By Sam Carter

This year’s annual Lesbian Lives Conference took place within its original stomping ground of Cork, Ireland. As I was serendipitously obtaining my MA up in Dublin, I had the privilege of attending the conference as a representative for Sinister Wisdom! I boarded a 6 am train with a few boxes of lesbian memorabilia (they were heavy—I had underestimated the weight!) and made my way to the University College Cork’s beautiful campus just in time for registration.


Conference speakers truly embodied the theme of ‘Lesbian* Life & Living’, and event organisers took incredible steps to engage with the local Cork lesbian/queer community, who organised after-conference events such as a cabaret, poetry readings, and numerous DJ sets. Keynote speakers included Dr. Aoife Neary of UCC, Karen Washington of the QT+BIPOC centered Rise and Roots Farm based in the Hudson Valley (US), as well as Lisa Fingleton and Rena Blake representing their ‘eco-social arts project’ The Barna Way based in County Kerry (Ireland). Additionally, authors Catherine O’Donnell alongside Chloe Michelle Howard discussed the queer un/becomings in their respective novels – SLANT and Heap Earth Upon It.


I had the absolute privilege of talking with and befriending more lesbians and queers in one weekend than I’ve encountered my whole life! If I did my job well, hopefully some of them are now reading this very article. Although I didn’t get the chance to enjoy the majority of panels given my time tabling for Sinister Wisdom, I experienced the residual excitement running off the consistent stream of lesbians passing by my booth who were more than happy to spend a moment (or many, if I could convince them) talking with me about their work, their ideas, and their own lesbian life, now in brief collision with mine. I felt the freedom to engage in conversation beyond the simple pleasantries of exchange, and found myself swapping emails, Instagrams, and advertising both local and international fliers, projects, and archives once I’d given away the majority of Sinister Wisdom merchandise. Particular panels include beautifully cheeky titles such as ‘Fingering the Archives’ and the more sobering ‘Resistance in Times of Violence’, reflecting both the energy of urgency and unabashed joy that flavored the whole weekend. Film screenings such as “Free Beer Tomorrow” co-produced and directed by Julia M. Applegate and LuSter P Singleton were such a hit amongst conference-goers that LINQ Ireland, a Cork-based lesbian and queer organisation, set-up an impromptu, secondary screening to meet demand.


Additional films and panels were incredibly local to Cork. For example, “Loafers”, a documentary covering Cork’s longest running gay bar of the same name and directed by Cork LGBT Archive founder Orla Egan left not a dry eye for those in attendance. Events following the conference’s end further provided a truly intergenerational sight of lesbian loving, belonging, dance, and discussion I haven’t before experienced. There’s something to be said in seeing an older butch absolutely destroy the dance floor that really adds decades to your life and makes you realise that perhaps queer utopia does exist in these brief, incandescent flashes.


Founded in Ireland in 1994, the Lesbian Lives Conference is an ever-evolving, always becoming event that creates an unequivocally lesbian, queer space ripe with discussion, critique, and joy. The next conference is currently rumored to set up shop in Toronto. Hopefully, with a bit of luck, I’ll see y’all there!

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Sam Carter is an MA graduate student at University College Dublin in Archives and Records Management. Her upcoming dissertation explores the significance of archival spaces and nostalgia within queer southern archives. You can connect with her Instagram @sam.carter83.