Katherine V. Forrest is twice winner of the Lambda Literary Award for best mystery (The Beverly Malibu and Murder by Tradition), and has been honored with the Pioneer Award from the Lambda Literary Foundation. She has been profiled in virtually every major lesbian and gay publication in America, as well as in numerous magazines and newspapers abroad including The Queensland Pride, (Australia), Lesbienne, (France) and Tetu (Germany). She was the senior fiction editor at Naiad Press from 1984 to 1994 and teacher of many classes and seminars on the craft of writing.
Forthcoming books include the long-awaited Daughters of an Emerald Dusk (Alyson Publications, May, 2005), Women of Mystery, (Ed.) (Alice Street Editions, 2005) and Lesbian Pulp Fiction 1950 - 1965, excerpts chosen and introduced by Katherine V. Forrest (Cleis Press, May, 2005)
Congratulations on Hancock Park being nominated for a Lambda Award. Did you expect the nomination at all?
Thank you, Lynne. It's a great compliment that every novel in the Delafield series has been nominated since the Awards came into existence—an important validation to me that the series continues to be of high quality for readers and critics.
It's been twenty years since the first Kate Delafield book, Amateur City, was published. Did you ever expect Kate to be as popular as she undoubtedly still is?
Twenty years. Imagine. I surely didn't, not at the time. All I knew when I found Kate was that she was what I was looking for: a woman in a high profile, high visibility, high stakes profession, a woman who presented the best case scenario for someone who believes she must be in the closet. The eight novels have given me not only lots of opportunities to write stories around a continuing character, but to explore issues important to my community, primarily issues around the closet, which is my great passion as a writer.
What are some of the most significant ways in which Kate has changed during the course of the Delafield series? And when the heck will she jump on out of that closet?
She grows and changes, I believe, with each passing book. Not quickly enough, but still, she's Kate and she lives her life as she sees she must. The way I view her, she's edged her way a bit further out of the closet with each book. Hancock Park is a crossroads book. Embroiled as she is in a court trial resulting from one of her homicide investigations, she also is confronted with the evidence of what her closeted life as a police officer has cost her, and that the price may well escalate.
How much has Kate Delafield changed Katherine V. Forrest? Does she ever challenge your own beliefs?
I would hope I've grown and changed, regardless of Kate. As for Kate, she challenges my patience! Even so, I'd like to think I share some part of her essential integrity, something about her I greatly admire. And yes, she's a touchstone for many of us in the lesbian community with the issues that she faces in the novels. Under pressure-laden circumstances she's come right up against outing, gay bashing, incest, breast cancer, the blacklist, abuse of power—just for starters.
What makes Kate Delafield such an appealing character for you to write about, to develop? How has her allure as a character changed over the course of twenty years?
Even though she's at mid-life, she's like a blackboard still being written on. She's in a profession that fascinates us all—TV programs and the enduring popularity of mystery fiction being proof. She's a flawed woman with a conscience and a moral code of ethics and she's constantly at war with aspects of herself and the world around her. She's been a marvel to write about over these past two decades.
Your two SF books, Daughters Of A Coral Dawn and Daughters Of An Amber Noon were very successful, and still remains to be. Will you be writing more SF in the future?
Daughters of an Emerald Dusk, the third book in the trilogy, will be out from Alyson in April. I hope one day to do another book about the central figure in an erotic novella of mine titled "O Captain, My Captain"—it's in my short story collection, Dreams and Swords, which Bywater Books will be reissuing next year.
You've said that Curious Wine, your first published book, still remains the favorite amongst all your books. Have you considered going back there—writing another romance?
Sure. One day...
Do you feel that being labeled as a 'lesbian' writer limits the way in which people perceive your work?
I don't care. I've always considered myself a lesbian writer and I'm exceedingly proud that I write for my community. Straight readers have found my work, especially the mysteries, but I consider myself the luckiest person on earth to have as my audience my own community.
What do you see as the next frontier in lesbian writing? What are some of the issues that you see are being addressed that weren't spotlighted before?
Family issues. Lots of us are parents now, and I hope we'll have novels about that experience—although, watching lesbian parents around me, I wonder when they'll have the time! I'm looking for more novels from our youngest writers. I'm part of the generation that did everything we possibly could so that the lesbian children coming after us would not grow up in the kind of world we did. We changed the world with our activism. So, you young writers out there, tell us what we've wrought, tell us all about yourselves!
Are there any lesbian-themed books written by a straight author, that you've read, which you feel addressed certain issues very well?
Paula L. Woods has a mystery series (Inner City Blues, Stormy Weather, Dirty Laundry) featuring Charlotte Justice, an African-American LAPD homicide detective. A featured character in her books is Billie, a lesbian detective. These issue-oriented books easily come to mind because Paula is a good friend of mine, but gay and lesbian characters are popping up all over straight fiction because as we become more visible on the landscape, we're being reflected in literature.
Isn't it true that, if not for the insistence of your partner, the reading public may never have had the pleasure of reading any of your work…
Yes. I guess you read the dedications on my early books.
Any heartfelt advice for anyone in a relationship with an author?
Hang onto your sense of humor as best you can.
How did it come about that you were picked up by the Berkley Publishing Group?
I wanted to be published mainstream. Even though I continue to have close affiliations with many our own presses and am published by them, I think it's important that gay and lesbian authors also be published mainstream because the statement that we are part of the major literature of this country is a vitally important one.
Through all the investigation that you've done for your books you must have had the opportunity to meet some very interesting people. Did the research for any specific book yield more that its fair share of surprises?
All research is rewarding and surprising. One of the joys of being a writer is that we learn about all sorts of things we wouldn't normally know a thing about. Such as being a police detective, and police procedure!
What's happening with Murder At The Nightwood Bar being optioned for film?
It had many near misses. Perhaps it may still be filmed one day. Or perhaps another of the books.
With The L Word being so enormously popular, don't you think that Kate Delafield would lean herself exceptionally well to a Television police drama? Are audiences ready for that on network television?
A character with Kate's integrity on the screen? I think audiences are more than ready.
What have been some of the highlights of your writing career thus far?
Fifteen published works of fiction—the highlights don't come much brighter.
Naiad Press—where you used to serve as an Editor—closed its doors after many years of being the prime publisher of lesbian fiction. Long-term, was this a good or bad thing for lesbian publishing?
Anytime a publisher closes its doors it's not a good thing for lesbian publishing. But we have new presses like Bywater that have come on board, Firebrand has returned to publishing fine books, our books continue to be published, and good things are happening in our ever changing world. What are you currently working on, and what can we look forward to from you in the near future?
At the moment I'm catching my breath after a very busy couple of years. Certainly Kate will be heard from again.
The five things every aspiring writer should know and make peace with…
Learn your craft in every way you can. Read everything you can find, get into a writers group so you can have a colleague group to give you credible and useful feedback. 2. Write every day.
Think of yourself as a writer, respect yourself as a writer, and expect the people around you to do the same.
Rejections are all part of the process. Every writer I know has a collection of rejection slips.
Learn to look at the world as a writer and you'll have a supply of ideas and writing material that will outstrip the hours in a day and the days in your life.
