If you have not been living in a man-cave for the last decade, odds are pretty good that you’re aware of the phenomenon known as Fem-Slash February, an annual observance of all things sapphic. As this is a cause near and dear to our hearts here at SFP, we put a couple of questions to those of our authors who have published wlw content with us. Please feel free to grab a beverage of your choice, and enjoy their responses!

Daisy Fairchild (Tasting Much Sweeter Than Wine and What The Empress Wants)

Space Fruit Press: What do you most enjoy about writing sapphic romance?

DF: Ooooh, I mean, it depends a bit on what you’re writing? But I think there’s often a level of intimacy when you’re writing f/f relationships that can sometimes be harder to construct with other pairings? I mean, maybe it’s just because I’m a wlw myself, but there’s just something so compelling about the closeness of women, and how that then translates to romance and naughty times!

SFP: Why do you think writing sapphic romance is important?

DF: Because I grew up never seeing it, and I don’t want that for other baby queers. And my family wasn’t even conservative! It just didn’t exist in the media. And when I did start to see it, it was all very specific types and tropes of wlw content? So it’s very important to me that we show women of all kinds loving other women of all kinds!!

SFP: What’s your earliest strong impression of sapphic romance in media?

DF: I saw the Star Trek episode with the lesbian kiss as a kid (editor’s note: Star Trek: Deep Space 9, S4:E5, “Rejoined”), and it absolutely blew me away. Like I said, my immediate family were pretty liberal, so I even knew a couple IRL lesbian couples, but they were all – not to stereotype – very suburban-mom type lesbians, with minivans and frosted perms, so the concept of them and romance was not one that occurred to me, like how you can’t imagine your parents being sexy, you know? But Jadzia Dax was hot, and her wife was beautiful, and they were forbidden, and their kiss was just… whew!!! If you’ve never seen it, go watch the episode, or at least the kiss. Terry Farrell, my fucking queen, hot damn.

Catherine Fletcher (Baggage For Two and The Last Place They’d Look)

SFP: What do you most enjoy about writing sapphic romance?

CF: What’s not to love, honestly. For me, it’s an exploration of myself as a queer woman, and a depiction of the kind of romance I wanted to read when I was a teen. It’s also a bit of a rebellion against the culture that raised me. I love writing about women and the women who love them. I love giving myself the tummy swoop when things get hot and heavy in the draft.

SFP: Why do you think writing sapphic romance is important?

CF: Representation, baby! I never saw sapphic romance growing up, or if I did, it was always forbidden and we shouldn’t be watching that. I don’t want that for the queers that come after me. I want them to see themselves in the literature available to them, and I want them to see sapphic-aligned characters that get to have joy and love and the freedom to be themselves in all their myriad variations.

SFP: What’s your earliest strong impression of sapphic romance in media?

CF: I can’t remember the earliest thing I might’ve seen sapphic romance in, but I can pinpoint the thing that made me go, oh maybe I am like these women who love other women. It was the winter of 2007, I was a volunteer at the women’s center on campus at my post-secondary institution, and we were watching Imagine Me & You. When Piper Perabo’s character goes back to kiss Lena Headley’s in the flowershop, after telling her that they couldn’t be together, it was like, oh.

Louisa Vidal (Trash Planet Confidential)

SFP: What do you most enjoy about writing sapphic romance?

LV: The same thing I enjoy about romance full stop – the delicious dance between two clueless people towards smoochin’. Conjuring chemistry, the subtle interplay of language, illustrating someone’s inner landscape. Also boobs.

SFP: Why do you think writing sapphic romance is important?

LV: Because a day without lesbians is like a day without sunshine. Because the world is always richer with more WLW stories out there. Because these stories couldn’t be told out loud for so long.

SFP: What’s your earliest strong impression of sapphic romance in media?

LV: In retrospect, Kristy being my favourite of the Babysitter’s Club should’ve been a tell. A few years later in my development I watched Marleen Gorris’s wonderful movie Antonia’s Line, which treats a lesbian character with all the same grace and splendor of the rest of the women in the movie.