Anna Livia was a lesbian feminist author and linguist, well known for her fiction and non-fiction regarding sexuality. From 1999 until shortly before the time of her death she was a member of staff at University of California, Berkeley.
In the 1980s, she taught French and English at the University of Avignon. She was a co-director of the Feminist Press in London from 1982–1989. From 1983–1990, she was an editor for Onlywomen Press as well as their periodical, Gossip, from 1984–1988. From 1994–2002, she edited for the Lesbian Review of Books. In 1995, she received her doctorate in French linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley. She taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign from 1995 to 1998. She began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1999, which she continued to do until her death. She published her revised PhD thesis, Pronoun Envy, in which she "developed a feminist analysis of the use of pronouns," in English and French writing. From 2001–2002, she taught as a visiting lecturer at Mills College.
''Relatively Norma'' (1982)
Livia's first novel is about Minnie, a lesbian from London, who travels to Australia to visit with and come out to her family. They barely react to her pronouncement of lesbianism, seemingly too busy with their own lives and identities. In her book Contemporary Lesbian Writing: Dreams, Desire, Difference, Paulina Palmer argues that Livia's novel "questions the significance of lesbianism as the key to personal identity," and "humorously exposes the excuses heterosexuals employ to avoid confronting and discussing the subject of lesbianism." Sally Munt, in her exploration of lesbian novels between 1979 and 1989, generally views the novel positively, but states that it is filled with "counter-cultural specificities of early 1980s London feminism," that border on the "self-referential claustrophobia which can sentence a text to obscurity outside its own sycophantic subculture." All of the male characters names are John, as a reference to clients of prostitutes. In an interview for The Leveller, Livia explains that "As a lesbian-feminist, I write in a lesbian-feminist context...The male characters are all called John...that's saying I think all men are Johns, which is true.... If other women want to read it, they'll have to imagine themselves into the lesbian feminist framework."
Awards
Three of Livia's books were nominated for Lambda Literary Awards for Lesbian Fiction. Incidents Involving Mirth was nominated in 1990, Minimax in 1991, and Bruised Fruit in 1999. She won a Vermont Booksellers Association Special Merit Award for translation.
