Jewelle Gomez is equally well-known for her forays into science fiction and a painful, heartfelt realism (I'm looking forward to the spring publication of her new book of stories,Don't Explain, the title story of which I read first inThe Penguin Book of Lesbian Short Stories). She is the author of the groundbreaking novelThe Gilda Stories, which was the winner of two Lambda Literary Awards. She's also published a collection of essays, Forty-Three Septembers, and three books of poems,The Lipstick Papers, Flamingoes and Bears, and the recentThe Oral Tradition. Gomez has been a poetry activist for many years in New York and now here, where she works as the executive director of the Poetry Center at San Francisco State.

December 12, 1997