Alma Routsong

Alma Routsong (26 November, 1924 - 4 October, 1996) was an American novelist best known for her lesbian fiction, published under the pen name Isabel Miller.cite web |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1589/is_1999_August_17/ai_55316111/pg_2 |title=Take a Wilde RIDE - highlights of gay rights history from 1895-1998 |work=The Advocate |date=1999-08-17 |first=John |last=Gallagher |accessdate=2007-06-18]

Biography

Alma Routsong was born in Traverse City, Michigan 26 November 1924, the daughter of Carl and Esther Miller Routsong. During World War II she served in the WAVES, training at the Farragut, Idaho Naval Training Center [ Traverse City "Record-Eagle", August 17, 1945] and then working as a hospital apprentice. She graduated from Michigan State University in 1949 with a degree in art.

Routsong's first two novels were published under her own name, with the later works under the pen name, a combination of an anagram of "Lesbia" and her mother's maiden name. [cite web |url=http://www.patienceandsarah.com/Routsong.html|title="Writing and Publishing Patience and Sarah" |work=Gay American History |first= Jonathan |last= Katz |accessdate=2008-01-02] Between 1968 and 1971 she worked as an editor at Columbia University. From the mid-1970s until 1986 she was a proofreader for "Time Magazine". [Wavie, "Isabel Miller"]

Routsong was an officer in the New York chapter of Daughters of Bilitis [Hogan and Hudson, "Completely Queer"] and was arrested during a DOB police raid. [Wavie, "Isabel Miller"]

Alma Routsong died in Poughkeepsie, New York on 4 October 1996. [Social Security Death Index]

Works

*cite book | last=Routsong | first=Alma | title=A Gradual Joy | location=Boston | publisher=Houghton Mifflin Company | year=1953
*cite book | last=Routsong | first=Alma | title=Round Shape | location=Boston | publisher=Houghton Mifflin Company | year=1959
*cite book | last=Miller | first=Isabel | title=A Place for Us | location=New York | publisher=Bleecker Street Press | year=1969 republished as cite book | last=Miller | first=Isabel | title=Patience and Sarah | location=New York | publisher=McGraw-Hill | year=1971
*cite book | last=Miller | first=Isabel | title=The Love of Good Women | location=Tallahassee, FL | publisher=Naiad Press | year=1986
*cite book | last=Miller | first=Isabel | title=Side by Side | location=Tallahassee, FL | publisher=Naiad Press | year=1991
*cite book | last=Miller | first=Isabel | title=A Dooryard Full of Flowers: and Other Short Pieces | location=Tallahassee, FL | publisher=Naiad Press | year=1993
*cite book | last=Miller | first=Isabel | title=Laurel | location=Tallahassee, FL | publisher=Naiad Press | year=1996

Awards and Honors

*Friends of American Writers award (1954, for "A Gradual Joy")
*Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Fellow (1957, for "Round Shape)" ["Mrs. Bruce Brodie Wins Fellowship to Conference" Urbana, Illinois "Courier", 28 July 1957]
*American Library Association Gay Book Award (1971, for "Patience and Sarah")

Reviews

*"After the G.I. Wedding," (review of "A Gradual Joy"), "The New York Times" 23 August 1953
*"When Mother Moved In," (review of "Round Shape"), "The New York Times" 6 September 1959
*"Their love was a thing apart" (review of "Patience and Sarah"), "The New York Times" 23 April 1972

References

Bibliography

* "Contemporary Authors Online", Gale, 2002
* Steve Hogan and Lee Hudson, "Completely Queer: The Gay and Lesbian Encyclopedia" (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998), pages 481-482.
* Elizabeth M. Wavie, "Isabel Miller" in Sandra Pollack and Denise D. Knight (eds) "Contemporary Lesbian Writers of the United States," (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), pp 354-360
* Carol Hurd Green and Mary Grimley Mason (eds) "Alma Routsong", in "American Women Writers," volume 5 (St James Press, 1994), pp 394-396

External links

* [http://www.patienceandsarah.com/Routsong.html 1975 Jonathan Katz interview of Routsong]