Book Launch: Rachel Karp

Brooklyn writer and co-creator of the hit queer history and culture podcast Cruising Rachel Karp launches The Lesbian Bar Chronicles!

Book Launch: Rachel Karp presents The Lesbian Bar Chronicles: The Living History and Hopeful Future of America’s Dyke Dives and Sapphic Spaces

Brooklyn writer and co-creator of the hit queer history and culture podcast Cruising Rachel Karp launches The Lesbian Bar Chronicles, a grassroots tour of the nation’s lesbian bars that illuminates their past, present, and hopeful future. Lesbian bars are so much more than a place to get a drink. For over a century, they’ve acted as community posts, political organizing grounds, and sanctuaries. Yet whereas in the 1980s there were an estimated 200 lesbian bars across the US, the current count sits at a few dozen. In The Lesbian Bar Chronicles, Karp embarks across the country with her wife and best friend to chronicle the stories of the remaining US lesbian bars. Weaving together over 100 hours of immersive interviews with bar owners, staff, and regulars, Karp delivers a heartfelt reclamation of queer history and queer lives, that examines how these beacons for community and inclusion can teach us to live openly, cultivate connection, and continue to take up space. Karp reads from and discusses the book before a audience Q&A and signing.