Fifty years ago, LGBT+ people demanded equality – and unleased a queer creative tide. Now, many queer books are disappearing. You can help us save them and build a space for our community.
Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive grew out of Edinburgh’s lesbian and gay bookshops that were running in the 1980s and 1990s.
Thirty years later, Sigrid Nielsen and Bob Orr (cofounders of the original Lavender Menace Bookshop) established the archive to collect the ground-breaking titles that were available then and which are little known a generation later.
Become a Menace and donate to Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive.
Why? To protect our cultural and literary history to say to the world that we’ve always been here. Embracing diversity is liberating – ‘our liberation is your liberation’ to quote a chant from the early 70s.
By conserving out of print queer books, we are preserving queer history and providing access to readers, writers and researchers. By connecting you to our culture, we are able to show that we have a rich history of writing which is often hidden from us.
Our archive is a community space for LGBTQ+ people to come together, connect, and learn about our shared history. We run events with LGBTQ+ writers and host regular reading groups, and your support helps us with those costs. 