Maida Tilchen

Maida Tilchen writes primarily to preserve and/or dramatize lesbian history. A lifetime book collector, she co-wrote the first "second wave" article on lesbian pulp novels, published in Margins magazine in 1975. Her collection of New Mexico books and her adventures in collecting them are featured in New Mexico Magazine in the January, 2020 issue. Her writing has been published in Gay Community News; Sojourner; Body Politic, The Advocate; and books including Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology; Lavender Culture; Women-Identified Women; Feminist Frameworks; Gay Press, Gay Power; and includes the foreword to the bibliography The Lesbian in Literature.

She served as a VISTA volunteer in southern Indiana; was a lesbian activist in Bloomington, Indiana in the 1970s; was promotions manager for Gay Community News (Boston) and has had many research and writing jobs in the educational field. Currently, she has retired from a satisfying and meaningful career.

She has visited New Mexico often since 1993. After her first trip there, wanting to continue to live in the library-rich Boston area but to keep one foot in the "land of enchantment," she started writing fiction set in New Mexico.

To view a one-hour video interview, go to http://www.chicagogayhistory.org/biography.html?id=796

To read more about Maida's books, go to http://landbeyondmaps.typepad.com/land_beyond_maps/

(edited by author)