Eating Fire: My Life as a Lesbian Avenger

Notes and Acknowledgments

 notes and Acknowledgments Readers should be aware that this is not an exhaustive history, especially of the New York Lesbian Avengers. Far more people contributed than are mentioned here. For the sake of the book, I had to make cuts, not additions. On the other hand, what I did include is as accurate as possible, though in a few instances (for example, when I was informed that I once had three roommates instead of two) I decided to let the original description stand. Our lives are shaped as much by the stories we cobble together with our memories as they are by the actual details. Partly for this reason, I made a conscious decision to use full names only for people who are public figures, at least in a limited sense. It can be unsettling to see your name pop up on Google or in a book, especially if you don’t remember things quite the same way. The only two pseudonyms in Eating Fire are Faustina and Kathryn. In general, this book owes a great deal to ideas explored in The Gully online magazine and New York’s Gay City News, but my biggest thanks go to those joyful troublemakers and unapologetically big-mouthed dykes the Lesbian Avengers. This book is for you. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Kelly Cogswell is a journalist, blogger, and prize-winning columnist at Gay City News in New York. A longtime lesbian activist, she worked briefly with the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization in New York before becoming a founding member of the Lesbian Avengers in 1992. She cofounded and edited The Gully online magazine, offering “queer views on everything.” ...