Liz Bradbury
Besides her work as an author of fiction of the critically acclaimed Maggie Gale Mystery series, Liz Bradbury has written and had published over 350 nonfiction articles and essays on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender issues. She has had regular columns in several GLBT publications and web sites including the Valley Gay Press, PA Diversity Network’s web site: www.padiversity.org, Panzee Press, Diversity Rules, and Gaydar Magazine.
Bradbury is a founder and is the Executive Director of Pennsylvania Diversity Network, the largest GLBT advocacy organization in PA. She has been the publisher of the Valley Gay Press newspaper for 12 years. As an advocate for the GLBT community, she has worked to successfully pass pro-GLBT legislation. She speaks frequently on GLBT rights and is an expert on same-sex marriage equality in Pennsylvania.
Bradbury lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania and Amelia Island, Florida with her partner Patricia Sullivan.
Liz is currently at work on her next Maggie Gale Mystery - Being the Steel Drummer.
Contact Liz
When my first book was ready for publication I wasted nearly a year on publishing companies that insisted I not contact anyone else until I heard back from them. One that had expressed interest in my manuscript actually went out of business a few weeks later. Good thing I hadn't signed with them.
My father was one of the top editors at Doubleday in its heyday in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, but publishing has changed a great deal. In the old days, editors worked directly with writers to create higher quality work. However, the more I work in the writing world of today, I actually hear that contemporary Lesbian authors working with companies, often cry when they get their drafts back from the company's editors.
Then there is the uniformity to which some companies insist their authors conform. And the pressure to produce a set numbers of pages in a narrow number of days. I think requirements such as these contribute to the lack of quality in some of the Lesbian novels being published today.
Those are just some of the reasons I decided to go ahead and publish myself, and I continue to be more and more glad I did.
By the way, when an aspiring Lesbian writer sends me a query letter, I write them back.
While I certainly can't publish every manuscript that comes to me, I'm glad to help other women writers with their work. It's a question of community, not competition. That's why we're working to set up the Medusa Literary Society web site, to share and exchange information with other Lesbian writers.
