Sabrina Porterfield
Sabrina Porterfield’s essays have been featured in the anthologies Ask Me About My Divorce (Seal Press, 2009) and Labor Pains and Birth Stories (Catalyst Book Press, 2009). She loves her Jane so much that she moved eight hours south of the Arctic Circle to be with her (and that’s love, baby). She spends her time mothering twins, teaching English to Finns, and wearing lots of warm clothing. When she can grab a quiet moment, she does a little writing on the side.
Sara C. Rauch
Sara C. Rauch is a poet, a writer, and an aspiring kombucha harvester. Her poetry has appeared in The Berkshire Review, upstreet, Inkwell, Earth’s Daughters, and The Black Boot. She lives with her partner and their four big-boned cats in Northampton, Massachusetts. When she isn’t writing, she is tending her community garden plot, riding her bicycle, and figuring out new and exciting ways to cook kale. Visit her blog at www.cactusroom.blogspot.com.
Michelle Renae
Michelle Renae is a writer and spoken word artist who makes her home in Chicago. Her work focuses primarily on feminist issues and spirituality as explored through her own life and sexuality. Michelle is also the co-founder and president of Organa Wellness Inc., a Chicago-based organization that helps women harmonize body, mind, and soul through a range of holistic services. She lives with her husband and their energetic three-year-old son. To contact Michelle and learn more about her work, please visit www.michellespoken.com or email her at [email protected].
Amelia Sauter
Amelia Sauter is a writer, cartoonist, martini lounge owner, marketing consultant, and musician living with her dynamic partner, their simple-minded dog, and their needy old cat in Ithaca, New York. Yes, she really does all those things, and yes, it pretty much makes her crazy. Back in the old days when newspapers thrived, Amelia wrote a regular cocktail column for The Ithaca Journal. Her cocktail blog can be found at www.feliciaspeakeasy.com and her freelance blog is www.drinkmywords.com. Amelia is currently writing a humorous memoir, Small Town, Big Cocktails (working title) about leaving a stable social work career to open a wild cocktail lounge, when she didn’t even know how the heck to make a gin and tonic. She is seeking a publisher for the book.
Rachel Smith
Rachel Smith was born in Chicago in 1970. She is the mother of two children: a son (eleven years old) and a daughter (three years old). She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology and an MBA in Healthcare Management. Currently, she’s employed as an administrative assistant at a large teaching hospital in Chicago. She got married in 2005 and is currently separated from her husband, although he lives close by in effort to maintain a strong relationship with their children. She is still with her lover, K.
Sheila Smith
Sheila Smith was born into the Depression, came of age during the McCarthy era, but became a political radical and a gender queer anyway. She’s lived in the same town, Corvallis, Oregon, for fifty years. She worked in biology labs, and turned dog trainer and lay minister in retirement years. She writes for much fun and little profit. Her work has been published in Spirit of Corvallis (Donning Company Publishers, 2008), A Cup of Comfort for Divorced Women (Adams Media, 2008), two animal shelter newsletters, and PETCO’s electronic newsletter.
Leigh Stuart
Leigh Stuart lives in Los Angeles with her two teenage children. In addition to being a devoted mother, she is a partner, daughter, freelance writer, attorney, and former wife. Recognizing her personal truth while simultaneously uncovering her longtime husband’s secret life is the subject of her nearly completed memoir, Revolution.
Susan White
Susan White, originally from eastern Tennessee, received her master’s degree from the Bread Loaf School of English and her MFA from Stonecoast. She has published short fiction in River Walk Journal, Pisgah Review, Front Range Review, and Fresh Boiled Peanuts. Her nonfiction essay, “Night Run,” will appear in A Daughter’s Story anthology. She teaches high school English in Asheville, North Carolina. When she’s not grading or writing, Susan enjoys running on the mountain trails with her dogs, Zora, Callie, and Hooper.
About the Editors
Candace Walsh is the editor of Ask Me About My Divorce: Women Open Up About Moving On (Seal Press, 2009). She is also the features and poetry editor at Mothering magazine. She co-founded and edited Mamalicious magazine. Her articles have appeared in Travel + Leisure, Sunset, Food & Wine, Natural Solutions, Newsday, New York, Blender, and Details. She also wrote, with John Morris, the book Stone Designs for the Home (Gibbs Smith, 2008). Candace lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Laura André received her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was Assistant Professor in the history of photography at the University of New Mexico from 2003 to 2007. Her essay “Not Otherwise Specified” appeared in Ask Me About My Divorce: Women Open Up About Moving On (Seal Press, 2009). She lives in Santa Fe and works for an independent bookseller specializing in rare and contemporary photography books.
Acknowledgments
We’d like to thank Krista Lyons for supporting and signing this project, Andie East for promoting it, and Seana McInerney for handling the paperwork. We love the brilliant cover design, and send our most passionately heartfelt kudos to the book’s cover designer, Kate Basart.
The rich variety of this book is entirely due to the many wonderful writers who sent in their stories—way more than could all be squeezed between these covers. Thank you for wading through the messiness of recalled personal history and sorting it out on paper for our appreciative consideration. We’d also like to thank all of the writing website moderators and blog writers (like Jen Sabella at AfterEllen.com) who posted our call for submissions. Jill Soloway was kind enough to give us some wonderful and accomplished writer leads.
This book has been generously graced with the eminent insights of Dr. Lisa Diamond and Jennifer Baumgardner, who have individually mapped the terrain of women’s desire in new ways that are both intrepid and visionary.
We are grateful to Andi Zeisler for publishing Audrey Bilger’s article on the changing meaning of the word “wife” in Bitch magazine, which sent us scrambling for her involvement in this book. Gretchen Van Esselstyn of mediabistro.com gave us one of our first mentions in a tutorial on writing for anthologies.
Candace’s children played nicely on many an afternoon when we had a deadline looming; Laura’s dogs snored soothingly in the background. Thank you to the friends and family who cheered us on and joined our book’s Facebook fan page; and thank you to the scores of complete strangers who joined it as well. Our book’s proposal was drafted at Two Fools Tavern in Albuquerque, and we read submissions and hammered out the introduction there over many a Guinness and Cobb salad (Candace), and Bass and nachos (Laura). It’s the quintessential, unpretentiously perfect writer’s haunt and we hope to linger there over many future projects. We also want to thank Jill McArthur for bemusedly hearing out our up-to-the-minute editorial dispatches and giving us each such great hair for our author photo.
Selected Titles from Seal Press
For more than thirty years, Seal Press has published groundbreaking books. By women. For women.
Ask Me About My Divorce: Women Open Up About Moving On, edited by Candace Walsh. $15.95, 978-1-58005-276-4. A spicy, bracing, riveting anthology that proclaims: I got divorced, and it rocked my world!
Sexual Intimacy for Women: A Guide for Same-Sex Couples, by Glenda Corwin, PhD. $16.95, 978-1-58005-303-7. In this prescriptive and poignant book, Glenda Corwin, PhD, helps female couples overcome obstacles to sexual intimacy through her examination of the emotional, physical, and psychological aspects of same-sex relationships.
Girl in Need of a Tourniquet: A Borderline Personality Memoir, by Merri Lisa Johnson. $16.95, 978-1-58005-305-1. This riveting and dramatic personal account gives us a glimpse of what it means to be a borderline personality in a relationship.
Lesbian Couples: A Guide to Creating Healthy Relationships, by D. Merilee Clunis an
d G. Dorsey Green. $ 16.95, 978-1-58005-131-6. Drawing from a decade of research, this helpful and readable resource covers topics from conflict resolution to commitment ceremonies, using a variety of examples and problem-solving techniques.
P.S.: What I Didn’t Say, edited by Megan McMorris. $15.95, 978-1-58005-290-0. For the friend who’s been there for you through everything, the friend you’ve lost touch with, or the friend you’ve wished you could help, this thought-provoking collection of unsent letters expresses the unspoken.
The List: 100 Ways to Shake Up Your Life, by Gail Belsky. $15.95, 978-1-58005-256-6. Get a tattoo, ride in a fire truck, or use food as foreplay—this collection of a hundred ideas will inspire women to shake things up and do something they never dared to consider.
Find Seal Press Online: www.SealPress.com
www.Facebook.com/SealPress
Twitter: @SealPress
Dear John, I Love Jane
Women Write About Leaving Men for Women
Copyright © 2010 by Candace Walsh and Laura André
Published by
Seal Press
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
1700 Fourth Street
Berkeley, California
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review.
“First Date With Ann” from What It’s Like To Live Now by Meredith Maran, copyright © 1995 by Meredith Maran. Used by permission of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
“Wedding Gown Closet,” © 2010 Katherine A Briccetti, is an adaptation from Blood Strangers, published by Heyday Books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dear John, I love Jane : women write about leaving men for women / edited by Candace Walsh and Laura André.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-580-05384-6
1. Women--Sexual behavior. 2. Bisexuality. 3. Man-woman relationships. 4. Interpersonal relations. I. Walsh, Candace. II. André, Laura, 1965-
HQ29.D37 2010
306.76’5082--dc22
2010010375
Dear John, I Love Jane Page 27
