The Book Launch of Walking to the Edge, Lesbians Are Everywhere: An Australian Lesbian Travel Anthology Edited by Long Breast Press, held at Jika Jika Community Centre Plant Street Northcote on Sunday 21 March, 2 - 4 pm (Images from the day are here.)
After Jean had acknowledged the traditional custodians of the land we were meeting on, the Wurundjeri Woiwurrung people of the Kulin Nation, Claudia was the emcee who welcomed everyone to the launch, gave a short informative talk about Long Breast Breast, which had its 15th anniversary in 2020, gave brief explanations about the six books we’ve published so far leading into our seventh and did a great job of introducing everyone.
Liz Smith did an absolutely fabulous Launch of the book with some very complimentary comments about the book itself and in particular the contributions from the 26 writers. She also highlighted a few of the stories to give an idea of the variety and some similarities of the travels by lesbians to various parts of the world as well as Australia in pursuit of lesbian events and places to visit.
The readings by several of the authors gave everyone present a more detailed idea of the kind of travel stories they could expect to read for themselves after they’d bought the book: Wendy Suiter’s Intersections; Barbary Clarke’s Displaced - and Belonging; Ardy Tibby branched out and partly read from Out and AbOUT and partly told stories; Chris Sitka read parts of the two stories she contributed, Planet Stausebach and Coasting; and Jean Taylor read an extract from Lesbians Are Lovely, Lesbians Are Radical Feminists, Lesbians Are Travellers.
Claudia thanked all the contributor’s whose stories are sometimes illustrated by coloured photos and drawings, a first for LBP, thanked Liz for launching the book so wonderfully, thanked Pat Michell for documenting the event by taking the photos that are now on the LBP website, and urged everyone to continue buying books being sold by Ardy and Barbary while we mingled and chatted and ate all cheese and fruit platters and pavlova on offer, with many thanks to everyone who attended to make this a very enjoyable launch.
If you prefer to browse the shelves of a bookshop, you can find Walking to the Edge at these bookshops: