Alma Routsong

Alma Routsong was born Elma Louise Routsong in Traverse City, Michigan on November 26, 1924.[2] Her father, Carl Routsong, was a police sergeant, and her mother, Esther Miller Routsong, was a nurse.[3][4] She had an older brother Richard and a younger brother Gary.[3]

Routsong attended Traverse City Senior High School, where she was on a college preparatory track. She was the senior class president and participated in several other organizations including the National Honor Society.[5] As an adolescent, Routsong read lesbian fiction including Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, and Djuna Barnes' Nightwood.[6]

During World War II, Routsong served in the WAVES. She trained at the Farragut, Idaho Naval Training Center before working as a hospital apprentice.[7] After leaving the WAVES, she graduated from Michigan State University in 1949 with a degree in art.[8]

Routsong began her literary career in 1953 with the publication of her first novel, A Gradual Joy. She followed the success of this book with Round Shape in 1959. Both books were mainstream and lacked lesbian content; however, they were autobiographical and captured "her seemingly happy heterosexual married life."[9]

In 1969, Routsong self-published A Place for Us under the pseudonym Isabel Miller. She used her own Bleecker Street Press imprint - named after her shared apartment with Elizabeth Deran on Bleecker Street - after numerous rejections from mainstream publishers. Routsong based this novel on the 1820s relationship between folk painter Mary Ann Willson and Florence Brundage, and as a result, it was her first explicitly lesbian work.[10]

Routsong and Deran sold copies of the book outside Daughters of Bilitis meetings. As the book increased in popularity, McGraw-Hill took notice and republished it as Patience and Sarah in 1972.[10] For each of her subsequent works, Routsong continued to use the name Isabel Miller, a combination of an anagram of "Lesbia" and her mother's maiden name.[4]

Between 1968 and 1971 Routsong worked as an editor at Columbia University.[8]

In 1971, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table of the American Library Association created the first award for LGBTQ+ books, the Stonewall Book Award, which celebrates books of exceptional merit that relate to LGBTQ+ issues. Patience and Sarah was the first winner.[11]

From the mid-1970s until 1986 Routsong was a proofreader for Time Magazine.[8]

Routsong joined the Gay Liberation Movement in 1970 and was an officer in the New York chapter of Daughters of Bilitis.[8][18] She was arrested during a DOB police raid.[8]

She and Sidney Abbott, Kate Millett, Phyllis Birkby, and Artemis March were among the members of CR One, the first lesbian-feminist consciousness-raising group.[19]

Barbara Gittings staffed a kissing booth at the national convention of the American Library Association in Dallas in 1971, underneath the banner "Hug a Homosexual," with a "women only" side and a "men only" side.[20][21] When no one took advantage of it, she and Routsong kissed in front of rolling television cameras. In describing its success, despite most of the reaction being negative, Gittings said, "We needed to get an audience. So we decided, let's show gay love live. We were offering free—mind you, free—same-sex kisses and hugs. Let me tell you, the aisles were mobbed, but no one came into the booth to get a free hug. So we hugged and kissed each other. It was shown twice on the evening news, once again in the morning. It put us on the map."[22]

Alma married Bruce Brodie in 1947 and they had four daughters; Natalie (1949), Joyce (1952), Charlotte (1954), and Louise (1958). In 1962, Routsong met Elizabeth Deran at a church event and entered into a romantic relationship with her.[10] Brodie and Routsong divorced in 1962.[18]

When the pair's relationship became known, Deran was forced to leave her job with the United States Treasury Department. Routsong and Deran then moved to Greenwich Village in New York City.[10]

Routsong struggled with alcoholism in the 1970s as her relationship with Deran came to an end. The pair rekindled their friendship in the early 1980s, and Deran motivated Routsong to write more books.[10]

Routsong developed an interest in spiritualism and enjoyed making astrological charts of the women in her life. She also spent time at Kate Millett's Women's Art Colony Farm.[18]

Later in life, Routsong shared a relationship with artist Julie Weber.[18]

Routsong died of ovarian cancer at age 71 in Poughkeepsie, New York on October 4, 1996.[18][23]

• 1975 Jonathan Katz interview of Routsong
• 1990 Video interview of Alma Routsong
• Guide to the Isabel Miller papers, 1937-2009, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Special Collections