Isabel Miller at home in Poughkeepsie, New York (1992), NYPL. “Isabel Miller” was a pen name for Alm

Isabel Miller at home in Poughkeepsie, New York (1992), NYPL. “Isabel Miller” was a pen name for Alma Routsong: “I picked this pen name because Miller was my mother’s maiden name and Isabel is an anagram of Lesbia.”A Place for Us. Completed in 1967, it wasn’t until 1969 — after numerous publishers’ rejections — that Miller decided to use her savings to publish the book herself, selling copies primarily through the Daughters of Bilitis. The cover was drawn by Miller and her then-lover. After being awarded the American Library Association’s Gay Book Award in 1971, A Place for Us was reissued by McGraw-Hill as Patience and Sarah.Patience and Sarah (1972), first edition cover.A Dooryard Full of Flowers (1993), a collection of “Patience and Sarah” short stories.Isabel Miller (right) and Barbara Gittings (left, coordinator of the American Library Association’s Task Force on Gay Liberation) at the ALA Conference in Dallas, Texas (June 23, 1971). The certificate held between them reads, “The Task Force for Gay Liberation of the Social Responsibilities Round-Table / American Library Association presents this — the first Gay Book Award, 1971 — to Isabel Miller author of A Place for Us who is gay and proud.”“My lover and I were touring New York State and were visiting the folk art museum at Cooperstown. I was wandering through it, not really concentrating on anything, when my lover said: ‘Psst, psst!’ and called me back, pointing to this picture of a mermaid by Mary Ann Willson. There was a card beside it that said Miss Willson and her ‘farmerette’ companion lived and worked together in Greenville Town, Green County, New York, circa 1820. Then we went into the next room — a small library — and found a book by Lipman and Winchester, called Primitive Painters in America, with a short piece about Mary Ann Willson. It said that she and Miss Brundidge had a ‘romantic attachment.’ I was absolutely taken by it. I didn’t want to travel any more. I didn’t want to see Harriet Tubman’s bed. I wanted to go home and research Willson and Brundidge, find out all about them, and write a book about them. I spent a long year going to the library, trying to find out about them. I looked up all the Willsons and all the Brundidges in the Forty-second Street Genealogical Library. It’s a great library, but it didn’t have anything about them …“Before Patience and Sarah, I had started several books about myself and my friends, but I became overwhelmed with guilt and couldn’t finish them. This historical situation I could project into; it was ideal for the hangup I had about not tattling. Once I accepted that the book would have to be fictional, it went along fairly well.”— From “Writing and Publishing Patience and Sarah,” an interview with Alma Routsong, in Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. by Jonathan Katz (1976).“Maremaid” by Mary Ann Willson (watercolor, 1810-1820). Fenimore Art Museum. “[Willson’s] Maremaid resembles the subject of an 18th century trade sign and trade card from London. Brandishing a weapon in each hand, rather than a mirror and comb, as in the London images, Willson’s ideal appears to combine attributes of the Amazon with those of the mermaid.” — Museum description. -- source link

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