title: Living "anyway:" stories of access.
abstract: Elana Dykewomon's 1974 novel, Riverfinger Women, was among the first lesbian books with a "happy ending." Her seven books of fiction and poetry include the Lambda Award winner Beyond the Pale (now an audio and e-book) and Lambda nominee, Risk. She was an editor of the lesbian-feminist journal, Sinister Wisdom, for eight years. Her literary work foregrounds the lesbian heroic as integral to women's communities. As a social justice activist, she has organized and participated in anti-war, anti-racist, anti-classist, fat and disability rights work since the 1970s. She is now working with Old Lesbians Organizing for Change. She is happy to live embedded in dyke community as a lesbian radical committed to a loving justice. While she suffered psychiatric abuse at 13 (and acknowledges long-term adaptive behavior on that account), she has not experienced disabling mental illness since. Her primary disabilities are mobility impairment through severe, progressive arthritis and constant low-to-powerful pain, sometimes diagnosed as fibromyalgia. Her acute illnesses include pancreatitis and a rare-in-adults kidney disease currently in remission.
authors.affiliation: a Independent Cultural Worker.
authors.forename: Elana
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Dykewomon
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D018452:Homosexuality, Female / Q000266:history* / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D007674:Kidney Diseases / Q000266:history / Q000523:psychology; D007857:Leadership; D010195:Pancreatitis / Q000266:history / Q000523:psychology; D011057:Politics