SASS Newsletter

The September/October issue.

Anna Burke
October 30, 2025

It’s been an eventful fall. This edition, we take a look at our banned books campaign, update you on the news that matters to our literary community, hear from readers, and introduce a GCLS corner where we cover the SWAG4GCLS campaign—with a SASS team you can join!

A word after a word after a word is power.

Margaret Atwood

Halloween is upon us, and what is spookier than book bans, censorship, and increased political violence against the sapphic community? Please share your experiences on our Facebook group, Bluesky, or Instagram, or join us for the following virtual sessions:

Writing session with Kris Bryant, Sunday Nov. 2 at 10am Central

Links to join these sessions can be found in our Facebook Group for security purposes.

News Roundup

Two Important Reports on Libraries and Book Bans

EveryLibrary’s latest report—"Codifying Censorship or Reclaiming Rights: The State-by-State 2025 Legislative Landscape for Libraries"—looks at the more than 130 bills across the country that directly affect libraries, library workers, and the right to read. During the first half of this year, these bills have attempted to do everything from criminalizing school librarians to cutting funding, enforcing anti-DEI mandates and content restrictions, and more. The report also looks at the nine states that have written in new laws that protect librarians from harassment and prosecution, help maintain access to digital content, and reinforce public policy around library services.

PEN America released their latest report on book bans over the last school year. Their findings continue to highlight what anti-censorship have been saying for years: the attacks are getting bigger, going higher, and continuing to happen at a whirlwind pace.

In “The Normalization of Book Banning ,” PEN defines a book ban as the removal of a book from the school shelves. This ban may be temporary or permanent; the removal is counted as a ban, as the material is unavailable for use. Starting at the top level, PEN found that since 2021, nearly 23,000 titles have been banned across 45 states and 451 public school districts.

Here’s a free printable bookmark with steps anyone can take to protect the freedom to read.

An AI Update from Jae

Once again, Jae provides an important public service to the sapphic lit community with this update: Recently, several authors have been burned by service providers using generative AI tools without disclosure. A sapphic author paid an editor on Fiverr to edit her manuscript, only to later discover that the edits were created by AI. The editor pasted her entire manuscript into AI without her knowledge or permission! Likewise, a popular graphic artist has been credibly accused of having used AI to generate at least some of her covers without revealing that fact to the authors who paid for the covers.

How to protect yourself:

Ask upfront: Before hiring an editor or artist, explicitly ask about their process and whether they use any generative AI tools.
Check their previous work: While it's getting harder to recognize AI-generated covers, there are still some tell-tale signs (e.g., extra fingers, weird-looking hands, strange artifacts, details that make no sense, etc.).
Seek referrals from fellow authors: Work with editors and cover artists that come highly recommended by fellow authors you trust.
Contract clauses: Insist on a contract with a no-AI clause, specifying that the editor or artist can't use generative AI to work on your manuscript or cover.

Book Bans: First the Latest Bad News

North Carolina: Some North Carolina teachers are scaling back or shutting down their classroom libraries in response to a new state law requiring them to catalog all their books so they can be listed online. The new state law, passed in July, requires school districts to post the names of all library books in each school, including the books that teachers keep in their classroom libraries. The new requirement for teachers to catalog hundreds of books — and in some cases more than 1,000 — has drawn complaints from educators statewide. North Carolina’s new law allows parents to identify the books in classrooms and the school library that they don’t want their children to read.

Texas: SB 13 is a bill that removes local control from public schools across the state of Texas and puts the power of what books are or are not available to students into the hands of politicians. The bill tells educators and librarians that they’re unable to do their jobs correctly, despite being trained, educated, and experienced in the field.

Ohio: A federal judge dismissed an Ohio teacher’s lawsuit after she was suspended for having LGBTQ-themed books in her classroom. Read here

Book Bans: Now the Latest Good News

Alberta, Canada: Alberta politicians backed off the plan to ban books province-wide after massive backlash.

Delaware’s Freedom to Read bill is now state law. This one is applicable to both school and public libraries.

Connecticut: The Freedom to Read bill in Connecticut. It is also applicable to school and public libraries.

Kentucky: Kentucky libraries are seeing a surge due to a ban on cellphones during school hours that has prompted more students to turn back to reading. Read here

Maryland: Remember Mahmoud v. Taylor that allows Montgomery County School parents to pull their students from lessons related to positive portrayals of LGBTQ+ people? Guess how many parents have opted their students out? 43 families or .003% of the district. What a wonderful waste of time and energy. (We’ve seen this with Florida school library opt-outs, too, wherein minuscule portions of families restrict access to the library for their students. Also of note: one of the plaintiffs in Mahmoud v. Taylor is the chair of the local Moms for Liberty chapter.).

Iowa: Students at Iowa City West High School started a “Banned Book Club” reading challenged titles after Iowa’s book-restriction law, now paused by legal injunctions. Read here

Great Rulings

"A former Wyoming library director [Terri Lesley] who was fired amid an uproar over books with sexual content and LGBTQ+ themes on youth shelves has reached a $700,000 settlement with her former employer." This is the second such settlement this year wherein a director said they wouldn’t be banning books per board directives and they were subsequently fired. The first was Suzette Baker in Llano, Texas.

A federal judge ruled that the Department of Defense Education Activity must return nearly 600 books removed under race and gender censorship concerns, restoring students’ First Amendment rights. Read here

A Trump-appointed judge ruled that provisions of Texas’s READER Act are unconstitutional and unworkable. The part of the law in question is about vendors needing to rate each book for its "sexual explicitness." The law requires schools only purchase books from vendors who rate the books based on state guidelines, as schools cannot purchase any books deemed to be "sexually explicit."

—by Cindy Rizzo

Banned Books Week Campaign

SASS and GCLS partnered on their first campaign together for Banned Books Week on October 5–11, 2025. There was strong engagement (over 14,000 views of campaign posts from the SASS account alone and over 50% of those were from non-followers), and graphics with the campaign hashtag #SapphicsWithTheBanned spanned social media channels across four continents. Thank you to the many authors and presses who joined and supported the campaign with powerful posts and videos featuring sapphic titles and voices. Here is a summary of the community engagement highlights from the campaign:

November is SWAG4GCLS Month

Authors and writers:

Set your writing and editing goals for November
Join Team SASS! here or create your own SWAG4GCLS page on the Give Lively site by clicking “Start A Fundraiser”
Let your fans, readers, friends, and family support your goals while also supporting GCLS

Everyone:

Go to the SWAG4GCLS pages of your favorite authors and support their goals or donate to Team SASS! to help us all support GCLS!

Who Can You Support?

Reader Sound-Off

Top 3 Sapphic Reads of 2025

This year was, to put it mildly, difficult. I had trouble really enjoying the books I was reading and fell into a bit of a slump. My own writing suffered as well. To reinvigorate myself, I recently dove back into an old favorite, picked up the newest entry in a beloved series, and indulged in my love of movies.

1. Who'd Have Thought - G Benson

A delightful story that I will defend to the death--fake marriage between an icy/grumpy neurosurgeon and sunshine ER nurse. Sam and Hayden's dynamic is so wonderful and it's a joy to watch it evolve.

2. Windlass - Anna Burke

I mean, she's a genius right? I was so happy to go back to Seal Cove and see the culmination of Angie and Stevie's attraction.

3. Like They Do In The Movies - Nan Campbell

Loved all the nods to LA and the film industry in this. —KP Evans

Nobody In Particular by Sophie Gonzalez

The Wilding of Em’s Path by Ana K Wren

Discovering Nicola by Clare Ashton —Helen B.

Midnight Rain by Haley Cass

Captive in the Underworld by Lianyu Tan

Bloomtown by Ally North —Tiffany

Tropes: Helpful or Annoying?

Tropes can be an easy way to quickly give readers an overview of what a book holds in store for them. I personally wouldn’t call them annoying. I’d say they’re probably helpful, although not necessary. For example if I see an author has flagged their book as second chance or friends to lovers (my favourites) I’d be more likely to move it towards the top of my TBR, but there would also be a number of other factors in play. —Helen B.

I don't hate tropes and understand their utility for readers, but as an author honestly it's the last thing on my mind. I differentiate between categorical or genre tropes and "plot" tropes. The former, for me, can be a useful tool to really drill down on the type of read I'm looking for--i.e., is this a butch/femme pairing, contemporary or historical, speculative, romance or love story. It also can be a useful tool in determining the level of spice in a romance.

Plot tropes, though, can be overused or too heavily relied on. I personally don't care about certain things like if there was one bed or not. If the characters are compelling and the relationship is believable, then the story is working for me and that's all that matters.

I think if you're writing for tropes, then that can get difficult. I think you need to start with your characters and build from there. —KP Evans

I’m a romcom person, I like tropes and happily ever afters. —Tiffany

A Book For All Seasons

With the days growing darker, the holiday season looming, and the Year of Our Lady Chappell Roan 2025 mercifully yet slowly coming to an end, reviewers and readers like myself are soon going to be compiling our “Best of” lists. This article is one of those lists, but with a twist. Rather than give you a basic numbered list of books from the entire year, I’m going to give you my favorite book from each season of the year so far.

Without further ado, here we go: a tour through the seasons of my reading in 2025.

Winter (January–February)

My bookish 2025 started off strong with The Relationship Mechanic by Karmen Lee, a wonderful one-night-to-forever romance set in Georgia. I also got to read JJ Arias’ For Love and Blood and Fury (or as she calls it, her “vampire throuple book 1”), the first two novellas in Milena McKay’s Cupids and Goddesses trilogy, and Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk.

If I had to pick the best read of those colder months, though, it’d have to be Bryce Oakley’s One Last Run, the first book in her recently completed Latitude and Longing series. For starters, what’s more wintery than a skiing trip? Second, Bryce gives us an almost flawlessly executed second chance romance between two characters, Danica and Pete, who are perfect for each other if they can just get over the issues that tore them apart the first time. The final piece of the puzzle that makes this book so good is the side characters. Bryce can write a group of longtime friends and all the messy dynamics between them with such heart and humor you won’t want the book to end. Luckily, since this is a series, you’ll have plenty of time with the rest of them as soon as you finish this one.

Spring (March–May)

The hits just kept on coming as the flowers began to bloom and the temperatures rose. Some of them were real tearjerkers, too. There was Mazey Eddings Late Bloomer, Only Hope by Ruby Landers, Afterlove by Tanya Byrne, and Here We Go Again by Alison Cochrun. If this were a list of “Best Books at Tearing My Heart Apart Then Putting it Back Again”, Worth Waiting For by Kristin Keppler would be taking the top spot.

But since this is a list of best reads, I have to give the slight advantage to Virginia Black’s No Shelter But The Stars. This was space opera at its best, giving you a galaxy-spanning conflict and boiling it down to a personal relationship between two women depending on each other for survival. The story doesn’t shy away from the difficulties they face not only in learning to trust each other, but also in surviving on a barren planet and, once they are rescued, finding each other again. Virginia’s prose is also phenomenal in keeping the tension taught. Altogether, this is the most earned happy ending I’ve ever read in sapphic literature.

Summer (June–August)

Summers are my best time for reading. Classes are out and even though I still have to work, it’s much easier to sneak away to read a chapter (or two) here and there. Plus, when it’s over 90 degrees outside, why not stay inside and read more?

As for the best book of those months, again I have plenty to choose from. There’s Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne, a book that made me rethink my avoidance of cozy romances, Quiver by Rachel Spangler, a book brimming with bitter bickering and “just kiss already” energy, and Whisper of Solace by Milena McKay, featuring one of the iciest ice queens to ever ice queen.

However, I’m going to have to go with Informed Consent by Rachel Spangler for my favorite of the summer. Sapphic romance, as well as straight romance (I assume; never touched the stuff) is full of characters who are too lovably dumb for their own good. You read their arguments against falling in love and just go, “You sweet, sweet moron”. Informed Consent does the opposite. It gives you two women who are too smart and empathetic for their own good. It’s like watching two people standing at a door saying, “No, after you,” until finally someone pushed them through it. It’s a delight to read, especially considering how obvious it is that they are perfect for each other. You end up with a book that feels both cozy yet filled with romantic tension and I loved it.

Fall (September–October)

I’ll be honest. The past two months have been some of the busiest I have been. This semester has been no slouch and between that and my other projects (which I will gladly yet awkwardly rant at you about anytime), I haven’t been able to do as much reading as usual.

Still, what I have read has been pretty good. There was Chef’s Kiss by Stephanie Shea, The Memories of Marlie Rose by Morgan Lee Miller, and Too Forward by Krystina Rivers. The winner, though, would have to be Meeting Millie by Clare Ashton. As I’ve said so many times before, I love second chance romances. Not only does the first book in Ashton’s Oxford Romance series give you a story of two friends reuniting and falling in love, it’s also infused with so much sapphic yearning and one of the most adorably awkward bisexual awakenings I’ve ever read. Plus, what’s not to love about a sapphic with a British accent?

Conclusion

So there you have it! My favorite books of every season so far with plenty of additional recommendations (because it’s me). I know it seems like a lot, but if you think about it, you’re just four more books from being able to make a Sapphic Literature advent calendar! So, you’re welcome!

Hope the rest of 2025 blesses you with plenty of amazing stories!

—by Jamie Rose

How has sapphic literature changed my life?

I spent a good chunk of my youth assuming what was around me, and who was around me, was the only option. I was supposed to have crushes on boys, because all my friends did. And didn't I want to be like them? Okay, sure, "I guess I like that random boy over there."

To put it quite simply, it didn't occur to me that there was another option in the slightest. And then I went away to college, and I met Others. There were women that liked both women and men. There were some that didn't like men at all. Women that liked whatever. Women that we'd thought were boys, but we had been so wrong about that.

That opened up a world of options that, although I had vaguely known existed, I didn't know it had been an option for me. The older I got, though, the more I got to know myself, and what I truly needed in my life. But even as that happened, I still didn't know a lot of people that were like that. I knew some, but few enough to convince me we were still Others.

When I had my first relationship with a woman (who I married posthaste) I started craving stories that reflected the life and the love that we had. I scoured the libraries, which had very few options in 2008, but luckily it did have the Kate Delafield series by Katherine V Forrest, my very first foray into sapphic literature. From there I read Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden, Radcliffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, several books by Julie Ann Peters, and Ash by Malinda Lo.

With every new story I picked up there came a new realization: I didn't know we were in this genre too.

It became harder to find books in my little library that I hadn't already devoured, so I moved online, where I discovered a veritable trove of bingeable books, chock full of people that were in a lot of ways similar to me. To Us.

Then I stumbled into fanfiction, which gave me an endless stream of imaginative and wondrous worlds that people were just giving us completely free. Every season and every show opened another vein of inspiration in pockets across the world.

I have never, not once, exhausted my need for more stories. I have only continued to expand into every genre I can find Us in. Those spaces are ripe, and the stories we get from them are a fully renewable resource, constantly replenished by the introduction of new creatives, and new voices, every single year.

So what has sapphic literature given me? Something so incalculable that it can't be fully grasped in any tangible way. But what I can say is that when I was younger I thought I was an Other. Sapphic literature taught me there was an entire world of Us just waiting for me to find it. And that world continues to be infinite.

—by Nikki Marks

Two-Minute Marketing Video with Becks Quirk

Becks Quirk shares some marketing tips for new authors and new book ideas.

GCLS Corner

GCLS heads to Florida in 2026 for Gulfport ReadOut and the GCLS Con.

Our commitment to our community means showing up – even when it’s hard. That’s why we are bringing our sapphic literary community to Florida in 2026. Our presence in red states underscores our fidelity to our entire community. It reflects our commitment to connection and visibility, especially for those who have fewer opportunities to experience LGBTQ+ events as local politics restrict authentic stories from being shared.

Gulfport and Orlando are both blue islands in a red sea. These communities are home to vibrant, visible, and brave LGBTQ+ folks who want and need to know we care about them. At our 2025 Con in Albany, Florida resident Jamie Rose shared her thoughts on why it matters for GCLS to come to Florida to support the community there.

Several members of the GCLS board and community will be at Gulfport ReadOut in February (Feb. 6-8) to support the work OUT Arts & Culture is doing to support queer literature. Come by our vendor table and learn more about GCLS…or just say “hi!”!.

In August (Aug 5-9), GCLS brings our 22nd Annual Conference to Orlando and our theme is “Loud and Proud”. We can’t wait to welcome our community from across the world to the LGBTQ-friendly theme park capital of the world. We are crowd-sourcing our programming. If you have an idea for a panel, presentation, or signature session to share with the Con, find more information here: 2026 Con Programming Information.

Come to Con, celebrate our literature, our community, and the people doing the hard work in Florida supporting the freedom to read and to exist freely and openly.

If you can’t make it, please consider supporting GCLS by sponsoring a ticket for someone else to attend.

We would love to see you there!

—by Betsy Carswell

Looking Back on Women’s Week in PTown

For over 40 years, now, members of the sapphic community have flocked to Provincetown, MA for a week-long celebration of sapphic art, culture, and community called Women’s Week. This was my fourth (fifth?) year attending, and each year I grow increasingly grateful for the opportunity to surround myself with my favorite people in the sapphic literary community (aka, all of you). This year, Women’s Week felt particularly like a blessing, though travel delays and flight cancellations did unfortunately plague several of my friends, as the political climate in the U.S. is an increasingly terrifying place. It reminded me that the greatest defense we have in these tragically precedented times is each other.

What separates Women’s Week from the other conferences and events I regularly attend is its focus on community. Whether browsing in queer-owned shops, eating meals with friends, or attending readings, signings, panels, and book fairs, there is a more relaxed atmosphere—perhaps courtesy of that fresh sea air—that fosters conversations and new friendships. Or maybe I just like the seaside and find it easier to socialize with the wind whipping off the Atlantic… Either way, this year didn’t disappoint, and it even brought a surprise! My high school bestie (and date to Rochester NY’s Big Gay Prom) the brilliant sapphic comic, Madelein Murphy, had a show at the Red Room. I watched her perform her set with my fellow author Rey Spangler, who, in classic small-queer-world, was Madelein’s college creative writing professor.

And the readings! Whether at the Provincetown Library with its incredible ship (there is literally a ship built into the library’s second floor) or in bars, coffee shops, and galleries, listening to writers read from their latest releases filled me with 1) the desperate need to buy every single book I could get my hands on, and 2) a swelling sense of kinship with these brilliant minds. I’m a nerd, so I think there is something magical about a room full of people all falling under the same spell, simultaneously existing together in the same room while also being transported to the world conjured in our imaginations by the writer. If that isn’t some kind of magic, I don’t know what is.

I’m always sad to leave events like these, packing up my suitcase—which never seems to hold everything I brought in it, probably because of all the books—and saying goodbye to friends I won’t see again for months. After that initial sapphic hangover, however, I feel ready to fight and ready to write. Creative types often talk about refilling that creative well. That is precisely what events like Women’s Week do for me.

This year, my main take away is that I don’t have to wait so long between seeing friends and connecting with readers. Friends and I took a solemn vow to arrange more opportunities to see each other in the coming year, either through retreats or author events, especially since we will need an antidote to the poisonous rhetoric coming from the right. I encourage you to do the same with your friends and community, building stronger, more resilient ties and fortifying ourselves for the fight.

—by Anna Burke

Reader’s Nook

An excerpt from Laura Garden’s The Potomac Smelled Like Guts, Writer's Digest award-winning short story published in her newsletter, Writing in Work Gloves, May 2025.

Leigh blinked at the captain. He would never know how exhausting it was to pretend not to be a woman in every conversation so that men like him wouldn’t condescend and talk down to her like he was doing now. She realized he expected her to answer. “Your concern is generous but misplaced. I find this work for the Union army light compared to farm labor. I come from a dirt-floored log cabin deep in the woods. Who would I dress up for? Who would notice if I put on a ballgown and called myself Cinderella? Jumping from one lie to another is for people who live in cities and sailors.”

“Forgive me if I have offended. I like to see women out in the world. I see in thee the qualities necessary for a good life: trust in the innate goodness of Man and trust in thyself.”

“Aren’t they the same?” she asked.

“No. Certain capacities arise in the self before they become evident in society.”

“You mean God changes the human heart?”

“Exactly.”

“Well. A debate for another time perhaps,” she said. “Take the spoon? Sell it and put the money to a good cause?”

The captain tucked it in his vest pocket. Leigh wondered why he never had stubble. He always looked like he had just shaved. His eyelashes were as long as a girl’s.

The captain, whose name was not LaRiviere any more than it was Orpheus, could have told the farmer from Maryland that she was also a woman, but she did not. She could have told her about seeing the giraffe at the Jardin des Plantes at the 1840 Paris Botanical Exhibition, or that she had always worn pants, even as a pampered child in the quaker widows’ house with the gables and grassy lawns in Nansemond County. She could have told her about the merchant packet sunk in a storm one-hundred-and-ninety-odd nautical miles north of Madeira in April of ’49, and of her retroactive promotion to first mate after a bookkeeper in Liverpool discovered in the log that the previous mate quarantined in his cabin with an unnamed illness had vanished somewhere between Charleston and the storm.

She could have shown her a honey-tongued Dixie Witch—Alexander Leonidas Van der Ham Sandwich, née Martha Pettigrew Lourdes, not her first or last friend who occasionally passed as a man but the proudest, shot in a planter’s parlor in Natchez by a terrified fancy boy they had bought for the right reasons, ironically—Dixie Witch, that shark-toothed Ganymede in silk pearls, Charleston planter’s wife always pregnant with wild schemes to provoke her husband to divorce her. She, for she was always what she appeared and when she wore dresses she felt like a woman, had joked she would be bred to death and could laugh about it now between fatal contractions.

Delivered, sweat-soaked victorious, now dead in LaRiviere’s arms, now dying, recalling the night they watched their cursed ship sink out of sight from the careening rowboat, now, ça va, in their host’s oversized dressing gown and low light he became Apollo again, bronze-haired Achilles returned, more milk than blood in his pale blue skin, leaving the quaker LaRiviere with a Deringer, a hungry newborn—boy she would hide from his deranged palmetto-crowned grandfather and monstrous inheritance—and a worthless banknote for two thousand pounds in the form of a blood-soaked bill-of-sale with a human name, the same terrified fancy boy LaRiviere would not in fact emancipate until her grief softened to something more rational.

Their war began centuries ago. LaRiviere had only been fighting in it for a few decades, but she was good at ferrying souls to the other side and enjoyed it more often than not. Perhaps she should have been daydreaming about her razor-tongued, consumptive wife who had just run off the Bangor farm to live with the Shakers, but the thought of her did not cross LaRiviere’s mind. Instead it was the gut-sucking fall of the sinking ship.

Sudden weightlessness when the sea dropped out beneath them, leaving them entombed by vertical walls of water on two sides before the ocean hurled them out again into the air, into the air and out of the boat like seeds from a sower’s hand. LaRiviere, witless and concussed from an injury sustained when the deck of the ship cracked up, had gargled saltwater and kicked until Dixie Witch and another passenger had dragged her and her broken arm back into the idea of a lifeboat. When she had regained her senses, Witch had been asking over and over if anyone had seen his horse.

“The horse drowned,” LaRiviere had told him. “Stop asking about the horse.”

She could have told the woman from Maryland of owning and being owned, of men en femme at the masquerade balls of the African-American gentlemen’s fraternal society in Washington, or that dancers everywhere—Norfolk, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Paris—used to swirl around a room in one dizzying, dazzling tornado of humanity but now every couple spun alone according to the latest fashion, and no one danced the valse a trois temps anymore.

She could have informed the woman from Maryland that there were no true country people left in America, not since the railroad ran through the heart of every American. The city is inside us now. Anyone could be anyone. Believing that one belonged somewhere required willful self-deception.

Instead she had tossed her a few trite sentences about Southern Lucifer and trusting thyself, words a woman who had never held silver could understand.

LaRiviere ran her hand through her hair. How would poor people like Mrs. Wahl grasp universal suffrage if they were still ensorcelled by spoons?

The SASS newsletter provides our community with information, analysis, resources, and even short sapphic fiction to keep us informed, mobilized, and connected. By working together to defend our community, our literature and our livelihoods, we can surmount the obstacles placed in our path and thrive!