Queering the Frontier — Lesbian Authors Who Write Westerns

 

Queering the Frontier — Lesbian Authors Who Write Westerns


For over a century, the Western genre has symbolized rugged masculinity, individualism, and the myth of Manifest Destiny. Yet in the margins—and increasingly, in the center—lesbian authors have claimed the American frontier as a site for queerness, resistance, survival, and reimagination. This whitepaper explores the evolution of lesbian-authored Westerns, the significance of queer storytelling in frontier landscapes, and the pioneering voices who have redefined what it means to ride the range.

1. Rewriting the Frontier: Why Lesbian Westerns Matter

The Western has long served as a metaphor for transformation. Lesbian authors use the genre to:
- Subvert heteronormative romance tropes
- Center queer women's experiences in rugged, often hostile environments
- Explore chosen family, survival, and identity
- Reclaim the frontier as a space of liberation and resistance

In lesbian-authored Westerns, the frontier is no longer just a land of conquest—it becomes a place of self-discovery, gender rebellion, and found intimacy.

Trailblazers and Icons

Jane Rule
Though not strictly a Western author, Canadian-American lesbian writer Jane Rule explored rugged settings and the emotional terrain of women outside social norms. Her novel Desert of the Heart (1964), later adapted into the film Desert Hearts, offered one of the earliest sympathetic depictions of lesbian love in a Western-like Nevada desert setting.

Judy Grahn, A poet and theorist as much as a storyteller, Grahn’s work is steeped in the mythic and the frontier. While her writing is often poetic and symbolic, it echoes themes of survival, landscape, and queer mythology in ways aligned with Western literature’s scope.

Modern Voices: Lesbian Writers in Contemporary Westerns

Katherine V. Forrest:
Forrest’s Daughters of a Coral Dawn series is science fiction with Western flair, but her detective fiction (Curious Wine, Kate Delafield series) also features desert landscapes, strong female protagonists, and the kind of psychological independence associated with frontier fiction. Her work is foundational in lesbian genre writing.

Jeanine Hoffman:
Author of Wild Rides and Wildflowers and A Pebble in Time, Hoffman crafts lesbian romances set in the Wild West, complete with women gunslingers, saloonkeepers, and themes of justice and redemption. Her books offer historical fiction with strong, complex heroines.

Caren J. Werlinger:
While Werlinger often leans toward contemporary or speculative fiction, her work occasionally explores settings and sensibilities reminiscent of the Western—especially when rural survival, solitude, and same-sex intimacy are central themes.

Ali Vali
Vali’s Call of the Raven is a notable historical Western romance featuring lesbian protagonists in a classically rugged setting. It merges traditional Western tropes—horses, ranches, revenge—with powerful lesbian representation.

Themes in Lesbian Westerns

Across the subgenre, several recurring themes emerge:

Identity and disguise: Many stories involve characters who defy gender roles, dress as men, or pass as male to survive.

Freedom through exile: The frontier often becomes a haven from societal constraints—a place where queerness can thrive away from cities and tradition.

Survival and grit: Lesbian Western heroines are tough, skilled, and deeply bonded to the land and to one another.

Community-building: From outlaw gangs to isolated ranches, these stories often emphasize chosen families and queer kinship networks.

Intersectional Frontiers: Lesbian Authors of Color & Two-Spirit Voices

Queer Indigenous and BIPOC voices bring additional complexity to the Western:

Debra Magpie Earling’s Perma Red centers a fierce Native girl resisting assimilation—while not explicitly lesbian, the novel’s rejection of heteropatriarchal norms and deep emotional ties between women resonate with queer Western themes.

Two-Spirit writers contribute to a reclamation of land and story that undoes the colonial narrative of the Western, showing how queerness has always existed on the frontier.

Media Adaptations & Popularity

Lesbian Westerns have seen increased attention in indie film and self-published fiction. Films like The World to Come (2020) and Ammonite (2020), while not written by lesbian Western authors, reflect a growing appetite for stories of same-sex love in stark, remote landscapes. They borrow heavily from the aesthetics and ethos of Westerns—solitude, survival, and emotional restraint.

Challenges

Publishing barriers: Lesbian Westerns often reside in niche presses or self-publishing ecosystems due to mainstream publishing’s limited appetite for cross-genre queer fiction.

Genre hybridization: Many lesbian Westerns incorporate elements of fantasy, mystery, or historical fiction, breaking away from traditional Western formulas.

Academic and cultural recognition: There’s a need for greater critical study of lesbian contributions to Western literature, especially in curriculum and literary scholarship.

A Queer Legacy of the Frontier

Lesbian authors have transformed the Western from a symbol of colonial masculinity into a canvas for love, liberation, and identity. Whether through saloon romances, outlaw tales, or desert wanderings, they claim space for women whose stories have long been excluded from the mythic West.

As the frontier of literature continues to evolve, lesbian Westerns stand as bold reminders that the West has always belonged to more than white male cowboys.