Draft:Feminary

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Draft:Feminary
Feminary: A Feminist Journal for the South Emphasizing Lesbian Visions
LanguageEnglish
Edited byCollective
Publication details
History1969–1982
ISO 4Find out here

Feminary: A Feminist Journal for the South Emphasizing Lesbian Visions was an American radical feminist magazine that ran from 1969 to 1982.

History

Feminary originated in 1969 as the Research Triangle Women’s Liberation Newsletter, a small pamphlet advertising women's liberation groups in the Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina (known collectively as the Research Triangle for their proximity to major research universities). By its third issue, the newsletter would be renamed to the Female Liberation Newsletter of Chapel Hill.[1] The newsletter was founded by and for local feminist and women's groups active in the Research Triangle, including Women's Liberation #27, a feminist and socialist offshoot of Students for a Democratic Society, and a group which would later become Lollipop Power, a feminist children's books publisher.[1]: 11–12 [2]: 4  Articles published during the Newsletter's first year included an article warning of the dangers of byssinosis, a lung disease affecting mostly female textile workers in the state; a planned sexual discrimination suit against Ligget and Myers, a local tobacco producer; and a protest to prevent the execution of Marie Hill, a Black woman from nearby Rocky Mount convicted for murdering a shopkeeper.[1] Editors during this early period included Elizabeth Knowlton, Marguerite Beardsley, and Minnie Bruce Pratt.[1][3]

The Newsletter's publication frequency began to dwindle by the second half of 1970, and in late 1971, the Newsletter would stop publishing for over a year.[1] A new core of collective members, including Knowlton, Nancy Blood,[4] Linda Brogan, and Leslie Kahn, would restart the newsletter in early 1973, this time renamed to simply the Feminist Newsletter.[1] This new iteration became a bi-weekly publication, and in addition to local announcements, began to publish essays, news, poetry, and classified ads.[1]

In 1974, the Newsletter would be renamed to Feminary, a term inspired by Monique Wittig's 1969 novel Les Guérillères.[1]

In an issue published in the spring of 1978, Feminary would make its final name change to Feminary: A Feminist Journal for the South Emphasizing Lesbian Visions.[1][5] With this name change came an explicit change in scope, which the collective then wrote was a "shift in focus from a local feminist magazine to a lesbian feminist journal for the South."[5][6] By this time, the collective's membership had steadily dwindled, and at the time of this new direction consisted primarily of Susan Ballinger, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Mab Segrest, and Cris South.[1]

The journal ceased publication as a Southern journal in 1982. The remaining collective members sought new publishers for Feminary, and ultimately handed the publication over to a group located in San Francisco. While the San Francisco group had ambitions to produce a version of Feminary as a "national magazine with an international perspective," they ultimately only produced two issues from before shuttering permanently in 1985. Feminary's transformation into a literary journal meant that it no longer provided timely news and group announcements to the Research Triangle area. In 1981, former Feminary members Nancy Blood and Leslie Kahn, as well as six other women, founded a new newsletter for the Triangle area titled simply The Newsletter. This publication was meant to more closely follow the format of the original Feminist Newsletter, and ran from 1981 to 2001.[1]: 84–85 [4]

Membership and organization

Throughout its history, Feminary was organized collectively, rather than hierarchically. [...]. Membership waned at several points, with current members repeatedly printing notices asking for help publishing future issues.

Feminary mostly had no external funding, and sustained itself via individual subscriptions.[citation needed] In some cases, members surreptitiously used resources from local universities to print the journal.[1][7] Some issues were printed by Whole Women Press, a lesbian feminist printer founded by former Feminary members Nancy Blood and Leslie Kahn.[1][8][9] At one point, the magazine received a grant of $1,200 from the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines.[1]: 72 

Legacy

Feminary was an exemplar of the women in print movement, and is often compared to fellow Southern lesbian feminist publication Sinister Wisdom.[3][10][11][12] The magazine was particularly noted for its representation of feminism and lesbianism in the United States South. [...].

Feminary is also remembered for taking a relatively strong anti-racist and class-conscious stance as a publication within the women's liberation movement and the lesbian feminist movement, both of which have been criticized for preoccupation with white, middle class women. However, the core collective members were mostly, and sometimes entirely, white women throughout the magazine's existence.[12][13]

Many members of the Feminary collective continued to engage in public scholarship and activism. Elizabeth Knowlton, who left Feminary when it was still The Feminist Newsletter, later moved to Atlanta and co-founded the Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance.[14][15] Mab Segrest founded North Carolinians Against Racist and Religious Violence (NCARRV), an anti-racist organizing group, and Southerners On New Ground (SONG), a social justice organization.[16] Segrest continues to write and has published several books, including Memoir of a Race Traitor, which won the 1994 Lambda Literary Editor's Choice Award.[17][18] Minnie Bruce Pratt continued to write, teach, and organize until her death in 2023.[19]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Gilbert, Jennifer L. (April 1993). "Feminary" of Durham-Chapel Hill: Building Community Through a Feminist Press. Master's Thesis, Duke University.
  2. ^ Schultz, Hooper (2026-02-08). ""Watching the Ferns Uncurl": Minnie Bruce Pratt and Lesbian-Feminist Community Building in North Carolina". Journal of Lesbian Studies.
  3. ^ a b Cantrell, Jaime (2015). "SUBSCRIBE to Feminary! Producing Community, Region, and Archive". In Stone, Amy L.; Cantrell, Jaime (eds.). Out of the Closet, Into the Archives: Researching Sexual History. State University of New York Press. pp. 311–335.
  4. ^ a b "Nancy Blood – Southern Lesbian Feminist Activist Herstory Project". Retrieved 2026-05-20.
  5. ^ a b Atwell, Elizabeth. "Feminary: A Feminist Journal for the South Emphasizing the Lesbian Vision". OutHistory. Retrieved 2026-05-20.
  6. ^ "A Feminist Journal for the South Emphasizing the Lesbian Vision". Feminary. 9 (2). 1978.
  7. ^ Heying, Silas Margaret; Mixon, Amanda (2026-03-18). "The Feminary Re-Collective: A Roundtable with Eleanor Holland, Helen Langa, Mab Segrest, and Cris South". Journal of Lesbian Studies. 0 (0): 1–25. doi:10.1080/10894160.2026.2644042. ISSN 1089-4160. PMID 41847839.
  8. ^ "Explore the Exhibit: Arts + Culture | Love and Liberation: A History of Durham LGBTQ+". durhamlgbtqhistory.org. Retrieved 2026-05-21.
  9. ^ "Whole Woman Press" (PDF). Feminary. 9 (1): 48–49. 1978 – via Love + Liberation: A History of LGBTQ+ Durham.
  10. ^ Harker, Jaime (2018). The Lesbian South: Southern Feminists, the Women in Print Movement, and the Queer Literary Canon. University of North Carolina Press. doi:10.5149/9781469643373_harker. ISBN 978-1-4696-4335-9.
  11. ^ Cherry, Wynn (2000). ""Hearing Me Into Speech:" Lesbian Feminist Publishing in North Carolina". North Carolina Literary Review (9): 82–90.
  12. ^ a b Powell, Tamara M. (2000). "Look What Happened Here: North Carolina's Feminary Collective". North Carolina Literary Review (9): 91–102.
  13. ^ Pratt, Minnie Bruce (2020-01-27). "The Queer South: Where the past is not past, and the future is now". Scalawag. Archived from the original on 2025-06-28. Retrieved 2026-06-23.
  14. ^ "Elizabeth W. Knowlton oral history interview, February 16, 1998 (Biography)". ArchivesSpace at GSU Library. Archived from the original on 2024-02-27. Retrieved 2026-05-21.
  15. ^ Sahar, Lee (2022-03-08). "The Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance". Atlanta History Center. Retrieved 2026-05-21.
  16. ^ "Mab Segrest – Southern Lesbian Feminist Activist Herstory Project". slfaherstoryproject.org. Retrieved 2026-05-21.
  17. ^ Admin, Lambda (1995-07-15). "7th Annual Lambda Literary Awards". Lambda Literary. Retrieved 2026-05-21.
  18. ^ "Memoir of a Race Traitor". The New Press. Retrieved 2026-05-21.
  19. ^ Rubino, Stef (2023-07-10). "Remembering Minnie Bruce Pratt as a Radical Southern Femme". Autostraddle. Retrieved 2026-05-22.

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