October 29th, 1997 to November 4th, 1997

Author Valerie Taylor dies

Former Chicagoan Valerie Taylor, aged 84, died peacefully in her sleep Oct. 22, 1997, in Tucson, Ariz. She once described herself as an inevitable revolutionary because in this society she was an "eight-time loser": "I am a woman, a lesbian, a creative spirit, a laborer, a handicapped person, a peace worker, an Indian [Potawatomi], and over 60."

Born Velma Nacella Young in 1913 in Aurora, Ill., she authored a dozen novels and hundreds of poems under the pen names of Nacella Young, Francine Davenport, Velma Tate and Valerie Taylor.

Taylor lived in Chicago from the mid-1950s until 1975. Sale of her first published novel, Hired Girl (1955), enabled her to leave an abusive marriage and pay for a divorce. She wrote her first lesbian- themed novel, Whisper Their Love (1957), while working in publishing, living in a cottage on South Shore Drive raising her three sons. Four of her later novels, Journey to Fulfillment (1964), A World Without Men (1963), Stranger on Lesbos (1960), and Return to Lesbos (1963), are set in Chicago and form a sequential story when read as above. In addition, she contributed to small Chicago literary magazines, such as Chicago Choice, that proliferated in the 1960s.

Beginning in 1965, Taylor was a founding member of Mattachine Midwest, served on the board of directors, and wrote for and edited its newsletter. She was an intimate friend of civil-rights attorney and law professor Pearl Hart, a Mattachine Midwest cofounder. Several poems in Two Women: The Poetry of Jeannette Foster and Valerie Taylor (1976) addressed the love shared by Val, who was in her late 50s, and Pearl, in her early 70s, when they met.

In 1974, Val co-created the country's first Lesbian Writers Conference and gave a history of lesbian writers as her keynote address, later published as For My Granddaughters ... (1975). Although after Pearl Hart's death she moved to Margaretville, N.Y., she continued to return to Chicago presenting seminars at the annual Lesbian Writers Conferences through 1978.

In the fall of 1978 she moved to Tucson, Ariz., becoming resident grandmother to a thriving lesbian community. Renewed interest in her work spurred Naiad Press to reprint three of her earlier novels and publish three new works, Love Image, Prism, and Rice and Beans, in the 1980s. Taylor was a prolific letter writer and corresponded copiously with lesbian writers of her generation, including Elsa Gidlow, May Sarton, and Dr. Jeannette Howard Foster.

When Foster's money for nursing home care ran out, Taylor and a new generation of writer/activists-Tee Corinne, Lee Lynch, and others-raised funds around the country for her care. Later, Taylor herself needed special care after a serious fall in 1993. Corinne and others again massed an appeal and came to her aid. Donors included Jane Rule (Desert Hearts), Anyda Marchant (who writes as Sarah Aldridge), and dozens of women from Writers Conference days and fans of her books from all around the country. Val spoke often of the need for an Old Dykes' Home. Val was inducted in absentia into the City of Chicago Commission on Human Relations' Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 1992. Recently, Val was a featured interview in Studs Terkel's Coming of Age, an oral history of old-line activists continuing the good fight.

Taylor left several unpublished works, including two novels dealing with the 1920s and the Depression era. In her letters, she expressed that these were her best works, but lesbian publishers did not feel they were right for the current lesbian market. Writer, artist, historian Tee Corinne was named as Val's literary executor. Corinne had been responsible for the publication of Two Women Revisited (1991) and had included works by Val in prose and poetry anthologies that she edited.

Valerie is survived by two sons, Marshall Tate and family, of San Jose, Calif., and Jim Tate, of Tucson, where a memorial will be held at 2 p.m. Nov. 8 at the Pima Friends Meeting House. Val was active in Quaker meetings since her Chicago days. A Chicago memorial is also being planned.

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