Q: What prompted the idea to create a site dedicated to lesbian authors and artists?

A:  Well, I've been writing I think since before I learned to talk, and when I discovered AOL and the Lesbian message boards… with places to post my poetry and stories, I was in seventh heaven so to speak. Over the past couple of years I've made quite a few friends online, most of them also writers… and well, they write some awesome poetry, stories, songs …and if you're not on AOL, and don't know what corner to go look in to read their material… you'd never see it. 

    I started working on a fantasy story, and thought it would be great to put it up on the web with illustrations, my own cyber book kind of. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought that it would be great if someone could showcase their work on the web in the same way, where more lesbians could see and enjoy it … guess I'm that someone! 

Q:  What do you hope to achieve by going to all this work to develop a site showcasing lesbian art and literature?

A:  I don't know if I can explain it exactly. When I go into a search engine and ask for lesbian poetry, the returns are very small, and usually it's some woman's home page with a couple pages of poetry tucked in along with other things in her life she wants to share. Which is fine if you don't mind surfing a couple hundred small sites to find some really excellent poetry/stories written by women for women. But then there are all the women out there who write, who have no idea how to even put a home page onto the internet. (Heck, I didn't figure it out 'til about a month before the site actually appeared on the Web!) 

  There is an enormous amount of talent within the lesbian community… I guess I just want to try to get all those small sites, and shy poets and storytellers, to join hands and venture onto a broader avenue of expression… the World Wide Web… making access to their writings a little easier.

Q: You've used a single poem per page format… that takes up a lot of MBs! Why not just put all the poems by an author on one page without the fancy backgrounds and pictures?

A.  I think pages and pages of poetry would get boring rather quickly. I did it because it adds impact. Visuals that add to the poetry has you wanting to see what's next. 

   In many instances the backgrounds and images represent not only the poem, but something about the author/artist as well… their personal likes, beliefs, etc. It's another little piece of who they are and why they write.  And mostly because I want this to be an artistically pleasing site … let the words, the format, the images …create an overall harmony that displays their works in the best possible light. I want a reader to come away with a positive feeling about the site, even though they have just read a piece of poetry that ripped them down to the very core of their soul, or made them cry, laugh, or nod in "yeah, I can relate". 

    If the overall site isn't designed in a way that it sticks in their minds once they have surfed onto another site … they will quickly forget what they read, and where they read it.  I want them to come back, again and again, see who's new, see what new material a beloved author has added to the site, and continue to follow an author as they struggle to write those chapters to a budding first novel. 

We bare our souls in our words and imagery, and it's always nice to know that someone else out there is seeing the world through our eyes, even if it's only for a few minutes, for in those few minutes … our lives and worlds become one.