Weldy, Ann (Ann Bannon)
Title
Weldy, Ann (Ann Bannon)
Birth Date
September 15, 1932
Birthplace
Joliet, Illinois
Occupation
Writer,
Professor
Associate Dean
Advocate
Pseudonyms
Ann Bannon
Biographical Text
Ann Bannon is the pseudonym of Ann Weldy. She also appears in some sources under her mother's maiden name of Thayer or her married name of Ann Holmquist. She uses the name Ann Bannon exclusively in relation to her work as a writer.
Ann Bannon is widely hailed as the ‘Queen of the Lesbian Pulps’, and her Beebo Brinker series has been reissued by five different publishers, and made into a play. Bannon lists Radcliffe Hall’s Well of Loneliness and Spring Fire by Vin Packer (Marijane Meeker) as the two books that influenced her to write lesbian pulp fiction. After reading Spring Fire, she began a correspondence with Marijane Meeker which eventually led to publishing Odd Girl Out with Fawcet Publications. After writing five books in the Beebo Brinker series she went on to a life in academia, earning her PhD in linguistics and ultimately working as an associate dean at California State University, Sacramento.
Bannon believed her pulp fiction books to have been forgotten until they were reissued by Naiad Press in the 1980s. Since her retirement she has continued to tour the United States, speaking at many LGBT+ events. In an interview in the NFB documentary Forbidden Love, she recounted that she stopped writing fiction in the late 1960s when her children got older and began to be curious about what she was doing and writing.
“I wish I had been braver. It was easier to live in my head then to go out and live a real life. It was a strategy that saved my sanity. I was doing what I had been told to do. My family, my life, my culture, my society all said, be a good wife and mother. And I gave it a long run and a long try and it finally didn’t work. So, I’m living a better life, a much truer life, but you can’t go back and rewrite it.”
The photograph on this page features the authors Julie Ellis (left) and Ann Bannon (right) at the New York Collectable Paperback Expo in 2004. Photo courtesy of http://www.annbannon.com
Ann Bannon is widely hailed as the ‘Queen of the Lesbian Pulps’, and her Beebo Brinker series has been reissued by five different publishers, and made into a play. Bannon lists Radcliffe Hall’s Well of Loneliness and Spring Fire by Vin Packer (Marijane Meeker) as the two books that influenced her to write lesbian pulp fiction. After reading Spring Fire, she began a correspondence with Marijane Meeker which eventually led to publishing Odd Girl Out with Fawcet Publications. After writing five books in the Beebo Brinker series she went on to a life in academia, earning her PhD in linguistics and ultimately working as an associate dean at California State University, Sacramento.
Bannon believed her pulp fiction books to have been forgotten until they were reissued by Naiad Press in the 1980s. Since her retirement she has continued to tour the United States, speaking at many LGBT+ events. In an interview in the NFB documentary Forbidden Love, she recounted that she stopped writing fiction in the late 1960s when her children got older and began to be curious about what she was doing and writing.
“I wish I had been braver. It was easier to live in my head then to go out and live a real life. It was a strategy that saved my sanity. I was doing what I had been told to do. My family, my life, my culture, my society all said, be a good wife and mother. And I gave it a long run and a long try and it finally didn’t work. So, I’m living a better life, a much truer life, but you can’t go back and rewrite it.”
The photograph on this page features the authors Julie Ellis (left) and Ann Bannon (right) at the New York Collectable Paperback Expo in 2004. Photo courtesy of http://www.annbannon.com
Awards
Equality Forum’s LGBT Icon, 2012
Pioneer Lambda Literary Award from the Lambda Literary Foundation. 2008
Trailblazer Award, from the Golden Crown Literary Society, 2005.
The Distinguished Service Award for Faculty Excellence by the Alumni Association of Sacramento State University, April 2005.
Saints and Sinners Literary Festival Hall of Fame, 2004.
Certificate of Honor by the Board of Supervisors City and County of San Francisco, February 2000.
Outstanding, Pioneering Contribution to Lesbian and Gay Writing by Outlook National Lesbian and Gay Quarterly, March 1990.
Sources
Bannon, Ann. “About Ann Bannon.” Ann Bannon, www.annbannon.com/about.html.
Harrison, John. "Ann Bannon." Hip Pocket Sleaze: The Lurid World of Vintage Adult Paperbacks, Headpress, 2011. pp. 43-59.
Weissman, Aerlyn, et al. Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives. National Film Board of Canada, 1992.
Harrison, John. "Ann Bannon." Hip Pocket Sleaze: The Lurid World of Vintage Adult Paperbacks, Headpress, 2011. pp. 43-59.
Weissman, Aerlyn, et al. Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives. National Film Board of Canada, 1992.
Profile Contributor
Denyse Rodrigues
Terrence Paris
Item Relations
| This Item | Creator | Item: Marriage (The) |
| This Item | Creator | Item: Women in the shadows |
| This Item | Creator | Item: I am a woman |
| This Item | Creator | Item: Odd girl out |
| This Item | Relation | Item: Fawcett Publications |
Collection
Citation
“Weldy, Ann (Ann Bannon),” The Lesbian Pulp Fiction Collection @ Mount Saint Vincent University, accessed October 10, 2024, https://msvulpf.omeka.net/items/show/825.
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