About the Project

The Alyson Archives collects the publications of Alyson Books (formerly known as Alyson Publications) in one central and online location,  providing new context and insight to the press as well as to the legacy it's left. The Archives aims to recover a literary history that—while brief—was nevertheless meaningful in its creation of new reading communities. By making this history accessible to a broader public, we aim to ensure that these works and those responsible for them continue to be credited for their valuable creations.

In the 1970s and the 1980s, smaller presses geared towards the publication of LGBT texts offered new opportunities for queer authors, new representation of queer themes and relationships, and new means of connecting queer readers. In the U.S., publishers like Alyson Books (1980-2009) provided readers with hundreds of LGBT texts (both fiction and non-fiction) that included works like the notable children’s book Heather Has Two Mommies (2000), the erotic anthology My First Time: Gay Men Describe Their First Same-Sex Experience (1995), and Alison Bechdel’s early comic collection Dykes and Sundry Other Carbon-Based Life-Forms to Watch Out For (2003).

In 2009, Alyson Books printed its last offering, shutting its doors through a soft closing that drew little attention despite the popularity (and notoriety) that the press had garnered. The press's closing was later than many of its contemporaries and was likely connnected to the rise of the web's Read-Write culture and an increased interest in online publishing and self-publishing .

The Alyson Archives aims not only to maintain a space for the Alyson Books publications that serve as poignant cultural touchstones, it also hopes to introduce these works to new readers, making the press's history accessible to a wide audience of the site's users. Every digital project is an argument and the argument that our project makes is that the books published by Alyson Books from 1980-2009 are worth remembering and worth passing on to others.

Project Support

This project comes out of Davidson College’s Digital Studies Program. This site’s maintenance is aided by the E.H. Little Library. We have received generous financial support from the Charles Nelson Williamson Endowment for Gay and Lesbian Studies at Davidson.