Conditions (magazine)
Encyclopedia
Conditions was a lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...

 feminist literary annual founded in 1976 in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 by Elly Bulkin, Jan Clausen, Irena Klepfisz
Irena Klepfisz
Irena Klepfisz is a Jewish Lesbian author, academic and activist.-Early life:Klepfisz was born in the Warsaw Ghetto on April 17, 1941 and was 2 years old during the "varshever geto oyfshtand",...

 and Rima Shore.

Publishing Collective

Conditions was a magazine which emphasised the lives and writings of lesbians, and, throughout its history, the magazine maintained an all-lesbian collective. This collective expressed a "long standing commitment to diversity; of writing style and content and of background of contributors", within the lesbian and feminist communities. Conditions was especially dedicated to publishing the work of lesbians, in particular working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...

 lesbians and lesbians of color.

The Black Women's Issue

The journal's fifth issue, published in November, 1979, was edited by Barbara Smith
Barbara Smith
Barbara Smith in Cleveland is an American, lesbian feminist who has played a significant role in building and sustaining Black Feminism in the United States. Since the early 1970s she has been active as an innovative critic, teacher, lecturer, author, independent scholar, and publisher of Black...

 and Lorraine Bethel
Lorraine Bethel
Lorraine Bethel is an African American lesbian feminist poet and author. She is a graduate of Yale University.Bethel has taught and lectured on black women's literature and black female culture at various institutions...

. Conditions 5 was "the first widely distributed collection of Black feminist writing in the U.S.", and was later to be the basis for the anthology Home Girls
Home Girls
Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology is a collection of Black lesbian and Black feminist writing, edited by Barbara Smith. The anthology was first published in 1983 by Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, and was reissued by Rutgers University Press in 2000 ....

, one of the first books released by Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press
Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press
Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press was an activist feminist press started in 1980 by author Barbara Smith at the suggestion of her friend, poet Audre Lorde.-Beginnings:...

. Conditions 5: The Black Women's Issue was hugely popular, and set a record in feminist publishing by selling 3000 copies in the first three weeks it was available.

Conditions Editors

  • Barbara Smith
    Barbara Smith
    Barbara Smith in Cleveland is an American, lesbian feminist who has played a significant role in building and sustaining Black Feminism in the United States. Since the early 1970s she has been active as an innovative critic, teacher, lecturer, author, independent scholar, and publisher of Black...

  • Lorraine Bethel
    Lorraine Bethel
    Lorraine Bethel is an African American lesbian feminist poet and author. She is a graduate of Yale University.Bethel has taught and lectured on black women's literature and black female culture at various institutions...

  • Dorothy Allison
    Dorothy Allison
    Dorothy Allison is an American writer, speaker, and member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.-Early life:Dorothy E. Allison was born on April 11, 1949 in Greenville, South Carolina to Ruth Gibson Allison, who was fifteen at the time. Ruth was a poor and unmarried mother who worked as a...

  • Cheryl L. Clarke
  • Jewelle Gomez
    Jewelle Gomez
    Jewelle Gomez is an American author, poet, critic and playwright. She lived and worked in New York City for twenty-two years working in public television, theatre as well as philanthropy before relocating to the West Coast...

  • Nancy Clarke Otter
  • Debbi Schaubman
  • Elly Bulkin
  • Jan Clausen
  • Irena Klepfisz
    Irena Klepfisz
    Irena Klepfisz is a Jewish Lesbian author, academic and activist.-Early life:Klepfisz was born in the Warsaw Ghetto on April 17, 1941 and was 2 years old during the "varshever geto oyfshtand",...

  • Rima Shore
  • Melinda Goodman
  • Paula Martinac
  • N. Quintanales


Conditions Contributors

(partial list)
  • Joy Harjo
    Joy Harjo
    Joy Harjo is a Native American poet, musician, and author of ancestry. Known primarily as a poet, Harjo has also taught at the college level, played alto saxophone with a band called Poetic Justice, edited literary journals, and written screenplays. She is a member of the Muscogee Nation and...

  • Cherríe Moraga
    Cherríe Moraga
    Cherríe L. Moraga is a Chicana writer, feminist activist, poet, essayist, and playwright.-Biography:Moraga was born in Whittier, California. She earned her Bachelor's degree from Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles, California and her Master's from San Francisco State University in 1980...

  • Joan Nestle
    Joan Nestle
    Joan Nestle is a Lambda Award winning writer and editor and the co-founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives.-Life:Nestle's father died before she was born, and she was raised by her widowed mother Regina Nestle, a bookkeeper in New York City's garment district, whom she credits with inspiring her...

  • Amber Hollibaugh
  • Donna Allegra
  • Becky Birtha
  • Audre Lorde
    Audre Lorde
    Audre Lorde was a Caribbean-American writer, poet and activist.-Life:...

  • Ann Allen Shockley
  • Beverly Smith
    Beverly Smith
    Beverly Smith in Cleveland, Ohio is a Black feminist health advocate, writer, academic, theorist and activist who is also the twin sister of writer, publisher, activist and academic Barbara Smith...

  • Gloria Anzaldúa
  • Joan Larkin
    Joan Larkin
    Joan Larkin is an American poet and playwright. She was active in the small press lesbian feminist publishing explosion in the 1970s, co-founding the independent publishing company Out & Out Books. She is now in her fourth decade of teaching writing...

  • Paula Gunn Allen
    Paula Gunn Allen
    Paula Gunn Allen was a Native American poet, literary critic, lesbian activist, and novelist.Born Paula Marie Francis in Albuquerque, Allen grew up in Cubero, New Mexico, a Spanish-Mexican land grant village bordering the Laguna Pueblo reservation...

  • Jacqueline Lapidus
  • Adrienne Rich
    Adrienne Rich
    Adrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."-Early life:...

  • Michelle Cliff
    Michelle Cliff
    Michelle Cliff is a Jamaican-American author whose notable works include No Telephone to Heaven, Abeng and Free Enterprise.Cliff also has written short stories, prose poems and works of literary criticism...

  • Hattie Gossett
    Hattie Gossett
    Hattie Gossett is an African-American feminist playwright, poet, and magazine editor. Her work focuses on bolstering the self-esteem of young black women....

  • Chrystos
    Chrystos
    Chrystos is a Menominee rights activist and poet. Prior to being published, she worked as a home caretaker, and an activist for Turtle Mountain Band of Chipewa, Norma Jean Croy , and Leonard Peltier....

  • Marilyn Hacker
    Marilyn Hacker
    Marilyn Hacker is an American poet, translator and critic. She is Professor of English at the City College of New York....

  • Mitsuye Yamada
    Mitsuye Yamada
    Mitsuye Yamada is a Japanese American activist, feminist, essayist, poet, story writer, editor, and former professor of English.-Early and personal life:Mitsuye Yamada was born as Mitsuye Yasutake in Fukuoka, Japan...

  • Jo Carillo
  • Toi Derricotte
    Toi Derricotte
    Toi Derricotte is an American poet and a professor of writing at University of Pittsburgh.At Wayne State University she earned a B.A. in 1965 and an M.A...

  • Minnie Bruce Pratt
    Minnie Bruce Pratt
    Minnie Bruce Pratt is an U.S. educator, activist, and award-winning poet, essayist, and theorist. Pratt was born in Selma, Alabama, grew up in Centreville,...

  • Bonnie Zimmerman
  • Elly Bulkin
  • Cheryl Clarke
    Cheryl Clarke
    Cheryl L. Clarke is a writer, educator and lesbian Black feminist activist, born in Washington DC in 1947.-Writing:Raised in Washington DC, some of her earliest work reflected the troubled times of the 1960s and the rebellions that ripped through the District of Columbia following the...

  • Dorothy Allison
    Dorothy Allison
    Dorothy Allison is an American writer, speaker, and member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.-Early life:Dorothy E. Allison was born on April 11, 1949 in Greenville, South Carolina to Ruth Gibson Allison, who was fifteen at the time. Ruth was a poor and unmarried mother who worked as a...

  • Irena Klepfisz
    Irena Klepfisz
    Irena Klepfisz is a Jewish Lesbian author, academic and activist.-Early life:Klepfisz was born in the Warsaw Ghetto on April 17, 1941 and was 2 years old during the "varshever geto oyfshtand",...

  • Jewelle Gomez
    Jewelle Gomez
    Jewelle Gomez is an American author, poet, critic and playwright. She lived and worked in New York City for twenty-two years working in public television, theatre as well as philanthropy before relocating to the West Coast...

  • Honor Moore
    Honor Moore
    Honor Moore is an American writer of poetry, creative nonfiction and plays.She is the author of three collections of poems: Red Shoes, Darling, and Memoir; two works of nonfiction, The White Blackbird and The Bishop's Daughter; and the play Mourning Pictures, which was produced on Broadway and...

  • Luzma Umpierre
  • Ramina Mays
  • Barbara Banks
  • Mab Segrest
    Mab Segrest
    Mab Segrest is an American feminist writer and activist. Mab Segrest is best known for her 1994 autobiographical work Memoir of a Race Traitor....

  • Sapphire (author)
    Sapphire (author)
    Sapphire is an American author and performance poet.- Early life :Ramona Lofton was born in Fort Ord, California, one of four children of an Army couple who relocated within the United States and abroad. After a disagreement concerning where the family would settle, her parents separated, with...

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