Secondarily, in the time between when Bannon’s novels went out of print and when they returned, her novels become cult classics. My first main point is that her novels were different because they were written by a lesbian author for female readers, and therefore depicted many of the difficult internal battles that lesbians at the time struggled with, letting them know that they weren’t alone and they weren’t crazy for having those feelings. I will make this point through analysis of primary sources which reveal both Bannon’s and Grier’s own thoughts about her rise to fame, as well as how her fans felt about her writing. What made Barbara Grier, founder of Naiad Press, decide that Bannon’s novels were worth republishing? And how did this affect Bannon’s life? In this paper, I will argue that Bannon’s novels held a quality that made them different from many lesbian pulps written in the 1950s and 1960s and more relatable to a lesbian audience, catapulting Bannon’s novels to the status of cult classics in lesbian history and propelling Bannon herself out of the closet. Bannon’s six novels were initially published from 1957-1962 during the lesbian pulp fiction boom of the 1950s and early 1960s. In this paper, I will discuss the republishing of Ann Bannon’s lesbian pulp fiction series, The Beebo Brinker Chronicles, in 1983 by Naiad Press, a lesbian publishing company. Reclaiming Lesbian Fiction – The Republishing of Ann Bannon’s Lesbian Pulp Fiction Novels by Naiad Press in 1983

Odd Girl Out by Ann Bannon