https://jaimeharker.com/about daily 0.75 2018-09-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b8d8281e17ba329012ddc33/1538537505172-BEREI6WL0XBT2NR3TO49/LOU+Pride+Parade-5126-2.jpg About https://jaimeharker.com/home-impact daily 1.0 2026-06-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59dbc7c2cf81e0c47e15482d/1507822063979-U1YX8PJ2ZSJAT18D20I1/Untitled-3.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b8d8281e17ba329012ddc33/1536619973073-ELAFTIHJ0HHSPR37OMO9/Harker_cover-final%5B5002%5D.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b8d8281e17ba329012ddc33/bb6fbc05-f985-4645-8501-528ee5e7aecb/Sapphfic.jpeg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b8d8281e17ba329012ddc33/1d4a7257-30cd-469a-bebb-2c521a76749b/Bannon.jpg Home - About the Book Queer literature, from writing groups to bookstores Bringing together literary history, queer theory, and lived experience, Jaime Harker maps the shifting queer literary publishing landscape of the last thirty years, through the lens of being an English professor and lesbian feminist bookstore owner. To tell this story, Harker draws on interviews with lesbian writers, publishers, filmmakers, and book reviewers. She also incorporates elements of memoir, specifically her own experiences as the owner of Violet Valley Bookstore, near Oxford, Mississippi. Harker dives into the importance of genre fiction—erotica, pulp novels, even sci-fi—in queer lit history, while making space for new modes of literary production, including the rise of lesbian fanfic, self-publishing, and social media. All of this, Harker argues, has given rise to a queer literary renaissance and these genre books, often disrespected in mainstream book discourse, are central to queer writing. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b8d8281e17ba329012ddc33/7f39b6a1-5ebc-419e-afc8-983285167209/Lydongraphic.jpg Home https://jaimeharker.com/press daily 0.75 2018-10-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b8d8281e17ba329012ddc33/1538537828635-OI0IGDUGBI135JKMZF2B/Violet+Valley+Bookstore-0623.jpg Press “We need to find a way to create inclusive spaces and let people feel like it’s OK to be who they are and not be kind of hidden away,” Harker said. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b8d8281e17ba329012ddc33/1538538199375-Q9YPDBSAAY8ABCWJ157G/473156_10100351514603776_696826759_o.jpg Press “I have always been a feminist. This took my parents by surprise because I was raised in a conservative Mormon family with a traditional approach to gender roles,” Harker said. “My father and I spent many evenings discussing and debating everything from theology to politics to the role of women in society, and while we often didn’t agree, we always felt we had learned something from the exchange. The environment in which I was raised made the central role of gender very clear. I knew early that I wanted more choices than my culture was offering.” https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b8d8281e17ba329012ddc33/1538538370859-IRTDWA2PAAXKQMUZDEJ3/Feminary Press “These women wrote their own books, started their own publishing houses, and opened bookstores because they believed it was necessary and important,” she said. “They taught themselves how to do everything, made up their own rules…they were groundbreaking in so many ways. And I thought: they did this without any of the advantages that I have. They inspired me to take a chance, too.” https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b8d8281e17ba329012ddc33/1538538530722-3E8OI74MU41W99KETIOT/image-asset.jpeg Press While the cheap rent and proximity to her wife’s cafe certainly made the space an attractive option, Harker’s main goal is spreading queer and feminist visibility beyond the bubble of academia. “There’s so many kids in little towns who will never go to university, who don’t have access to it,” she says. “And the more that things like Mississippi House Bill 1523 are passed and the more people talk about it, the more they’re taught they’re worthless.” https://jaimeharker.com/writing daily 0.75 2018-10-12 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b8d8281e17ba329012ddc33/1539038354835-N2PFKDPBT3RY392G5OXT/MiddlebrowQueer.jpg Writing - Middlebrow Queer: Christopher Isherwood in America Jaime Harker shows that Christopher Isherwood refashioned himself as an American writer following his emigration from England by immersing himself in the gay reading, writing, and publishing communities in Cold War America. Weaving together biography, history, and literary criticism, Middlebrow Queer traces the continuous evolution of Isherwood’s simultaneously queer and American postwar authorial identity. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b8d8281e17ba329012ddc33/1539038581313-V5IK6BQPOFTYY1QN37IV/1960sGayPulpFiction.jpg Writing - 1960s Gay Pulp Fiction: The Misplaced Heritage As a result of a series of court cases, by the mid-1960s the U.S. post office could no longer interdict books that contained homosexuality. Gay writers were eager to take advantage of this new freedom, but the only houses poised to capitalize on the outpouring of manuscripts were “adult” paperback publishers who marketed their products with salacious covers. Gay critics, unlike their lesbian counterparts, have for the most part declined to take these works seriously, even though they cover an enormous range of genres, with far more short story collections than is generally realized. Twelve scholars have now banded together to begin a recovery of this largely forgotten explosion of gay writing that occurred in the 1960s. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b8d8281e17ba329012ddc33/1539318520760-LNW3RY81AYG4GK3YWEZA/americathemiddlebrow.jpg Writing - America the Middlebrow: Women’s Novels, Progressivism, and Middlebrow Authorship between the Wars Between the two world wars, American publishing entered a "golden age" characterized by an explosion of new publishers, authors, audiences, distribution strategies, and marketing techniques. The period was distinguished by a diverse literary culture, ranging from modern cultural rebels to working-class laborers, political radicals, and progressive housewives. In America the Middlebrow, Jaime Harker focuses on one neglected mode of authorship in the interwar period—women's middlebrow authorship and its intersection with progressive politics. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b8d8281e17ba329012ddc33/1539038659611-YT3LG2VWQZREGGX3X5K4/TheOprahAffect.jpg Writing - The Oprah Affect: Critical Essays on Oprah’s Book Club The Oprah Affect explores the cultural impact of Oprah’s Book Club, particularly in light of debates about the definition and purpose of literature in American culture. Powered by women writers and readers, novels in this tradition attract crowds, sell well, and make unabashed appeals to emotion. The essays consider the interlocking issues of affect, affinity, accessibility, and activism in the context of this tradition. Juxtaposing book history; reading practices; literary analysis; feminist criticism; and communication, religious, political, and cultural studies; the contributors map a range of possibilities for further research on Oprah’s Book Club. A complete chronological list of Book Club picks is included. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b8d8281e17ba329012ddc33/1537833552801-21VVPNDNMAQY9PAHN5AP/faulkner+and+print+culture.jpg Writing - Faulkner and Print Culture William Faulkner's first ventures into print culture began far from the world of highbrow New York publishing houses such as Boni & Liveright or Random House and little magazines such as the Double-Dealer. With that diverse publishing history in mind, this collection explores Faulkner's multifaceted engagements, as writer and reader, with the United States and international print cultures of his era, along with how these cultures have mediated his relationship with various twentieth- and twenty-first-century audiences. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b8d8281e17ba329012ddc33/1539038788989-961L5ENB1A82G0IVPZU1/ThisBookIsAnAction.jpg Writing - This Book is an Action: Feminist Print Culture and Activist Aesthetics The Women's Liberation Movement held a foundational belief in the written word's power to incite social change. In this new collection, Jaime Harker and Cecilia Konchar Farr curate essays that reveal how second-wave feminists embraced this potential with a vengeance. https://jaimeharker.com/isom daily 0.75 2018-10-05 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b8d8281e17ba329012ddc33/1538537183701-SGZXXUWEK2JJV4S9HH99/The+Sarah+Isom+Center The Sarah Isom Center https://jaimeharker.com/violetvalley daily 0.75 2019-02-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b8d8281e17ba329012ddc33/1536083790170-KTBULFDBEG9TWYY3V58X/Violet+Valley+Bookstore-0643.jpg Violet Valley Bookstore https://jaimeharker.com/donate-text-impact daily 0.75 2025-05-12 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59dbc7c2cf81e0c47e15482d/1509386798700-GZN997HA8TMR0M009X0F/Untitled-3.jpg Donate