Katie Gilmartin

Katie Gilmartin

The oral history interviews in this collection were donated to ALOT by Katie Gilmartin, who is a printmaker, author, and academic, and currently resides in California. These interviews were conducted between 1991 and 1993 as research for Gilmartin’s doctoral dissertation “The very house of difference”: Intersections of Identities in the Life Histories of Colorado Lesbians, 1940-1965 (1995). Gilmartin completed her PhD in Cultural Studies at the Yale University Graduate School in 1995.

The interviews consist of the life histories of “women who loved women and were living in Colorado or neighboring states during the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s.” Gilmartin’s dissertation is particularly interested in the ways these women’s various identities intersect, and these questions are reflected in the oral histories in this collection. As Gilmartin writes in the Introduction of her dissertation: “What did it mean in the 1940s to be middle class, European American, female, lesbian, and butch-identified, living in a small town in rural Wyoming? What did it mean in the 1950s to be working class, Mexican American, female, lesbian, and uneasy with butch and fem identities, living in Denver? These various identities cannot be reckoned individually and then added together; they are lived simultaneously” (1).

Gilmartin later published a novel, Blackmail, My Love (Cleis Press, 2014), inspired by the interviews in this collection.

The complete set of interviews, and any transcripts, will be posted online as they come available. Please contact us if you have any questions about the other interviews in the collection, or any concerns about the interviews posted here. Available transcripts have been edited according to interviewees' requests and for privacy. Some interviews only have partial transcripts.

These interviews were undertaken during the time of Colorado’s Amendment 2 legal battles. The majority of the interviews in this collection are protected and/or use pseudonyms. To gain access, please contact scrb@sfu.ca for further information.

Katie Gilmartin
Creator: 
Katie Gilmartin
Location: 
Title Date of interview Place of interview
Addie 01/01/1992 United States, Colorado
Bess 01/01/1992 United States, Colorado
Cassie 01/01/1992 United States, Colorado
Charlotte 01/01/1993 United States, Colorado
Jay and Joan 01/01/1992 United States, Colorado
Sandy 01/01/1993 United States, Colorado