewall (1984) and Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives (1992).
Background
Ann Bannon, birth name is Ann Weldy, daughter of Jane and Paul Weldy was born on September 15, 1932, in Midwest and raised in Joliet, Illinois, the United States. Weldy graduated from college with a Bachelor of Arts degree in French in 1954 and married an engineer.
Education
Ann Weldy graduated from the University of Illinois with a Bachelor of Arts degree in French in 1954. Reflecting on Bannon's sorority days in Kappa Kappa Gamma, while studying at the University of Illinois, she remembered a younger sorority sister who became infatuated with an older sister whom Weldy befriended. Ann recognized the younger sister’s attractions, which went beyond mere sisterhood, and this observation provided her a means to question her own sexuality. This incident formed the basis of her first novel as Ann Bannon, Odd Girl Out, originally published in 1957.
Bannon stopped writing in 1962 and with the novels completed, Ann returned to college to earn a Master’s degree at California State University and finally a doctorate (Doctor of Philosophy) in Linguistics at Stanford University.
Ann Bannon's early role models were lesbian fiction authors such as Claire Morgan, Vin Packer, and Tereska Torres. Ann Bannon read their books and decided that she wanted to do this too.
When she started writing in 1955, Bannon was a twenty-two-year-old housewife living in Philadelphia. She found the book that became the inspiration for her own writing on a drugstore shelf: it was Vin Packer’s Spring Fire, a story of two college sorority sisters who have an intense affair.
The book sparked a fire in Bannon, only a year out of college herself, and eventually led to her own lesbian narrative. With surprising and welcome help from author Vin Packer, to whom Bannon had written for advice, the manuscript found its way to Dick Carroll, editor-in-chief of Gold Medal Books. Bannon took the rough draft to her editor, Dick Carroll, was promptly handed back to her with the admonition that she cut it by half and pursue the strong storyline, which involved two women. She followed his advice and gave Carroll a finished manuscript in just a few months' time. The result was Odd Girl Out, published in 1957, and Ann Bannon was born.
Weldy chose the surname “Bannon” simply because she liked the fact that it contained her first name. At this time she was living in Philadelphia and was able to escape to New York City on the weekends. There she caught glimpses of gay life in Greenwich Village. Though she was terrified of being caught up in a bar raid, her time in New York was a respite from her marriage and influenced her later novels.
Her first novel, Odd Girl Out, published in 1957, was the second best selling original paperback of 1957. This was accepted, and the other four novels followed in rapid succession. She went on to publish four other bestselling lesbian paperbacks that were referred to as The Beebo Brinker Chronicles: I Am a Woman in love with a woman - must society reject me? (1959); Women in the Shadows (1959); Journey to a Woman (1960); and Beebo Brinker (1962). Ann originally wanted to title her second novel, I Am a Woman, Strangers in This World - a phrase she felt captured the alienation gay men and lesbians experienced. Dick Carroll, however, felt the title was too literary and did not clearly inform the reader of the book’s lesbian content. Instead, he devised the lengthy, though explicit, title I Am a Woman in love with a woman - must society reject me?
With their colorful covers, their coded blurbs (“twilight, strange, shadows, secret, odd, evil, and warped”), and their lively, passionate heroines, Bannon’s books were quickly discovered by eager readers. They snapped them up from kiosks in train stations, newsstands, and pharmacies, where they were displayed next to the Westerns, the detective stories, and the science fiction. The books were taken home, hidden from censorious eyes, and devoured in secret. The series attracted a devoted following of women hungry to find validation for their lives and their sexuality. Back in the repressive Fifties and Sixties, it was literally a lifesaver for many of them, as the avalanche of letters to Bannon from that era attested.
Bannon has not published any novels since Beebo Brinker (1962), she did not reject the possibility of returning to lesbian fiction.
Ann Bannon worked as a professor and ultimately an associate dean at California State University, Sacramento, largely unrecognized as a novelist, believing that her stories had run their course. But they kept being re-discovered over the years and re-issued by different publishers. Occasionally, one of the university librarians would stop her on her way across campus to say, “We just bought a new edition of your books.” Or a student would enter her office, lay a small bouquet shyly on her desk, and say, “I just found out who you are.” Sometimes it was a colleague whose reaction was usually, “No! Really? That was you?”
It was not until she retired in the late 1990s and finally had time to travel, lecture, and meet the public, that the reach of her novels began to sink in. Initially, Bannon was promoting the new Cleis Press editions of the Beebo Brinker Chronicles (2001 - 2003) around the country. But before long, a variety of exciting new projects emerged. Ann appeared on many radio and television interviews, wrote numerous reviews and essays, and found herself, as friends claimed, among those who had “flunked retirement.”
In 2004, the process of translating three of the novels into an award-winning theater piece began. Written by playwrights Kate Moira Ryan and Linda S. Chapman, “The Beebo Brinker Chronicles” stage play had two successful runs in New York in 2007 - 2008, produced first by Hourglass Productions, and then by Harriet Leve, with executive producers Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner.
(In 1969 the police raided the Stonewall Inn, leading to t...)
1984
Views
For an entire generation, The Beebo Brinker Chronicles provided the first representation in literature that they had ever read of women loving women. Ann Bannon and other authors helped to end the isolation and ignorance that had kept thousands of gay women in emotional prisons, and paved the way for the new generation of lesbian writers who were to follow. Over the decades, of all the original lesbian pulp novels authored by women, Bannon’s books have become the most read, the most remembered, and the most often taught.
Quotations:
"I wrote the stories no one else could tell. And in doing so, I captured a slice of life in a particular time and place that still resonates for members of our community."
Ann Bannon got married immediately after college in 1954. The marriage was tumultuous and Weldy, a young housewife, struggled with the frequent moves necessitated by her husband’s job and her sexuality.
Bannon's marriage ended in a contentious divorce in 1981. She has two daughters: Janie and Inga.