Bent on Writing: Contemporary Queen Tales

Britta Santowski is a freelance writer in Victoria.

Bent on Writing is a collection of 65 works (including poetry, fiction,
and essays) by 55 authors who participated in the Toronto queer reading
series, Clit Lit, between 1998 and 2002. The editor, Elizabeth Ruth,
hosts this event at Toronto’s Red Spot. The contributors are
predominantly female or female-identified.

The works themselves are well presented and interesting. In her essay
“My Dad in Pink,” Karleen Pendleton Jiménez writes about her
complex relationship with her cross-dressing father; Julie Glaser’s
“Eat and Disorder” details the challenges of being a vegetarian
lesbian in a traditional meat-and-potato German family; an excerpt from
Debra Anderson’s novel, Code White, provides an insider’s view of a
mental hospital; Caitlin Fisher’s hypermedia novel, Vanessa, explores
a girl’s childhood play and cruelty.

Too much space (about a third of the book) is devoted to how-to
information on starting a similar queer reading series in your
community. After the first 10 or so essays, I got tired of the mandatory
kudos. Okay already, I got it: Clit Lit is a great event; the
coordinator is encouraging; the audience is supportive; the first
reading was terrifying but empowering; and said author has since
improved her or his presentation or writing skills. Also annoying is the
fact that the text throughout is slanted on each page—a gimmick that
serves little point beyond reinforcing the obvious fact that this is not
“straight” text.